Of course there are various claims as to how this post-1997 immigration surge occurred. One, famously made in 2009 by the former Labour speech-writer Andrew Neather, was that Tony Blair’s government wilfully eased the immigration rules because they wanted to ‘rub the Right’s nose in diversity’ and create what they unwisely took to be an electorate that would subsequently be loyal to the Labour Party.¹³ After the outcry caused by his 2009 recollection Neather qualified this particular memory. Other Labour officials from those years began to say they had no idea who Neather was. But it is not hard to see how anyone, however junior, could have come away with such an impression of what was happening in those years.

For instance, it was clear from the moment of her appointment as Minister for Asylum and Immigration during Tony Blair’s first term that Barbara Roche was seeking a complete rethink of Britain’s immigration and asylum policies. While the Prime Minister was concentrating on other matters, Roche changed every aspect of the British government’s policies. From here onwards all people claiming to be asylum seekers would be allowed to stay in Britain – whether they were genuine or not – because as she informed one official, ‘Removal takes too long, and it’s emotional.’ Roche also thought the contemporary restraints on immigration were ‘racist’ and that the whole ‘atmosphere’ around the immigration debate ‘was toxic’. Over her period in office she repeatedly stated her ambition to transform Britain. As one colleague said, ‘Roche didn’t see her job as controlling entry into Britain, but by looking at the wider picture “in a holistic way” she wanted us to see the benefit of a multicultural society.’

Neither the Prime Minister nor the Home Secretary, Jack Straw, were interested in questioning the new asylum policy, nor the fact that under Roche everyone entering Britain, whether he or she had a job to go to or not, was turned into an ‘economic migrant’. Wherever there was any criticism of her policy, either internally or externally, Roche dismissed it as racist. Indeed Roche – who criticised colleagues for being too white – insisted that even the mention of immigration policy was racist.¹⁴ What she and a few others around her sought was a wholesale change of British society. Roche – a descendant of East End Jews – believed that immigration was only ever a good thing. Ten years after the changes she had brought about she told an interviewer with satisfaction, ‘I love the diversity of London. I just feel comfortable.’¹⁵