Here is the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, writing in the Telegraph just after the census was released: "We need to stop moaning about the damburst," he wrote. "It's happened. There is nothing we can now do except make the process of absorption as eupeptic as possible."

Of course he is right. The dam has burst and the water has flowed merrily for years. But is there not something disgraceful about this hectoring tone? Has it occurred to Boris Johnson that there may be people out there who will not get over it, or do not want to? Has it struck him that there are those who feel a degree of anger that for years the main parties have taken a decision wholly at variance to most public opinion? If not, has it at least occurred to him that there is something profoundly politically disenfranchising about talk of this kind?

If politicians refuse to engage in what they call "blame games" over the past, how can we know that they do not mean to employ exactly the same trick over their current actions in the future? Does this demand to "get over it" not break down one of the key tenets of democracy — some degree of accountability between the elected and the electorate? Continuous mass migration has done far more — more even than MPs' expenses — to persuade people that politicians cannot be believed.

On the night of the census announcement I was invited as a guest onto the BBC's Newsnight — the only one on a panel of four (five if you include the presenter) who expressed any concerns or reservations about mass immigration. The others were unanimously happy about it. The onus was therefore on me to explain why there might be any problems. This is not an unusual set-up.

A.C. Grayling — himself a hugely successful immigrant (from Zambia, then Northern Rhodesia) — said of the census, "I think on the whole it's a very positive thing, a thing to be celebrated." Bonnie Greer — also a highly successful immigrant — agreed and said, like Boris Johnson, "It cannot be stopped."

If you have not had the experience then let me tell you that it is fairly hard in these situations, especially when hampered with white skin, to resist the allure of the "get with it" attitude. The temptation to "go with the flow" is stronger than in almost any other argument. And not just because the price for stepping outside the consensus is so uniquely high.

Yet somewhere, lost in the middle of all this hipness and with-it-ness I tried to remember and bring into the discussion a little of the world outside the cosy Central London studio — a world which nobody else present even wanted to put their finger on: the downside of immigration and the people it forgets.