Immigration looks like a hot-button issue, but no mainstream politicians want to press it. Wisely Race and immigration lurked at this year's party conferences like uninvited guests. Nobody quite mentioned them by name, although delegates clearly knew they were there. Theresa May, the Conservative Party chairman, briefly raised the spectre of Enoch Powell-the party's late 19605 anti-immigrant firebrand-but only to gloat over the appointment of an Asian candidate in his old constituency. Oliver Letwin, the shadow home secretary, nodded at the vexed asylum issue, calling for quotas and offshore processing of applicants. But that was as far as it went. There was no talk of immigrants swamping the country, no vision of fortress Britain. This is odd, given the seeming strength of public opinion on the matter. The number of people citing race and immigration as important issues facing the nation has risen rapidly in the past few years (see chart). Polls show levels of concern higher than in the 1970s. Two recent polls by You-Gov and MORI found that more than 80% of all people (and 59% of black and Asian Britons) saw immigration as out of control.
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