Hannan: a thorn in Cameron’s side

Maverick Tory MEP Dan Hannan is in the soup again for comments made on the other side of the pond. Having angered his party leader David Cameron earlier this month by going on American TV and siding with US right-wingers attacking our health service - a line considered off-message with the new NHS-loving Tory party - Hannan has again mentioned the unmentionable, this time raising the spectre of the 1960s anti-immigration campaigner Enoch Powell.

Asked in an interview with a US internet television channel who was his political influence, Hannan answered quick as a flash: Enoch Powell.

Powell, he said, "understood why you need to live in an independent country and what that meant, as well as being a free marketeer and a small-government Conservative".

Enoch may indeed have been both those things. The trouble is he remains most famous for his 1968 'Rivers of Blood' speech when he warned that mass immigration from Commonwealth countries to the UK could result in racial tension as bad as that experienced in the United States in the Sixties.

The nuances of what Powell was getting at in that speech have been discussed and debated among Tories ad nauseam ever since, with Powell's defenders claiming he was never a racist. But as a senior Tory put it to the Mole this morning: "There's a simple golden rule in Westminster: however much you might admire Enoch for his Conservative principles, because of Rivers of Blood you just don't bring it up. Ever. It's as simple as that."

Powell was sacked by Prime Minister Ted Heath the day after making the speech - and Labour ministers and MPs have naturally been lining up with advice for Cameron on how he should discipline Hannan.

Lord Mandelson used the incident as an excuse to say that the modern Tory party is two-faced. "Yet again, we are seeing the two faces of the Conservative party: the one they want to present to the public and the one which attacks the NHS and praises Enoch Powell."

When Hannan called the NHS a "60-year mistake" and a service he "wouldn't wish on anyone", Cameron's public response was to dismiss him as "eccentric".

What will he do this time? He could withdraw the whip in the European parliament, but the fact that Hannan did not actually praise Powell for his stand on immigration probably means he's safe for the time being.

But there's no doubt that Hannan ,like his Telegraph stablemate Boris Johnson before him, is proving a thorn in Cameron's side - not to mention a pain in the butt - and he's taking a risk with these attention-seeking forays with the US media.

For the moment, far ahead in the polls, Cameron can afford to go for the benign neglect approach. But if and when things get tight, he may have to take action. However many Tory votes are being lost to UKIP and the BNP, anti-immigration is dangerous territory for modern Tories. ·