There are no ""legitimate concerns""

As a long-standing government advisor on immigration, working with all UK governments from Tony Blair onwards, I have a recurring frustration with the state of our public debate. Due to my recent retirement, I can emerge from the shadows (or ‘deep state’ for the paranoid amongst you) to publicly vent these frustrations for the first time.

A particular bugbear of mine (as well as the wider establishment) is the deployment of the toxic phrase ““legitimate concerns””. Often used by otherwise respectable politicians, this risks becoming a semi-acceptable argument in our public sphere.

I have done a double inverted commas around this contemptible term due to its inherent illegitimacy as a concept.

I can roughly trace its origin to the infamous incident during the 2010 General Election when Gordon Brown encountered a bigoted woman saying bigoted things. As I said in my multiple submissions to the Police at the time, repulsive language such as “flocking” risked sparking racist sentiments similar to those experienced in 1930s Germany. So did her northern accent, provincial demeanour and generally hectoring tone.