When I was a revolutionary student, I and all my comrades wanted more immigration into this country. This was not because we especially liked immigrants. Most students in those days lived far from the areas where migrants tended to settle. It was because we did not much like Britain, and saw mass migration as a good way of changing it.

We also very much liked to look down on those who opposed immigration. We thought they were bad people, motivated by bigotry.

Since then, I have grown up. I still very much dislike bigotry but have understood for many years that it is not necessarily bigoted to have doubts about leaving our borders unguarded. 

Many things opened my eyes. One was the weekend I offered to go canvassing for an old friend who was standing as Labour candidate in a Midlands seat. Before we went out into the rainy streets to battle for him, local party officials briefed us: ‘If immigration comes up on the doorstep – and it will – say we are against it.’

It wasn’t true. This was more than 40 years ago. Labour has known for ages that its supporters don’t want any more immigration. But the Labour elite has wanted it. So it has lied to them about what it thinks.

That lie was blown out of the water in April 2012. By then, 15 years of Blairism had permitted more immigration than this country had ever seen before. A minor Labour Party apparatchik called Andrew Neather (it rhymes with ‘breather’) chose finally to reveal what had really been going on, rejoicing at it in an article in London’s Evening Standard newspaper: ‘The results in London, and especially for middle-class Londoners, have been highly positive.

'Sir Keir Starmer is now Sir Sheer Squirmer, letting his speechwriters stuff his mouth with things Enoch Powell might once have said. Of course, this is both despicable and bitterly funny,' writes Peter Hitchens. Pictured: The PM's meeting with Albanian prime minister Edi Rama

‘It’s not simply a question of foreign nannies, cleaners and gardeners – although frankly it’s hard to see how the capital could function without them. Their place certainly wouldn’t be taken by unemployed BNP voters from Barking or Burnley – fascist au pair, anyone? Immigrants are everywhere and in all sorts of jobs, many of them skilled.’

He then carolled about how much more vibrant everything was for people like him. ‘It is so much more international now than, say, 15 years ago.’

He confessed to having been the author of a major 2000 policy speech by the then immigration minister, Barbara Roche, calling for a loosening of controls. But there was much more behind it. As Mr Neather disclosed, earlier drafts of the speech ‘included a driving political purpose: that mass immigration was the way that the Government was going to make the UK truly multicultural. I remember coming away from some discussions with the clear sense that the policy was intended – even if this wasn’t its main purpose – to rub the Right’s nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date. That seemed to me to be a manoeuvre too far.

‘Ministers were very nervous about the whole thing. For despite Roche’s keenness to make her big speech and to be upfront, there was a reluctance elsewhere in government to discuss what increased immigration would mean, above all for Labour’s core white working-class vote.’

Well, this landmine took a long time to blow up, but in the past few months Labour have finally grasped that one of their favourite policies is utterly hated by all the reasonable people of Britain, especially voters who used to be so loyal to them and never will be again. 

So what do they do? They try to pretend that they are, in fact, against the thing they have furiously pushed and supported for half a century. Sir Keir Starmer is now Sir Sheer Squirmer, letting his speechwriters stuff his mouth with things Enoch Powell might once have said. Of course, this is both despicable and bitterly funny.

But it is much worse than that. What was it they really meant to say and do? What is the truth about these people, who have in their time showered me with slime for pointing out that mass immigration was a mistake? Have they had a dark night of the soul? Or a dark night of the polls? I think we know, and the Tories are not much better.

I doubt much can be done about it now. The migrant millions are here, and the country has had its nose thoroughly rubbed in diversity. And together with that, we have been the victims of a huge abuse of trust, the thing which ultimately makes civilisation possible.

In fact, I am not sure there is much trust left here now. The well of trust is empty, and we look around frantically, seeking saviours. There are none, just some very ordinary people. I fear for the future.

Police op that was bungled from the start

The TV dramatisation of the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes by Met police officers

When police killed the wholly innocent Brazilian electrician Jean Charles de Menezes in 2005, I defended them. I thought that, if they had genuinely feared he was a terrorist armed with a bomb, they were justified in what they did. I now greatly regret that.

The young man’s cruel death is unbearable. I also find it hard to believe I was so totally fooled, with all that rubbish about how he had leaped over the ticket barrier, when he hadn’t.

The painful, icy new TV series, Suspect, in which the de Menezes case is dramatised, makes it clear that the police bungled almost every aspect of the event. They had no idea who they were following and had persuaded themselves he was someone he could not have been.

Despite their grandiose uniforms and fancy titles, senior officers did not act responsibly. Why should they? No system exists to hold them to account.

Beware? I'm utterly terrified! 

As I wheezed uphill on my pushbike (no e-bikes for me) on the track next to the Oxford bypass, I overtook a huge delivery truck grinding in the same direction. On its side, between the enormous wheels, was a large sign saying ‘Cyclists beware’.

This seemed to me to be an act of pointless spite. If lorry drivers and owners think we cyclists aren’t already scared of them, they must be pretty dopey. We are in fact terrified. If things go wrong, we are the ones tossed high into the air or crushed like hedgehogs. Why do the drivers of motor vehicles want to make us muscle-powered road users wholly responsible for our own safety? It looks like prejudice to me.