Slower to demonise, faster to fix

Although I agree with the ultimate conclusion of Yasmin Alibhai-Brown’s column today – that we shouldn’t, as a nation, “blame the outsider,” and that we should work towards greater integration – the tirade she launches before it is astonishing, and not in a good sense:

“A new government report finds that [the white, working classes] feel “betrayed” and abandoned. Ruined by “ethnic minorities” they cry into their antimacassars and threaten to vote for fascists. The British working classes include people of every shade. But only white grievances matter. Nobody seeks to find out what life is like for the incomers living in the fog of nativist bitterness.

Parliamentarians, the media, even the people who claim to speak for immigrants – such as Baroness Warsi and Trevor Phillips – are flocking to indulge the always-wretched and complaining classes.