Muddled thought carried to absurdity?

Boris Johnson wrote the following in today's edition of the Daily Telegraph: The disaster is that we no longer make any real demands of loyalty upon those who are immigrants or the children of immigrants. There are many culprits, and foremost among them is Enoch Powell. As Bill Deedes has pointed out over the years, the problem was not so much his catastrophic 1968 tirade against immigration, but the way he made it impossible for any serious politician to discuss the consequences of immigration, and how a multiracial society ought to work. In the wake of Powell's racist foray, no one had the guts to talk about Britishness, or whether it was a good thing to insist - as the Americans do so successfully - on the basic loyalty of immigrants to the country of immigration. If I recall those speeches and controversies correctly, Powell was predicting the 'rivers of blood' if unrestricted immigration were to be allowed to continue. It was his opponents who labled those warnings as racist. In view of recent events, it seems odd to now claim that by issuing that warning and suffering political isolation and ignominy as a result it was Enoch Powell himself who is now somehow responsible for his dire predictions appearing to come true. Either Boris has not researched his topic or has completely lost the plot. If the latter it will not be for the first time among recent Tory MPs for Henley. Think again, Boris, on your own words placed in bold above and quoted again here: ".......he made it impossible for any serious politician to discuss the consequences of immigration, and how a multiracial society ought to work." In other words - mass cowardice and complete lack of backbone! In what way could Powell have made such discussion impossible I wonder? So who were really the most at fault? Those who knew something was amiss but were scared to speak out, presumably for fear of similar villification.... (as Boris seems to be claiming as his excuse) ......... or those who did, and of course continue to do, the villifying? All politicians carry some degree of blame; that is why they are worried and some like Boris Johnson have started to spout nonsense.