Powell was famous and notorious, loved and hated, for a single political intervention, the so-called Rivers of Blood speech on immigration, the one that ended his career. (…)
Out on the streets, he was, like Madonna or Bono, one of those rare uninominal celebrities: To the despair of captive leftie passengers, cabbies the length and breadth of the realm enthused about “Enoch.”
A decade after his death and in a jurisdiction for which he had little use, John O’Sullivan and I took a taxi ride in Dublin in which our driver ended his disquisition on immigration with the words, “Enoch got it right.” (…)
Most of today’s political class will end their lives as failures, too, and without even the consolations of contrarianism. But, on statism, Europe, multiculturalism, and much else, Powell taught a very basic lesson — that any sane person should be instinctively skeptical when all the smart people agree. The “unforeseen consequences” are usually out there on the not-so-far horizon looming large in plain sight.
