Lisa Nandy told a BBC Question Time audience on Thursday that she 'grew up in this city [Manchester] in the 1980s in the shadow of Enoch Powell'. She then embarked on a two minute defence of multiculturalism and mass immigration, while delivering a broadside at Tory cuts. The full clip can be seen below.
The problem with Nandy's monologue is that it begins with a lie. Enoch Powell may have cast a long 'shadow', but his famous speech actually took place in 1968 - eleven years before she was born. His political career was all but over in the 1970s and he spent most of the 1980s as an Ulster Unionist, in virtual exile across the sea in Northern Ireland. A long shadow indeed. Powell departed the House of Commons for the last time in 1987, when Lisa was just seven years of age.
This is what is called clutching at straws.
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