Trevor Phillips

"Theres no suggestion that Lord Mandelson has done anything unlawful. But I would claim the friends privilege to tell Peter that he has been, at best naive and foolish, at worst greedy and duplicitous. Whatever is true as far as politics and public office are concerned, for Peter Mandelson, this is the end."

"Most liberal-minded folk would like to think that since they are not hostile to people of a different race, racism is a disease of the uneducated, unenlightened and socially backward - football hooligans, British National Party supporters, policemen. You could call this the Bad Guy Theory. But the Bad Guy Theory does not explain why Indian-heritage children do nearly twice as well as Pakistani-heritage children at GCSE. If the difference were simply a matter of teacher attitudes you would have to believe that most British teachers were bigoted — and that their prejudice was directed solely at the Pakistani pupils and never at their Indian classmates. Both suggestions defy common sense."

"For a long time, I too thought that Europe’s Muslims would become like previous waves of migrants, gradually abandoning their ancestral ways, wearing their religious and cultural baggage lightly, and gradually blending into Britain’s diverse identity landscape. I should have known better."

"The question now is whether the price of his misjudgement is to be paid only by the man himself, or whether those who trusted him and elevated him to the peerage, and to one of the highest diplomatic posts available, should also share in his ignominy."