It is against this bizarre background of prejudice that Prime Minister David Cameron will lead his Conservative Party into a general election in five months' time knowing that he has failed to deliver on a major promise to the electorate before the last election five years ago: that he would reduce net immigration by “tens of thousands.” Not only has he failed in this but he will appeal to voters for a new 5-year term knowing that net migration in the year ending June 2014 was up an astonishing 44 per cent, or 260,000 souls (this figure is reached by deducting the number of people leaving the country from the total of those entering).

Official statistics show that almost two-thirds of the increased immigration came from within the European Union, most of the newcomers attracted by a booming economy, offering comparatively high wages and a range of social benefits unavailable in eastern Europe from where most of the migrants arrive. Almost 11,000 newcomers hurried over from Romania and Bulgaria after they qualified in January 2014 for the European Union's guarantee of freedom of movement for its citizens and the right to bid for available employment throughout the union,

Of the 5 million foreign nationals now living in Britain, almost 1.3 million are from former states of the Soviet Union which are now under the EU umbrella. Poland leads the field with 680,000 of its nationals currently resident in the UK, their high economic profile reflected in supermarkets where whole sections are given over to food and drink imported for them from home. In sections of London and major provincial centres, convenience stores and restaurants catering specifically to an east European clientele jostle for space with long established Asian enterprises, the fruits of an earlier and larger immigration from the Asian continent between the 1950s and 1970s.

In the 2011 census of population in England and Wales, about 4.6 million “non-whites” were recorded in a total population of 64.1 million. By far the largest segment, 2.5 million, was identified as having Asian ethnicity, the majority of these being of Indian or Pakistani origin. It is almost forgotten now how the arrival of these, as well as hundreds of thousands of black immigrants, stirred riots the length and breadth of the land, with warnings in 1968 from one prominent politician, Conservative Enoch Powell, of the dangers he saw building for the future of Britain. “As I look ahead,” he proclaimed, “I am filled with foreboding. Like the Romans, I seem to see 'the River Tiber foaming with much blood.' That tragic and intractable phenomenon which we watch with horror on the other side of the Atlantic [he was referring to race riots in Washington DC, New York and elsewhere in the US] but which there is interwoven with the history and existence of the States itself, is coming upon us here by our own volition and our own neglect. Indeed, it has all but come. In numerical terms, it will be of American proportions long before the end of the century. Only resolute and urgent action will avert it even now. Whether there will be the public will to demand and obtain that action, I do not know. All I know is that to see, and not to speak, would be the great betrayal.”

Fortunately for Britain, what Powell prophesied did not come to pass. While the Asian community may occasionally feature nowadays in newspapers with headlines like “A child in Birmingham is now more likely to be a Muslim than a Christian,” the overwhelmingly non-fundamentalist Asian community is well integrated within, if not assimilated to, the larger British society. Britain's Culture Minister, Sajid Javid, himself the son of Pakistani immigrants, had no hesitation in declaring out loud that voters had legitimate fears over “excessive” immigration and were justified in wanting Britain to have more control over its borders. Just how it is going to do that and remain a member of the European Union is heavily engaging the attention of Mr Javid's Conservative Party which faces not only its traditional opponents, Labour and the Social Democrats, in the upcoming election, but a populist newcomer, the United Kingdom Independence Party. UKIP upset a number of apple carts recently by comfortably winning two House of Commons seats in parliamentary by-elections (held to fill seats which had become vacant). UKIP, Britain's fastest-growing political entity, campaigns vigorously on an anti-immigrant and anti-European platform. Its argument is a simple one: if Britain pulls out of the EU, it will not have to follow Europe's edicts on anything, including open movement and employment across the community.

Prime Minister Cameron has already announced that he wants to re-negotiate the terms of Britain's EU membership and in any event promised a national referendum on whether his country stays in or comes out after he is re-elected, as he hopes, in May. Public opinion polls over recent months have suggested that while, on balance, a majority think EU immigration s bad for the country, the nation is strongly in favour of staying within the European Union – an inexplicable contradiction given the growth of UKIP and the fact that its leader, Nigel Farrage, has a higher approval rating than the other party leaders (21 per cent to Cameron's 18 and Labour leader Miliband's 12 per cent).

Cameron has already sounded out his European colleagues on the possibility of extracting Britain from the collective stand on freedom of migration and work. Some Europeans read an implicit threat of withdrawal from the union if London did not get its way, adding to the anger especially in Germany where Chancellor Merkel was reported to be ”furious.” She has already, in the recent past, read Cameron a lecture on European manners when confronted with threats. “...we act in a European spirit,” she told him. “We always do that because otherwise you would never reach a compromise. We cannot just consign to the backburner the question of the European spirit. Threats are not part and parcel of that spirit. That is not part of the way in which we usually proceed."

Whitehall's conviction that Britain would be outvoted if she were to formally request amendment to EU regulations on movement and work, prompted a tactical re-think in Downing Street and a new plan for restricting immigration by denying jobseekers from the continent some of the most attractive benefits open to native British workers. EU migrants would be stopped from claiming in-work benefits, such as tax credits, and getting access to social housing for four years. They would be prevented from claiming child benefit and tax credits for children living outside the UK. There would be tighter restrictions on the right to bring in family members and any migrant worker who had not found work after six months would be sent home from the UK.

The Prime Minister presented his proposals in a passionate speech in which “I say to our European partners. We have real concerns. Our concerns are not outlandish or unreasonable. We deserve to be heard, and we must be heard. Not only for Britain’s sake, but for the sake of Europe as a whole. Because what is happening in Britain is not unique to Britain.” Mr Cameron added: "The British people will not understand - frankly I will not understand - if a sensible way through cannot be found, which will help settle this country's place in the EU once and for all." Newspapers and popular opinion, as reflected in radio phone-ins and letters to the press, indicate strong support for Cameron's proposals, underwritten as they are with lurid newspaper stories about east European immigrants using child allowances, paid from British taxpayers money, to build luxurious new homes in Hungary or Romania. “It's like free money,” one immigrant worker told the Daily Express. “Thank you England” - words which have the power to become a catch phrase in the forthcoming election and powerful enough to give the election to Cameron or a lot more parliamentary seats to Nigel Farrage, enough, perhaps, to hold the balance of power.