Search This Blog

Saturday 14 July 2012

A prophet yet an outcast: 100 years after his birth Enoch Powell has been vindicated on crucial issues

Powell was a man of conspicuous moral greatness, something that, alone, made him unsuited for politics, because it meant he could not keep what he perceived to be the truth to himself.

He had a gift denied to most politicians, which was of making prophecies that were right.

He was right about Europe; right about the single currency; right about economic management; right about Lords reform; right about devolution; right about American imperialism; and, with even Trevor Phillips, the figurehead of the Equalities Commission, now arguing that multiculturalism has failed, right about that, too.

Fourteen years after his death, and almost half-a-century after he sat in the Cabinet, his influence on political thought is not only undiminished: it continues to grow.