Over generations, we have built something extraordinary in Britain: a successful multi-racial, multi-faith democracy. It’s open, diverse, welcoming – these characteristics are as British as queuing and talking about the weather. It is here in Britain where different people, from different backgrounds who follow different religions and different customs don’t just rub alongside each other but are relatives and friends; husbands, wives, cousins; neighbours and colleagues. It is here in Britain where in one or two generations people can come with nothing and rise as high as their talent allows. It is here in Britain where success is achieved not in spite of our diversity, but because of our diversity. So as we talk about the threat of extremism and the challenge of integration, we should not do our country down.
I suggest that there is a certain tension between bemoaning ‘runaway’ immigration and saluting the great, equally ‘runaway’, success of London. You cannot have it both ways. London, in particular, is great because, not despite, its diversity. The problem of London exceptionalism is that the rest of the country is not more like London.
Unless, of course, you’re a Home Secretary pandering to the basest elements of the Tory party. A Home Secretary basing her pitch to lead her party on a stale and noxious concoction of tawdry nativism. In that case, in those circumstances, you are licensed to present a picture of Britain as a country on the brink of an abyss, in which hordes – or swarms – of migrants are undermining the British way of life, threatening social cohesion and tearing up whatever remains of whatever you mean by our ‘social fabric’. A country that is failing, in other words.
But it is piffle and dangerous claptrap at that. Because while it is undoubtedly reasonable to observe that migration – whether internal or external – can have costs as well as benefits, it is also reasonable to demand that our politicians talk about these matters in ways that dampen, not enflame, voters’ concerns.
Those concerns, it should be admitted, are real even if they are also, unsurprisingly, most keenly expressed in areas that, by and large, have experienced relatively little migration. The more immigrants a Briton knows or encounters the more probable it is they will take a liberal line on immigration. Just fancy that.
And, again, if Britain really is – as Conservative ministers repeatedly assure us – a great trading nation, open to the world, it follows that this openness be reflected in its attitude to the movement of people as well as capital.
We have heard it all before, in any case. Each and every wave of immigration, of whatever size, has been accompanied by howls of nativist protest. The Irish experienced it; so did post-war immigrants from the Caribbean. As did the Ugandan Asians and the Pakistanis. Now it’s the Poles and Romanians.
In each instance, the apocalypse was mysteriously averted. The sky remained unfallen. Britain – and especially England – changed and carried on and, mostly, did so with remarkably little fuss. By the standards of most european countries, British politics is startlingly moderate. There is no Jobbik, no True Finns, no Swedish Democrats, no Golden Dawn. Ukip, however much you might dislike Mr Farage, are pikers in comparison to any of these continental parties.
There is something comforting about this. It should serve as a reminder that, actually, Britain remains a pretty remarkable place. It is not broken, it is, in fact, a strikingly successful country in which the great majority of people lead lives of tolerable prosperity and modest contentment.
Of course, problems remain. But where is that not the case? There is no need to cast a Panglossian eye over these difficulties but, equally, it is important to stress the positive and put our problems in some kind of perspective. Which is that, yes, this is a lucky country.
Part of that good fortune lies in the fact that, most of the time and in most parts of the United Kingdom (Scotland, alas, being a partial exception to this general rule), politics is something of only intermittent importance.
As it happens, I wrote about some of this for The Times today:
This is a country that is, on the whole, at ease with itself. The proof of this will be seen tomorrow when one in four British adults will watch the final episode of this year’s edition of The Great British Bake-Off. I submit that a country in which 15 million people will watch a cake-making competition is not a country on the abyss or one ripe for revolution. The Bake-Off may be a festival of niceness but it is significant, too. Consider the finalists in this year’s competition: A British-Bangladeshi muslim housewife from Luton; a gay, hindu, trainee anaesthetist from Manchester and a white, middle-class, travel photographer from Cambridgeshire. Other contestants in this series included a prison governor from Swansea, a fireman from London, a Lithuanian bodybuildress and an art history student from Perthshire. Modern Britain, in other words. Of course, contestants for the Bake-Off are selected to reflect the range and diversity of life in our Britain but that, it seems to me, is just as it should be. And its success refutes the notion, as popularised by people like Mrs May, that we cannot all rub along together. If offers us a picture of a Britain we like and, actually, one in which most of us live. Indeed, most people manage fine. They like the neighbourhoods in which they live; they like the country they inhabit. Why wouldn’t they? This is an interesting country and a good one, too. Let them bake cake.A minority of citizens, it is true, yearn for a more ideological age and hence gravitate towards the singing sirens of Ukip, Jeremy Corbyn and, for some, the SNP. Many of these voters crave a politics defined by its certainty. A politics that will set the people free in a single bound. Despite their differences, these people are united by two things: a suspicion something has gone terribly wrong and an intolerance for what might be termed the broadly settled will of the British people. They want more exciting politics even as their fellow citizens enjoy not having to care about politics at all. That settled will is reflected by a number of evident truths. The British favour low taxes but support a strong safety net. They prefer free markets, but not unregulated cut-throat capitalism. They are wary of nationalising industry but keen to protect national institutions such as the NHS. They are relaxed about who you are and how you lead your life but would, if it’s not too much trouble, like to insist you sign up to a woolly, ill-defined set of attitudes that are generally believed to amount to “the British way of life”. Even here, however, they know the importance of not taking yourself too seriously. Their favourite motivational slogans are “Still, mustn’t grumble” and “Keep calm and carry on”.
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