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Veteran Conservative Ken Clarke has suggested that his party has adopted the philosophy of Enoch Powell.

The former Tory Chancellor and Home Secretary said Mr Powell, the controversial former Black Country MP, "probably would find it amazing" that today’s Tories have turned against Europe and against immigration.

Mr Clarke also described Powell’s views as “extreme”.

Enoch Powell was widely condemned after delivering his “Rivers of Blood” speech in Birmingham in 1968.

In it, he attacked immigration from Commonwealth countries and predicted: “In this country in 15 or 20 years’ time the black man will have the whip hand over the white man.”

Mr Powell, who represented Wolverhampton South West at the time, was sacked from his role in the Conservative Shadow Cabinet by Ted Heath, then the leader of the Conservative Party.

While some people defend the speech, Mr Powell is today widely regarded as, at best, someone who stoked up racial tension in an attempt to further his own career.

Mr Powell also opposed UK membership of the EEC, a forerunner of the European Union.

Mr Clarke delivered the comments in typically jovial fashion as he spoke in the House of Commons to explain why he planned to vote against the Bill allowing the Government to trigger Article 50, which begins the process of leaving the European Union.

But listening Conservative MPs understood the significance of his words, and responded with groans.

Mr Clarke said: “I feel the spirit of the former colleague, who I rather respected, apart from one or two of his extreme views, my former colleague Enoch Powell. The best speaker of the eurosceptic cause I probably ever heard in this House of Commons.

“If he was here he probably would find it amazing to believe that his party had become eurospectic and rather mildly anti-immigrant in a very strange way in 2016.

“Well I’m afraid, on that I haven’t followed them. And I don’t intend to do so.”

Mr Clarke was Home Secretary from 1992 to 1993, and Chancellor from 1993 to 1997. He stood three times for the Conservative leadership.