Indeed, so target that, and don’t use the issue to raise fear amongst the comfortably secure middle-classes who certainly aren’t blighted by it. That’s where my problem with ‘anti-social behaviour’ lies – it’s another bogeyman to frighten people who really have no right to be frightened, as they can, and have, bought their way out of trouble.

On the Tory campaign, we’re all grown up here and we can discuss this without it getting ugly. Michael Howard obviously was extremely careful to speak in a measured tone, and not to say anything overtly or even implicitly racist. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t resonate with different people in different ways. Debating the issue is fine, but there are a lot of soft-left urbanites who hear something completely different when you call for controls on immigration. That has to be accounted for and dealt with appropriately, because it won’t change.

And the other comment: I agree very much with the point you almost made about those who denounced the Conservative election campaign for daring to raise the subject of immigration — and it was the small-L liberal media who cried ‘racism!’ every time the subject was raised, just as much as Labour ministers and other politicians. I have never voted Tory in my life, and don’t expect to, but I never heard the slightest hint of racism in the Tory discussion of immigration (nor any attempt to lump it together with asylum seekers, another accusation widely and recklessly made). It’s plainly a legitimate subject of political debate, and those who sought to stifle it ought to be ashamed of themselves.

That’s my tuppence-worth, anyway.

Brian