London, June 5: Jemima Khan has slapped down her younger brother, Ben Goldsmith, for suggesting Enoch Powell was right when he made his notorious "rivers of blood" speech in 1968 urging Britain to keep out non-white immigrants.
The debate has intensified after the terror attack at London Bridge on Saturday night but this time the focus is on what should be done to counter home-grown terrorists.
The sibling arguments come as the latest opinion poll suggests the election race is now really neck and neck - the Survation poll for TV's Good Morning Britain puts the Tories on 41.5 per cent with Labour on 40.4 per cent.
Ben, 36, an Eton-educated financier, reflected a common sentiment when he summoned Powell from the past: "How much blood constitutes a river? And when might we acknowledge that perhaps Enoch Powell had a point on the dangers of mass immigration?"
Jemima, who is 43, cautioned her brother: "Hysteria and scare-mongering doesn't help. London is a very safe city, relatively speaking."
She ridiculed her brother by suffixing his original comment with: "....said the grandson of a German Jewish immigrant" - referring to their Jewish paternal grandfather, Franck Goldschmidt.
After his family moved to Britain in 1895, Franck's name was anglicised to Frank Goldsmith. He went on to become Conservative MP for Stowmarket in Suffolk and fathered two sons, Teddy and Jimmy - the latter, Sir James Goldsmith, being the billionaire father to Jemima, Zac and Ben.
Others joined the Twitter debate, with Jemima, who was once married to former cricketer Imran Khan, receiving a grateful acknowledgement from Dr Ayesha PTI: "You have proved to be loyal to principles and honesty we Pakistanis thank you."
British police today named two of the three attackers as Khuram Shazad Butt and Rachid Redouane, Reuters reported.
The three, who were in a white van which knocked down pedestrians, ran into nearby restaurants and pubs where they slashed victims at random with long knives.
Seven women and five men, aged between 19 and 60, were arrested under the Terrorism Act in Barking on Sunday. A 55-year-old man was later released without charge.
With three days to go before the general election this Thursday, both Theresa May and her Labour challenger, Jeremy Corbyn, have made security their priority issue.
Corbyn called for May's resignation as Prime Minister on the grounds that she had cut police numbers by 20,000 and impaired their ability to keep track of an estimated 23,000 terror suspects in the UK.
Asked by ITV News if he backed calls for May to resign, he said: "Indeed I would, because there's been calls made by a lot of very responsible people on this who are very worried that she was at the home office for all this time, presided over these cuts in police numbers and is now saying that we have a problem - yes, we do have a problem, we should never have cut the police numbers."
His comments came after Steve Hilton, a former adviser to David Cameron in Number 10, said May was "responsible for security failures of London Bridge, Manchester, Westminster Bridge" and "should be resigning, not seeking re-election".
May retaliated by saying that the debate was "also about the powers you give to the police and I have been responsible for giving the police extra powers to deal with terrorism. Jeremy Corbyn has boasted that he has opposed those powers - and opposed the powers for anti-terror actions throughout his time in parliament".
And, unlike the Labour leader, "I also support, absolutely, shoot-to-kill and I think what we saw on our streets on Saturday was how important that was".
