But yesterday’s shocking migration figures suggest a more likely explanation is that Mr Woolas has been drafted in to provide reassuring words, behind which disgraceful deeds will continue to be done.

More than half a million foreigners were allowed to settle in Britain during 2007.

Immigration has added nearly two million to the population since Labour came to power – despite hundreds of thousands of Britons leaving.

Thanks to a very high birth rate among certain ethnic minority groups, Britain’s population will surge towards 70 million over the next two decades whether further net immigration is curtailed or not.

Even during times of steady economic growth, allowing whole neighbourhoods to become dominated by people from alien cultures places a massive strain on social cohesion and public services. Now the economy has stopped growing and unemployment is rising fast, that strain will be multiplied many times over.

Race relations are therefore being placed in grave jeopardy.

So it is ridiculous for Mr Woolas to suggest that the Government has got things under control. He is Woolas by name and clearly woolly by nature. But he will never succeed in pulling the wool over the eyes of the British people about
the way their nation has been betrayed.