If one evening in the late summer of 1947, you were walking the streets of London,

you purportedly might have come across a man in a three-piece

suit wandering around Westminster, weeping. The man's name was Enoch Powell, and he was mourning

the loss of India, the jewel in the crown of the British Empire, which had just won its independence.

His boyhood dreams of one day becoming Viceroy of India would never be fulfilled.

He'd go down in history, a different way.

In 1968, this MP for Wolverhampton made a speech decrying immigration and its supposed ill effects on the UK, prophesying a race war that would

see the River Tiber foaming with blood, where the black man would have the whip hand over the white.

Powell's so-called River of Blood speech was met with outrage, but that didn't stop Powellism

becoming a huge influence on British politics,

from his unapologetic anti-migrant racism to his economic program

that has caused some commentators to call him Britain's first neoliberal politician.

Now, in 2025, Reform and Nigel Farage are storming ahead in the polls,

and Labour Prime Minister Keir Stama

is doing a bargain basement Powell impression

in a desperate attempt to claw back credibility.

Recently, he made a speech echoing the language

of Rivers of Blood itself,

saying immigration has done incalculable harm,

transform the UK into an island of strangers.

So, who was this man Powell and how did the politics he represents reshape the country?

What's the difference between Powellism and the Farageism of today?

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