Dacre And Goodhart – Bigot Dream Ticket

Some observers of the punditry recruited by the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre have noticed the appearance at Mail Online of one David Goodhart, who claims loudly to be of the left. There is no doubt as to why Dacre has secured his services, though: he talks immigration, and in such as way that chimes perfectly with the agenda of the Vagina Monologue.

Course they're his own f***ing words, c***

That means telling readers that there are lots of immigrants coming here, turning neighbourhoods from white majority to non-white majority in Not Very Many Years. Goodhart’s latest effort was so shoddy that it incurred the displeasure of The Rant Mistress, who has sufficient local knowledge to be able to call out Goodhart for trying to pull a number of particularly blatant whoppers.

But the mystery of Goodhart’s appearance among the array of dubiously talented rantmeisters of the Mail is not that it happened, but that it took so long. After all, he’s been peddling similar stuff – back in 2004 he mused “To put it bluntly, most of us prefer our own kind” – for long enough. He’s even managed to get his viewpoint aired on a BBC Radio 4 Analysis programme.

David Goodhart

In an accompanying article titled “Did immigration transform Britain by accident?” he asserts that immigration is “pretty unpopular”. And immigration is what Goodhart has been talking over at Labour Uncut, telling in the wake of the 2010 General Election that “Labour must become the anti-immigration party”. His concluding remark was unequivocal: “Labour must close the door”.

And in November 2011, Operation Black Vote (OBV) had harsh words for him. “David Goodhart: More dangerous than Nick Griffin?” was the question raised. The piece cites Trevor Phillips, who observed of Goodhart’s writing “Is this the wit and wisdom of Enoch Powell? Jottings from the BNP leader's weblog? The xenophobes should come clean. Their argument is not about immigration at all. They are liberal Powellites: what really bothers them is race and culture”.

So when you see Mail headlines like “Why we on the Left made an epic mistake on immigration” followed by remarks like “Among Left-leaning ‘Hampstead’ liberals like me”, you should beware. Because right behind is “I am now convinced that public opinion is right and Britain has had too much immigration too quickly”.

See that? The line pushed by Dacre and his obedient punditry has miraculously been transformed into “public opinion”. And, as the man said, there’s more: “By the time of the next census in 2021, the non-white minority population will have risen to around 20 per cent, a trebling in just 25 years. By 2066, according to one demographer, white Britons will be in a minority”.

Yes, just another hire to frighten the readers. No change there, then.