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How to use Aristotle

Announcing his candidacy for the governorship of California in a heavy Austrian accent, Arnold Schwarzenegger described how he had lived the American dream: 'I came here as an immigrant, and what gave me the opportunities, what made me to be here today are the open arms of Americans. I have been received; I have been adopted by America.'

In his autobiography and countless speeches, Colin Powell has told the heart-warming story of how he had been born the son of Jamaican immigrants in the New York slums, but climbed to high office. He hadn't forgotten others like him. In a speech to the 1996 Republican National Convention he said: 'A nation as great and diverse as America deserves leadership that opens its arms not only to those who have already reaped the rewards of the American dream, but to those who strive and struggle each day often against daunting odds to make that dream come true. The Hispanic immigrant who became a citizen yesterday must be as precious to us as a Mayflower descendant.'

Schwarzenegger became governor of California. Powell might have been President, but settled for being Bush's Secretary of State. Whatever you think of them, they proved that it isn't a handicap to conservative American politicians to be an immigrant or the child of an immigrant. It's almost an advantage: proof that you have fought your way to the top; a declaration that you know the sufferings of the masses.

If British Tories wanted to emulate the success of the American Right, then Michael Howard would have said last week: 'My father found sanctuary in Britain 60 years ago. He was saved from the gas chambers and welcomed with opened arms. The Kurd who is granted leave to remain must be as precious to us as the Queen (more precious, if Mr Burrell is to be believed). The Tory party will soon boast that it is living the British dream. In Michael Howard it will have its first Prime Minister who is the son of an asylum-seeker.'

If you are holding your breath until Howard acknowledges that his very existence depends on the right to asylum, I must warn you of the dangers of suffocation. It's a fantasy to imagine that a politician might praise refugees and point out that he is a walking advertisement for successful assimilation.

Until the mid-1990s, Howard was very wary about discussing his roots. A profile in the Guardian to mark his arrival as Home Secretary in May 1993 was typical of dozens of revealingly misleading pieces. 'I think he was a bit taken aback when I asked him about his family history,' the interviewer wrote. 'Yes,' he quoted Howard as saying, 'it was true his grandfather came from Romania. (Pause.) Yes, his father's family had settled in Wales.'

And on his mother's side? Howard said her family was 'also from Eastern Europe'.

He may have made a mistake, of course, and Jewish politicians need to be alert to the danger of encouraging anti-Semitism. For whatever reason, the mistaken line held until 1995 when a brown envelope stuffed with birth, marriage and naturalisation certificates arrived on my desk. I guessed they had been dug up by one of Howard's many enemies, but never discovered which one. There was no arguing with the documents, however.

Michael Howard's family hadn't moved to Britain in his grandfather's time. His paternal grandfather had lived and died in Romania, where Howard's father, Bernat Hecht, was born and raised. He found asylum in Britain just before the Second World War. If Bernat had stayed in Romania, there were good odds that he would have joined the 300,000 Romanian Jews who were murdered by the Nazis and local fascists.

He was lucky and so was his son by extension. Bernat had benefited from a small relaxation of the British immigration laws. As persecution in Europe grew in the 1930s, the Government agreed to accept asylum-seekers if they could find British citizens willing to feed and employ them. The Landys, a prominent Jewish family in South Wales, agreed to sponsor Bernat.

In 1940, the penniless 23-year-old married Hilda Kershion, a cousin of the Landys. The couple had a quiet life by the brutal standards of the 1940s. Bernat went into the Landy drapery business, and in 1941 he was blessed with a son, Michael Hecht. In January 1948, Bernat took the Oath of Allegiance, and changed his name from Bernat Hecht to Bernard Howard. At a stroke of a bureaucrat's pen Michael Hecht became Michael Howard.

Ever since the war, historians have lashed the British and other governments for imposing immigration controls which were to be death sentences for people less fortunate than Bernat Hecht. MI5 officers had warned that Hitler was trying to boost British fascism by creating a 'Jewish problem' in Britain. The politicians of the day believed them. Fear of a backlash impelled them to regulate.

It wasn't all bad. In her history of the period, Whitehall and the Jews, Louise London records small acts of kindness which saved the British Government from disgrace. Sir Ernest Holderness, Assistant Secretary at the Aliens Department of the Home Office, ruled that refugees in Britain should not be repatriated to Germany. Sir Samuel Hoare, Home Secretary in Neville Chamberlain's Government, wrung his hands when he imposed controls. 'I feel a great reluctance in putting another obstacle in the way of these unfortunate people,' he told the Cabinet.

No such delicate feelings affected Michael Howard when he was Home Secretary. The nearest Europe came to the crimes of Nazism and communism in the 1990s were the crimes of Milosevic and Tudjman. Howard imposed visa restrictions on Bosnians fleeing their death squads which made the finding of sanctuary in Britain legally impossible.

As the unteachable Conservative Party hauls the old beast from his cave and makes him its fifth right-wing leader on the run, these and many other memories come flooding back. Howard was as tough on crime and civil liberties as asylum-seekers, and crammed the prisons as he played the race card. Stephen Tumim, the Chief Inspector of Prisons in the 1990s, remembered last week that when he counselled moderation Howard would reply 'no votes in that'. Derek Lewis, the Director General of the Prison Service Howard fired, caught his essence well. Howard has 'the substance of the Cheshire Cat, the menace of Uriah Heep and the sincerity of Bob Monkhouse,' he said. The Tories' opponents are rejoicing that they have been given a hate figure they can hate with a vengeance.

But the joke is as much on liberals as conservatives. They wilfully forget that Tony Blair's move to reactionary politics played as great a part in the creation of Michael Howard as Bernat Hecht's decision to change the family name. When Howard took over as Home Secretary in 1993, Blair was already attacking the Tories from the Right on crime. The Conservatives had to protect their right flank by moving to the extreme. Last week Tory spin doctors acknowledged a hard truth many well-meaning Labour supporters still can't face when they told the Times that Howard 'may have been criticised [in the 1990s] for a hard line on crime and immigration, but Jack Straw and David Blunkett have not only adopted his agenda but gone further'.

A glance at the prison population makes the point. In 1993 it stood at 41,000; when Labour came to power in 1997 it was 60,000; last week it was 74,000 and rising. When Tory MPs objected to the Blair Government penalising asylum-seekers with a greater viciousness than Howard had ever proposed, New Labour warned them that they were providing 'clear evidence that the Conservative Party is trying to wreck the Government's attempts to clamp down on illegal immigration'. In other words, back off or we'll accuse you of being soft on the wogs. The Tories duly responded by moving further to the Right. Such has been the pattern of the last decade. New Labour steals Tory policies; the Tories shift to the extreme; Blair whips his supporters into line by warning them that they risk letting in a hard-Right Conservative government if they stop voting Labour.

When Howard and Blair began their macabre contest in 1993, I used to wonder who was the worse man: the ingrate or the opportunist. But as the years have gone by I've learned not to bother with trifles and found comfort in Dr Johnson's advice that 'there is no settling the point of precedency between a louse and a flea'.