When I heard Suella Braverman's speech this week at the American Enterprise Institute think tank in Washington, this memory came flooding back.
The Home Secretary warned that uncontrolled immigration, inadequate integration and the failed, misguided dogma of multiculturalism has proved to be a toxic combination for many European countries.
'Multiculturalism makes no demands of the incomer to integrate,' she added. 'It has failed because it allowed people to come to our society and live parallel lives in it.'
Unsurprisingly, her speech has sparked fury among the usual suspects - the liberal Lefties for whom 'multiculturalism' has long been a fashionable creed.
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Mrs Braverman has been accused of 'dogwhistle' racism by those who point out that her parents were ethic Indian immigrants from Mauritius and Kenya and that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's parents also came to this country from East Africa. Surely, they say, both their life stories are triumphs of multicultural Britain.
This ill-informed opprobrium shows just how little the champions of multiculturalism understand of the cause they promote.
Yes, Britain is multicultural, as anyone who walks round with their eyes open can see. But 'multiculturalism' is a different thing altogether.
It's a philosophy of allowing - even encouraging - different ethnic groups to live separately in our towns and cities. It encourages the growth of monocultural areas over integration - and it is profoundly dangerous.
Yes, Suella Braverman's and Rishi Sunak's parents came here from other countries, but like my mum and dad they didn't want their new lives to be corralled in smaller versions of where they came from.
I'm sure my parents - and the Home Secretary and Rishi Sunak's parents - would have wanted no part in multiculturalism. They engaged with British society on its terms, they soaked up British traditions and lived British lifestyles. They encouraged their children to study hard, work hard and succeed.
All our stories are the very antithesis of multiculturalism, which for nearly 50 years has dictated that immigrant communities should be supported in maintaining their own culture and identities.
The creeping, insidious result of all this has been that Britishness has become a dirty word.
