"Did we win the debate? No. But did we win the moral argument on some deeper level? Also no."
Of course, you can't win a debate that isn't allowed to happen, which is the point of, "the strength of taboo and sacralisation" , being also a taboo that has caused the indigenous population (without Tourette's) to quietly comply with the edict, whilst moving house as soon as they can afford to.
Ten years ago, I would have quarreled with you about your book. Now, having seen where the diversity trap has taken us, I very much regret my past allegiances.
The reality is that in sufficient numbers people from distant cultures will with absolute certainty reassert their cultures here. Ergo, a British city that happens to have a majority of citizens from sub Saharan Africa will function exactly as a city in sub Sahara Africa, albeit with (for now) greater welfare input. And it is actually monstrous to suggest otherwise, as if sub Saharan cities are not merely different from European/British cities but intrinsically inferior (a sort of accident) and so not worth reproducing. But this is precisely what the progressives impliedly argue when they argue for "diversity", that once migrants settle here they will abandon their “primitive” cultures and subscribe to the progressive world view.
Really enjoyed that piece Ed, and you are spot on - as you were ten years ago.
It begs the question how diverse do the liberals in the UK want the country to be? Or perhaps, in reality, how diverse does it have to be for the wealthiest liberals- as yet untouched - to start to experience the discomfort referred to in the article felt by those at the sharp end of the mass immigration?
Yes, yes and yes again. In the film Shadowlands someone claims 'we read to know we are not alone' and I think that's why I read this substack.
Unlike you, I actually do like arguing. It's the fallout from arguments I don't like. The frostiness immediately afterwards and the realisation that we weren't that close after all. Then comes the gradual distancing and finally loss of contact. Yet since I spend a lot of time thinking about this stuff I find it impossible not to talk about it, even when I know no good will come of it. Opinions will out.
'it is an unstoppable force meeting a moveable object'
I liked that.
I also liked the bit about conservatives claiming only to be worried about the poorest Brits when they object to mass immigration. No, we just don't like it FOR OURSELVES and it's not necessary to ape liberal concerns - which are probably only affected concerns in the first place - about 'the most vulnerable people in society' [sob].
My sister once came home and told her husband that there were three young lads outside in the street, jumping in front cars in an attempt to make them swerve out of the way. So my 6' tall ex-rugby playing brother-in-law went out and had a word with them. He came back saying he'd told them off. What had he said? He told them they were endangering themselves. That's not telling them off! Who cares about them? Let them get run over! Just tell them to stop endangering motorists, specifically my sister. Oh, I was so disappointed in him.
We can only use the most feeble of 'liberal' arguments against our occupation and dispossession. We can, just about, criticise Islam from a feminist perspective but anything else will land the complainant unemployed and/or in court. Everyone knows this. We have no conservative case because that case was abandoned long ago and conservatism is now dead.
I'm hopeless at predictions but I imagine we won't face great catastrophe, instead life will continue, just worse.
I agree about cheap labour. Brexit was hugely about immigration, partly the social unease but also a desire for a pay rise by restricting foreign competition. And as soon as wages go too high - as with builders last week - the government announces it will import more. That's why they can never be trusted, I'm afraid.
You are absolutely right on this. In my view, everything that makes Britain an attractive place to be - and which attracts so many immigrants - depends on a shared sense of belonging. The more immigrants we welcome, and the more we decide that 'their' history is now 'our' history, the more we attack and corrode that shared sense. I was educated at the same school as Rishi Sunak and I worked a few feet from him for a few years. I have absolutely the greatest liking and respect for him and his qualities, and would vote for him as a Tory leader. And yet...does he really have the same view of Britain as me? Was he brought up to think that he might one day fight or even die for this country? How does he feel about its history? My point is that this intelligent, cultured man of the world must surely carry some sense of his Indian, Hindu history - and while that means he has much to add to this country, it also represents a point of potential conflict between his view of it and that of a white British person. Now if there is that point of potential conflict with him, how much stronger is that potential conflict when we are talking about immigrants who make no attempt to assimilate - even after generations - or who publicly and consciously place their foreign heritage ahead of their Britishness (often 'rediscovering' that foreign heritage despite claiming Britishness at every possible opportunity).
It seems to me that when so many immigrants come from wholly different cultures, espouse religions that run entirely counter to the basis of our history and laws, view the Empire as a rapacious, hostile or criminal enterprise, challenge the very existence of the monarchy, then we lack the foundational points of common interest that are necessary for a nation to remain united. Of course, many White British people challenge some or all of the above - but at least they are likely to have some sense of commonality with other White Britons; something that they can unite around.
I ask myself often how we would act today in the face of an attack such as that experienced by Ukraine. 40 years ago, we'd have united like the Ukrainians have. Today, given the choice, I'd guess at least 30% of the population would simply move to another country: why fight for something that isn't really yours?
And why are we so blind to this? If I were to move with my white British wife to India or China, say, and have children in one of those countries, would anyone consider those children to be truly Indian or Chinese? What about those children, if born out of marriage to a second generation white Briton in those countries? It's all very odd.
'Was he brought up to think that he might one day fight or even die for this country?'
To be fair to Rishi, I'm not sure there are any white Brits born after WWII who were brought up thinking they might one day fight and die for their country. I certainly wasn't. And the truth is the gap between a cultured Hindu like Rishi and a cultured white Brit is negligible compared to the gaping chasm between the latter and some slob from a sink estate.
Let's say there are a million white British criminals. If God were to offer to swap them for a million random Hindus I'd bite his hand off, which suggests that ethnicity/ancestry isn't as important to me as I sometimes think it is. Would such an influx of aliens undermine our traditional British values and way of doing things? Probably, but I suspect less than the white British criminal already does.
You can play this game with almost any pairing: A million thick Brits versus a million clever Hong Kongers. A million tattooed, pink-haired, nose-pierced, professional activist, white British progressives v a million Pakistani Muslims. Admittedly, that's a tricky one.
". . . how we would act today in the face of an attack . . .?"
I too have often asked that question. History suggests a very simple answer: the rich would scarper and the poor would fight. The former, being generally well-educated, would be able to come up with very impressive reasoning to justify their pusillanimity: "For ourselves, we would stay and do what we could, of course, but how could we, in all conscience, force our choice on young Louise and James? They deserve . . . blah, blah, blah"
Many among the lower orders, being of a more pugnacious and less philosophical temperament, would relish the prospect of a good punch-up, especially with big guns. This, experience tells me, would apply just as much, if not more so, to young gentlemen from minority communities.
Those of us who have not directly experienced war tend to assume the highest motives among those who fight (I obviously exclude the left here). The more insightful of my elders (now all sadly passed) who fought in the two World Wars, informed me long ago that such reasoning tended to make itself apparent somewhat post-bellum.
We really had something on this little island. Our ancestors worked hard. Of course they weren’t perfect, and their values didn’t always align with ours, but it’s because of them we have those values with which to condemn them.
And we’re just throwing it away. For what? What country will my children inherit? A smaller Brazil with shitter weather?
75% white British. And yet we are told colonisation is the worst thing that can happen to a people.
And then we all have to go into work and not breathe a word about this catastrophe, but celebrate, and constantly flog ourselves for our own ethnic heritage.
I’ve never had a racial or an ethnic identity. And sneered at those who did (as long as they were white). But like so many in these comments I have to admit Ed, you were right, we were wrong. And yet, I almost wish I was still deluded. It’s far less depressing.
Fair comment by Ed but I wonder if part of the difficulty of making the case against diversity is because diversity seems to indicate choice and freedom, and in the addled brain of the average liberal that must be a good thing. Despite the more than adequate evidence that it is not, as diversity actually means less trust and more conflict. And more to the point, despite the fact diversity is a policed opinion, about which there can be no freedom to disagree. What is wrong with modern illiberal 'liberals'? How can something be really true if the truth is coerced? What sort of freedom is it?
Of course this all raises the larger question as whether the traditional un-diverse nation state, broadly ethnic in composition - common history, common culture and a common people or race, and the nationalism that went with it, was or could be a good thing. In the 19th c it gave rise to Italy, Poland, Hungary, Greece etc and was regarded as progressive, as it was citizen, democratic states replacing the feudal , dynastic states of the Ancien Regime - the Romanoffs, Ottomans, Hapsburgs etc. Bryon died in and for Greece - not really a right wing xenophobe. In the 20th c, and equally progressive, the same nationalist impetus was used to win colonial independence throughout Africa and Asia eg. Nkrumah and Gandhi, and remember the saintly Mandela was head of the African National Congress. So what went wrong? Well, Bismarck militarised nationalism to advance Prussia and the German Empire and we got the two world wars, so all nationalism and any nation state became suspect. But wasn't extreme nationalism a bit like extreme socialism/communism, one the concentration camps and the other the gulag? Both extreme? Yet we allow moderate socialism - social democrats and the Labour Party - mostly harmless, so why not moderate nationalism? In 1941 at the heart of the war Orwell published the Lion and the Unicorn and described the country as a family - despite the social divisions he knew so well - quite impossible now and we are the less for it. So I argue diversity weakens us. And what about the future, no longer England but Multiracial-land a country for everyone and a country for no one? What will connect people to the past, and to the then present, and give a national identity and a national community - with things in common - as well as some social solidarity? Won't even the theft of national identity and theft of national community amount to a kind of reverse racism against the white British? And won't India and China etc, who will very much keep their nations, laugh at the decadence and weakness of Britain and the 'white West' for giving everything away? As a character in the superb, must see Indian film 'White Tiger' says, 'the future belongs to the yellow and brown man.' Don't get me wrong, I loathe a flag waving uber nationalism but I respect and am grateful for a country like ours with its history and achievements, not forgetting its crimes and follies, and think it profoundly wrong we throw it all away.
Well, maybe that dates us: until 1989 I expected to join the army and for most of the 80s at least there was a pretty reasonable expectation of things in Europe ending in tears.
But the broad thrust of your argument is incredibly clarifying for me. I think it explains the attitude of a lot of my sophisticated, comfortable friends. Of course, anyone who is educated and well-read would enjoy the company of other cultured people from around the world - even prefer that company to the company of a ‘slob from a sink estate’. I certainly would.
But that simple statement explains, in my view, the gaping chasm in British politics. Because you can import as many cultured foreigners as you want, but the problem of the ‘cultureless poor’ in Britain won’t go away. In fact, it will increase as less and less attention is paid to those who are neither wanted nor needed as they are replaced by smart, presentable, hard-working, keen immigrants. That, I would argue, is why we have so many millions of demoralised poor leading wasted lives today. Their tragedy is that the ‘progressive left’ lays claim to them, like a child to a toy, but then having laid claim, and chased the ‘nasty Tories’ away, they ignore them in favour of more fashionable causes.
To go back to my war analogy: the men who won at Agincourt, Trafalgar, Waterloo, conquered the world, fought in the trenches and in WW2 and Korea - not to mention the Falklands, Iraq, etc - were almost all ‘uncultured’, often ‘criminal’, and certainly the types of people who would live on sink estates if they were unlucky. But when we needed them, or wanted them, they laid down their lives for Britain (or England/ Scotland, etc) and their mates. Many of them could have slipped into criminality, or were already criminals when they fought. Certainly, many (even most) held views that we would consider reprehensible today. But they cared for some representation on Britain. In the same way, the ‘neo-Nazis’ of the Azov Regiment in Ukraine, who cause us such angst, are doubtless people of awful attitudes. But the threat of external invasion united the Ukrainian people behind a vision of their country and I for one wouldn’t question the previous thoughts or actions of a man prepared to die next to me in a trench to defend my country: far rather fight next to the sink estate slob than FOR the righteous progressive sitting at home planning a ‘better future’ for my country.
To me, the great opportunity in Britain is for a political leader, and party, who can say to the people of this country ‘we will truly put you first’. Of course we need immigrants, and of course we should be race-blind. But race-blind does NOT mean culture-blind. We should divide immigrants into those who truly come here to settle, to assimilate, to become part of Britain permanently, and those for whom the relationship is more transactional or temporary. To all, we should say ‘welcome’, but we should reserve the prize of citizenship for the former - and then only after a long (maybe 2 generations?) qualification period. As for our own citizens, we should stop treating the poor as victims without agency and we should destroy the ‘client state’ culture of the state and the charity sector and other activists. We should invest massively in education and opportunity for the poor, but with that should come expectations: a ‘hand up, not a hand-out’, to coin a phrase. The party that can offer that, truly mean it, and deliver on it, will be in power for term after term. Again, the tragedy is that Labour has staked a claim to that territory, driven the Tories off it, and then been diverted by more progressive causes, preferring to keep a White British (and increasingly an immigrant) underclass as a client pool.
Not my context, but it seems like a better rhetorical stance would be "let's attract the kind of immigrants that become (maybe with some help) 'unicultural.'" The idea that Britishness was threatened by Polich plumbers always struck me as an outsider as pretty ludicrous. And that you needed Brexit to prevent immigration from EU was more so.
I viewed the problem of mass immigration into the EU as a 'tragedy of the commons' problem: it was not the responsibility of any one country so no one took respeonsibility for it. I thought that individual countries might deal with the problem better, hence the vote for Brexit. I think it's been shown that many people thought this way and voted for Brexit, not to keep EU citizens out, but to keep non-EU citizens out. On the face of it this looks illogical but it really isn't.
But was mass immigration between EU countries a problem? Was it a problem in the UK? Wasn't the Brexit sentiment highest in places with some (more than Scotland) but not much (less than London)? And then there is the issue of "reception." Were there policies that could have encourage/could still encourage faster Britishization?
'But was mass immigration between EU countries a problem?'
No, it wasn't. That's why I wrote immigration 'into' the EU (i.e. from non-EU countries). However, less immigration from Romania and Bulgaria would have been nice.
'Wasn't the Brexit sentiment highest in places with some [immigration] (more than Scotland) but not much [immigration] (less than London)?'
I think you're suggesting there's some kind of contradiction in the fact that there was less support for Brexit where there was already a lot of immigration (London etc.) and more support for Brexit where there was little immigration. Did I understand you right? If so, there is no contradiction. London is full of immigrants who have nothing against more immigration and the whites who don't like mass immigration have already fled to the country. Whites that don't mind mass immigration stayed and voted Remain.
'And then there is the issue of "reception." Were there policies that could have encourage/could still encourage faster Britishization?'
I would prefer less immigration full stop. Then the question of 'reception' (I don't know what that is) and policies that encourage faster 'Britishization' that we can't or don't implement don't even arise.
I think a generous interpretation of this is something like: “our strength” is the capacity to endure the disharmony that "diversity" (immigration) inevitably brings and through that endurance to end it. It is the Christian tradition of triumph through martyrdom of which Christ on the cross is the archetype. And related to that the deeply subconscious desire to burn our civilisation down in order to have it (more than somewhat unrealistically) rise from the ashes with only its values (the irreducible element) intact.
"Most of the things which people attribute to the benefits of diversity are actually due to the benefits of the conditions that allowed for diversity: liberalism, a free labour market, wealth, tolerance, trust towards outsiders."
You come up with such precise, elegant and clarifying turns of phrase from time to time; that's one of them. Perhaps could be improved by replacing "the things which" with "what" and "are actually due to the benefits of" with "actually arise from" - fewer words and avoids repetition of "the benefits of" (but appreciate you may want the repetition). And it contains an implicit elegiac element: that diversity [of peoples, of value systems] will erode the conditions that gave rise to it.
"Did we win the debate? No. But did we win the moral argument on some deeper level? Also no."
Of course, you can't win a debate that isn't allowed to happen, which is the point of, "the strength of taboo and sacralisation" , being also a taboo that has caused the indigenous population (without Tourette's) to quietly comply with the edict, whilst moving house as soon as they can afford to.
You were ahead of your time, Ed.
Ten years ago, I would have quarreled with you about your book. Now, having seen where the diversity trap has taken us, I very much regret my past allegiances.
Ditto.
Ditto.
The reality is that in sufficient numbers people from distant cultures will with absolute certainty reassert their cultures here. Ergo, a British city that happens to have a majority of citizens from sub Saharan Africa will function exactly as a city in sub Sahara Africa, albeit with (for now) greater welfare input. And it is actually monstrous to suggest otherwise, as if sub Saharan cities are not merely different from European/British cities but intrinsically inferior (a sort of accident) and so not worth reproducing. But this is precisely what the progressives impliedly argue when they argue for "diversity", that once migrants settle here they will abandon their “primitive” cultures and subscribe to the progressive world view.
Really enjoyed that piece Ed, and you are spot on - as you were ten years ago.
It begs the question how diverse do the liberals in the UK want the country to be? Or perhaps, in reality, how diverse does it have to be for the wealthiest liberals- as yet untouched - to start to experience the discomfort referred to in the article felt by those at the sharp end of the mass immigration?
Yes, yes and yes again. In the film Shadowlands someone claims 'we read to know we are not alone' and I think that's why I read this substack.
Unlike you, I actually do like arguing. It's the fallout from arguments I don't like. The frostiness immediately afterwards and the realisation that we weren't that close after all. Then comes the gradual distancing and finally loss of contact. Yet since I spend a lot of time thinking about this stuff I find it impossible not to talk about it, even when I know no good will come of it. Opinions will out.
'it is an unstoppable force meeting a moveable object'
I liked that.
I also liked the bit about conservatives claiming only to be worried about the poorest Brits when they object to mass immigration. No, we just don't like it FOR OURSELVES and it's not necessary to ape liberal concerns - which are probably only affected concerns in the first place - about 'the most vulnerable people in society' [sob].
My sister once came home and told her husband that there were three young lads outside in the street, jumping in front cars in an attempt to make them swerve out of the way. So my 6' tall ex-rugby playing brother-in-law went out and had a word with them. He came back saying he'd told them off. What had he said? He told them they were endangering themselves. That's not telling them off! Who cares about them? Let them get run over! Just tell them to stop endangering motorists, specifically my sister. Oh, I was so disappointed in him.
We can only use the most feeble of 'liberal' arguments against our occupation and dispossession. We can, just about, criticise Islam from a feminist perspective but anything else will land the complainant unemployed and/or in court. Everyone knows this. We have no conservative case because that case was abandoned long ago and conservatism is now dead.
I'm hopeless at predictions but I imagine we won't face great catastrophe, instead life will continue, just worse.
I agree about cheap labour. Brexit was hugely about immigration, partly the social unease but also a desire for a pay rise by restricting foreign competition. And as soon as wages go too high - as with builders last week - the government announces it will import more. That's why they can never be trusted, I'm afraid.
You are absolutely right on this. In my view, everything that makes Britain an attractive place to be - and which attracts so many immigrants - depends on a shared sense of belonging. The more immigrants we welcome, and the more we decide that 'their' history is now 'our' history, the more we attack and corrode that shared sense. I was educated at the same school as Rishi Sunak and I worked a few feet from him for a few years. I have absolutely the greatest liking and respect for him and his qualities, and would vote for him as a Tory leader. And yet...does he really have the same view of Britain as me? Was he brought up to think that he might one day fight or even die for this country? How does he feel about its history? My point is that this intelligent, cultured man of the world must surely carry some sense of his Indian, Hindu history - and while that means he has much to add to this country, it also represents a point of potential conflict between his view of it and that of a white British person. Now if there is that point of potential conflict with him, how much stronger is that potential conflict when we are talking about immigrants who make no attempt to assimilate - even after generations - or who publicly and consciously place their foreign heritage ahead of their Britishness (often 'rediscovering' that foreign heritage despite claiming Britishness at every possible opportunity).
It seems to me that when so many immigrants come from wholly different cultures, espouse religions that run entirely counter to the basis of our history and laws, view the Empire as a rapacious, hostile or criminal enterprise, challenge the very existence of the monarchy, then we lack the foundational points of common interest that are necessary for a nation to remain united. Of course, many White British people challenge some or all of the above - but at least they are likely to have some sense of commonality with other White Britons; something that they can unite around.
I ask myself often how we would act today in the face of an attack such as that experienced by Ukraine. 40 years ago, we'd have united like the Ukrainians have. Today, given the choice, I'd guess at least 30% of the population would simply move to another country: why fight for something that isn't really yours?
And why are we so blind to this? If I were to move with my white British wife to India or China, say, and have children in one of those countries, would anyone consider those children to be truly Indian or Chinese? What about those children, if born out of marriage to a second generation white Briton in those countries? It's all very odd.
'Was he brought up to think that he might one day fight or even die for this country?'
To be fair to Rishi, I'm not sure there are any white Brits born after WWII who were brought up thinking they might one day fight and die for their country. I certainly wasn't. And the truth is the gap between a cultured Hindu like Rishi and a cultured white Brit is negligible compared to the gaping chasm between the latter and some slob from a sink estate.
Let's say there are a million white British criminals. If God were to offer to swap them for a million random Hindus I'd bite his hand off, which suggests that ethnicity/ancestry isn't as important to me as I sometimes think it is. Would such an influx of aliens undermine our traditional British values and way of doing things? Probably, but I suspect less than the white British criminal already does.
You can play this game with almost any pairing: A million thick Brits versus a million clever Hong Kongers. A million tattooed, pink-haired, nose-pierced, professional activist, white British progressives v a million Pakistani Muslims. Admittedly, that's a tricky one.
". . . how we would act today in the face of an attack . . .?"
I too have often asked that question. History suggests a very simple answer: the rich would scarper and the poor would fight. The former, being generally well-educated, would be able to come up with very impressive reasoning to justify their pusillanimity: "For ourselves, we would stay and do what we could, of course, but how could we, in all conscience, force our choice on young Louise and James? They deserve . . . blah, blah, blah"
Many among the lower orders, being of a more pugnacious and less philosophical temperament, would relish the prospect of a good punch-up, especially with big guns. This, experience tells me, would apply just as much, if not more so, to young gentlemen from minority communities.
Those of us who have not directly experienced war tend to assume the highest motives among those who fight (I obviously exclude the left here). The more insightful of my elders (now all sadly passed) who fought in the two World Wars, informed me long ago that such reasoning tended to make itself apparent somewhat post-bellum.
This makes me so sad. It hurts my heart.
We really had something on this little island. Our ancestors worked hard. Of course they weren’t perfect, and their values didn’t always align with ours, but it’s because of them we have those values with which to condemn them.
And we’re just throwing it away. For what? What country will my children inherit? A smaller Brazil with shitter weather?
75% white British. And yet we are told colonisation is the worst thing that can happen to a people.
And then we all have to go into work and not breathe a word about this catastrophe, but celebrate, and constantly flog ourselves for our own ethnic heritage.
I’ve never had a racial or an ethnic identity. And sneered at those who did (as long as they were white). But like so many in these comments I have to admit Ed, you were right, we were wrong. And yet, I almost wish I was still deluded. It’s far less depressing.
'75% white British. And yet we are told colonisation is the worst thing that can happen to a people'.
To be fair, colonialisation is imposed on a society from without whereas we did this to ourselves. Or rather, our betters did it to us.
This has got to be your most quotable article.
Fair comment by Ed but I wonder if part of the difficulty of making the case against diversity is because diversity seems to indicate choice and freedom, and in the addled brain of the average liberal that must be a good thing. Despite the more than adequate evidence that it is not, as diversity actually means less trust and more conflict. And more to the point, despite the fact diversity is a policed opinion, about which there can be no freedom to disagree. What is wrong with modern illiberal 'liberals'? How can something be really true if the truth is coerced? What sort of freedom is it?
Of course this all raises the larger question as whether the traditional un-diverse nation state, broadly ethnic in composition - common history, common culture and a common people or race, and the nationalism that went with it, was or could be a good thing. In the 19th c it gave rise to Italy, Poland, Hungary, Greece etc and was regarded as progressive, as it was citizen, democratic states replacing the feudal , dynastic states of the Ancien Regime - the Romanoffs, Ottomans, Hapsburgs etc. Bryon died in and for Greece - not really a right wing xenophobe. In the 20th c, and equally progressive, the same nationalist impetus was used to win colonial independence throughout Africa and Asia eg. Nkrumah and Gandhi, and remember the saintly Mandela was head of the African National Congress. So what went wrong? Well, Bismarck militarised nationalism to advance Prussia and the German Empire and we got the two world wars, so all nationalism and any nation state became suspect. But wasn't extreme nationalism a bit like extreme socialism/communism, one the concentration camps and the other the gulag? Both extreme? Yet we allow moderate socialism - social democrats and the Labour Party - mostly harmless, so why not moderate nationalism? In 1941 at the heart of the war Orwell published the Lion and the Unicorn and described the country as a family - despite the social divisions he knew so well - quite impossible now and we are the less for it. So I argue diversity weakens us. And what about the future, no longer England but Multiracial-land a country for everyone and a country for no one? What will connect people to the past, and to the then present, and give a national identity and a national community - with things in common - as well as some social solidarity? Won't even the theft of national identity and theft of national community amount to a kind of reverse racism against the white British? And won't India and China etc, who will very much keep their nations, laugh at the decadence and weakness of Britain and the 'white West' for giving everything away? As a character in the superb, must see Indian film 'White Tiger' says, 'the future belongs to the yellow and brown man.' Don't get me wrong, I loathe a flag waving uber nationalism but I respect and am grateful for a country like ours with its history and achievements, not forgetting its crimes and follies, and think it profoundly wrong we throw it all away.
Well, maybe that dates us: until 1989 I expected to join the army and for most of the 80s at least there was a pretty reasonable expectation of things in Europe ending in tears.
But the broad thrust of your argument is incredibly clarifying for me. I think it explains the attitude of a lot of my sophisticated, comfortable friends. Of course, anyone who is educated and well-read would enjoy the company of other cultured people from around the world - even prefer that company to the company of a ‘slob from a sink estate’. I certainly would.
But that simple statement explains, in my view, the gaping chasm in British politics. Because you can import as many cultured foreigners as you want, but the problem of the ‘cultureless poor’ in Britain won’t go away. In fact, it will increase as less and less attention is paid to those who are neither wanted nor needed as they are replaced by smart, presentable, hard-working, keen immigrants. That, I would argue, is why we have so many millions of demoralised poor leading wasted lives today. Their tragedy is that the ‘progressive left’ lays claim to them, like a child to a toy, but then having laid claim, and chased the ‘nasty Tories’ away, they ignore them in favour of more fashionable causes.
To go back to my war analogy: the men who won at Agincourt, Trafalgar, Waterloo, conquered the world, fought in the trenches and in WW2 and Korea - not to mention the Falklands, Iraq, etc - were almost all ‘uncultured’, often ‘criminal’, and certainly the types of people who would live on sink estates if they were unlucky. But when we needed them, or wanted them, they laid down their lives for Britain (or England/ Scotland, etc) and their mates. Many of them could have slipped into criminality, or were already criminals when they fought. Certainly, many (even most) held views that we would consider reprehensible today. But they cared for some representation on Britain. In the same way, the ‘neo-Nazis’ of the Azov Regiment in Ukraine, who cause us such angst, are doubtless people of awful attitudes. But the threat of external invasion united the Ukrainian people behind a vision of their country and I for one wouldn’t question the previous thoughts or actions of a man prepared to die next to me in a trench to defend my country: far rather fight next to the sink estate slob than FOR the righteous progressive sitting at home planning a ‘better future’ for my country.
To me, the great opportunity in Britain is for a political leader, and party, who can say to the people of this country ‘we will truly put you first’. Of course we need immigrants, and of course we should be race-blind. But race-blind does NOT mean culture-blind. We should divide immigrants into those who truly come here to settle, to assimilate, to become part of Britain permanently, and those for whom the relationship is more transactional or temporary. To all, we should say ‘welcome’, but we should reserve the prize of citizenship for the former - and then only after a long (maybe 2 generations?) qualification period. As for our own citizens, we should stop treating the poor as victims without agency and we should destroy the ‘client state’ culture of the state and the charity sector and other activists. We should invest massively in education and opportunity for the poor, but with that should come expectations: a ‘hand up, not a hand-out’, to coin a phrase. The party that can offer that, truly mean it, and deliver on it, will be in power for term after term. Again, the tragedy is that Labour has staked a claim to that territory, driven the Tories off it, and then been diverted by more progressive causes, preferring to keep a White British (and increasingly an immigrant) underclass as a client pool.
I may be wrong but somehow I sense that when you write about the book's 20th anniversary, you will find that history has vindicated you.
Not my context, but it seems like a better rhetorical stance would be "let's attract the kind of immigrants that become (maybe with some help) 'unicultural.'" The idea that Britishness was threatened by Polich plumbers always struck me as an outsider as pretty ludicrous. And that you needed Brexit to prevent immigration from EU was more so.
How do you prevent immigration from the EU without Brexit?
But was EU immigration what people were voting against?
You put up enough red tape National I.D etc That it discourages people-
I viewed the problem of mass immigration into the EU as a 'tragedy of the commons' problem: it was not the responsibility of any one country so no one took respeonsibility for it. I thought that individual countries might deal with the problem better, hence the vote for Brexit. I think it's been shown that many people thought this way and voted for Brexit, not to keep EU citizens out, but to keep non-EU citizens out. On the face of it this looks illogical but it really isn't.
But was mass immigration between EU countries a problem? Was it a problem in the UK? Wasn't the Brexit sentiment highest in places with some (more than Scotland) but not much (less than London)? And then there is the issue of "reception." Were there policies that could have encourage/could still encourage faster Britishization?
'But was mass immigration between EU countries a problem?'
No, it wasn't. That's why I wrote immigration 'into' the EU (i.e. from non-EU countries). However, less immigration from Romania and Bulgaria would have been nice.
'Wasn't the Brexit sentiment highest in places with some [immigration] (more than Scotland) but not much [immigration] (less than London)?'
I think you're suggesting there's some kind of contradiction in the fact that there was less support for Brexit where there was already a lot of immigration (London etc.) and more support for Brexit where there was little immigration. Did I understand you right? If so, there is no contradiction. London is full of immigrants who have nothing against more immigration and the whites who don't like mass immigration have already fled to the country. Whites that don't mind mass immigration stayed and voted Remain.
'And then there is the issue of "reception." Were there policies that could have encourage/could still encourage faster Britishization?'
I would prefer less immigration full stop. Then the question of 'reception' (I don't know what that is) and policies that encourage faster 'Britishization' that we can't or don't implement don't even arise.
‘Diversity is our strength’
I think a generous interpretation of this is something like: “our strength” is the capacity to endure the disharmony that "diversity" (immigration) inevitably brings and through that endurance to end it. It is the Christian tradition of triumph through martyrdom of which Christ on the cross is the archetype. And related to that the deeply subconscious desire to burn our civilisation down in order to have it (more than somewhat unrealistically) rise from the ashes with only its values (the irreducible element) intact.
But as Ed point out those who most espouse this worldview do so from a safe distance and do so without bearing the burden of it - for now at least.
Diversity is our weakness. It erodes social trust and creates massive logistical costs.
The world works best if people with different worldviews live in different parts of it.
"Most of the things which people attribute to the benefits of diversity are actually due to the benefits of the conditions that allowed for diversity: liberalism, a free labour market, wealth, tolerance, trust towards outsiders."
You come up with such precise, elegant and clarifying turns of phrase from time to time; that's one of them. Perhaps could be improved by replacing "the things which" with "what" and "are actually due to the benefits of" with "actually arise from" - fewer words and avoids repetition of "the benefits of" (but appreciate you may want the repetition). And it contains an implicit elegiac element: that diversity [of peoples, of value systems] will erode the conditions that gave rise to it.
You need to produce more audiobooks and read them yourself like Peter Hitchens.