The “sentimental attachment” developed for West Indian cricket during schooldays in Guyana means he fails Norman Tebbit’s famous “cricket test” for British immigrants, but he promises he will be backing England — “who else?” — in this summer’s European football championship.

Indeed, the head of the Commission for Racial Equality has been part of the fabric of national life as a student activist, broadcaster and Labour politician for almost 30 years.

He is arguably one of the best-connected men in London. His great and good friends include Tony Blair and the Prince of Wales, from whom he has recruited his most senior staff.

Mr Phillips, 50, has good reason to be a black British patriot. “I get emotional about this country because my community came from a long way away and, while it was not always perfect, by and large we have been embraced, we have become British and changed what being British means.”

There are some within the black and Asian community who suggest that he has got a little too close to the white establishment, a criticism he rejects.

“It’s always a mistake to say because people like me are no longer poor we are somehow divorced from our roots. It is not part of the Afro-Carribean culture to be poor, criminal and underachieving, it is not a cultural choice.”

But his experience is, he acknowledges, not necessarily shared by every immigrant. “The way I feel about this country may not be the way a young Muslim in Bradford feels. That’s true, of course, the question is what do we do about it? “We need to assert that there is a core of Britishness. For instance, I hate the way this country has lost Shakespeare. That sort of thing is bad for immigrants, too. They want to come here not just because of jobs but because they like this country — its tolerance, its eccentricity, its Parliamentary democracy, its energy in the big cities. They don’t want that to change. We have to remember that migrants have become British in an incredibly short space of time. Lombardy bankers, Jewish tailors Afro-Caribbean bus drivers and German kings are as British as you and me.”

In a week in which young British Muslims have been arrested as terrorist suspects and Beverley Hughes, the Immigration Minister, resigned amid claims that the Home Office is allowing thousands of “fraudulent” immigrants into the UK, it is a message Mr Phillips is very keen to reinforce.

“People talk about ordinary British folk as if they are terribly afraid or bigots. We have forgotten how good we are at handling diversity, we have been good at it for a thousand years. I know there are real worries about immigration at the moment, but there is a lot of heat being generated on the subject and not much light. I wish everybody would just think about what this country needs.”

First of all, he wants to separate the question of immigration from asylum. Mr Phillips says there must be a real debate about the labour market and the need for a migrant work force to sustain economic growth.

He says the greatest fear of immigration is usually in white areas where there is none. “People are dragging out hints and innuendoes way beyond the evidence which supports it. They should not feed anxieties.”

Mr Phillips has recently spoken with the Independent Press Complaints Commission about the way immigration and aslyum are covered by some national newspapers, including one whose editor has boasted that a front-page headline on the subject will sell an extra 50,000 copies.

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