Conservative blogger and media luvvie Iain Dale has got his boxers in a twist over remarks made in The Sun yesterday. Iain gets all precious because Blunkett suggests that the Tories were using him to play the race card for them on a tv programme watched by one man and his dog on Sunday night. Blunkett clearly implies that because playing the anti-immigration card does not befit the, warm, cuddly, New Tory image that the boy Dave wants to cultivate, they used Iain Dale to do it for them. I suspect the allegation is untrue... and I have no reason to doubt Iain's word that he had not had any contact with Cameron, nor even his old boss David Davis. But interestingly, in the heat of his righteous indignation over Blunkett's remarks, Iain says... "After all, it was you who reassured us that only 13,000 Eastern Europeans would come here. Remind us, what was the final number? 600,000, was it?" Now, where could Iain Dale have got this 13,000 figure from? Well, it was a figure thrown at Blunkett in 2004 during a debate on the enlargement of the EU... by none other than his old mukker David Davis. In reply, Blunkett said... "I have never said that there would be only 13,000 people... We published independent research on the website last summer, with its methodology. The figure of 13,000 has never crossed my lips. We will not know the situation until people apply for the vacancies that exist in our economy."
That didn't stop Davis from repeating the allegation 8 months later in another debate... nor the independently-minded, entirely unconnected 'conservative commentator' continuing to peddle the untruth 2 years later.
