Got that? Britain is a successful multi-ethnic, multi-faith country, and the government has to show it has a plan to address people’s concerns and provide opportunties for everyone to flourish. And, er, there is a link between concerns people have about (checks notes) ‘where the government is acting on their behalf and on their interests with a range of factors’.
You have to laugh, even through the tears: these are the people who are in charge. Britain is a successful country? And this government has a…plan? But the important point to emphasise here is that Rayner, and the people around her, are simply constitutionally incapable of recognising the problem itself, or the solution. They actually think that ‘immigration and the impacts on local communities and public services’ is just one of a ‘range of factors’ destabilising society, alongside ‘economic insecurity, the rapid pace of de-industrialisation, technological change and the amount of time people were spending alone online, and declining trust in institutions’. And they actually think that the remedy for this is just ‘investment’ in ‘deprived areas’ so as to allow people to ‘flourish’.
British readers are familiar with this mindset: typically what it means is that money gets funnelled into regeneration schemes that kit out otherwise forgotten places like Newport, Dundee or Middlesborough with nice new shopping precincts and art galleries nobody visits. The idea, more or less, is that opposition to uncontrolled immigration is really just a feature of economic insecurity and, perhaps, a lack of civic pride. And if government can therefore just press the ‘grow’ button a bit harder, people will feel better off and pride will re-emerge, and our ‘successful multi-ethnic, multi-faith country’ will simply become more successful yet.
Immigration, even fairly large scale, can work just fine provided the state has robust integrationist policies & civil society is allowed to function… i.e. the diametric opposite to multiculturalism. But no, we got multi-culturalism, which is aggressively & overtly anti-integrationist.
I’m sure that I saw on the telly that all our problems were caused by us not consuming enough Weetabix.
Being a bit more serious. Years ago, while the cold war was still going on, an old guy that I worked with said of communism, yes it’s grim but often it was better than what these people had before. What does socialism have to offer to people who are self reliant, productive and prosperous? Not much really, so if you want to push your Marxist agenda, the first thing you need to do is wreck your country’s economy, which the current and the previous government have been doing deliberately and systematically, using Net Zero as a cover.
Perry – yes, Florida (people please note I typed “Florida” NOT “the United States” as a whole) shows a multi racial society can work – if people are united around basic principles of liberty – which include the right to attack, in very strong language, both religion (ANY religion) and atheism – the international establishment idea that Islam should not be harshly attacked is not compatible with a good society, or with a free society – in the end to be good society a society must be a free society (people must be allowed to debate – to point out things they believe to be wrong).
As for the United Kingdom….
The United Kingdom is falling apart – things are getting worse by the day.
Anyone who pretends that “Britain is successful” or that things are getting better, is lying, viciously lying.
The good thing is that the British people no longer believe the lies – they know that the government, both elected and unelected, and all the institutions (including the legal system) hate them (hate the British people) and wish to destroy them (the institutions, the establishment, wish to destroy the British people) – that is plain now, the mask is off.
@Paul Marks
It’s worse than that – the Government and Establishment are completely indifferent to the concerns of ordinary people. Hate can be resisted but indifference offers no easy target for resistance.
If you currently belong to a ‘favoured group’ you will shortly be relegated to the grey Lumpenproletariat alongside all the other once cherished clients.
In the full article David McGrogan mentions both trade and immigration.
On trade – up to fairly recently, only a few decades ago, it was understood that to pay for imports people must export, the modern doctrine that borrowing to fund consumption imports is fine, is not Adam Smith or Milton Friedman – it (the doctrine of borrowing to fund consumption imports – pushed by the modern Western establishment elite) is bonkers, it is utterly insane.
Immigration is not that complicated either – you let in friends (people who share your principles, your culture, and would be loyal to your nation), and keep out enemies. Unfortunately the modern establishment elite support the opposite policy – they believe in keeping out friends of Western civilization (remember the hatred the establishment showed for President Trump allowing in white South African refugees, fleeing racial persecution including rape and murder – the same hatred would be shown for British refugees fleeing present and future censorship and persecution), and they believe in welcoming in (indeed wildly encouraging and subsidizing – spending vast sums of money on benefits and services for the enemies, in order to encourage them to come) enemies of the West.
Why?
See my previous comment – the establishment elite wish to destroy the West, it is that brutally simple.
“But we need new people to pay our pensions….”
Enemies, people who hate the principles of your civilization, are NOT the children you (influenced by the terrible “Social Revolution” that started in the 1960s) failed to have.
They are not interested in paying your pension or paying for your health care in your old age – quite the contrary, they want stuff from you (they are not going to give you stuff – they are going to take stuff), and they also want to humiliate you – in order to show that their culture is stronger than yours. And their children and childrens-children tend to be of like-mind (if anything – more so). This is not the 1960s – there is so much evidence of non “assimilation” now that it can not be ignored. Oh new populations may wear the shirts of sports teams, or even go white-water-rafting as a “team building exercise” (as the 7/7 London bombers did) – but they still hate you, and wish to destroy you.
Immigration is NOT the answer to demographic decline – not in Italy, not in Japan, not in Britain or Germany, not anywhere. Migrants are NOT the children we Westerners failed to have.
I think we are beyond it now that a bit of economic growth is going to buy people off regarding how much hostility there is to immigration now. I don’t even think that will work in America now, let alone Britain and Western Europe.
A decade ago they might have been able to get away with it.New Labour famously claimed it wanted to rub diversity in the face of the right. Ironically it was the Tory Boris Johnson who took New Labour philosophy to its extreme end point with the Boriswave, and along with the crazy COVID policies, it’s likely the eventual death knell of this type politics in Britain
There are two things I have come to consider as basic truths of immigration. First, immigration at scale is incompatible with the welfare state. Second, assimilation takes three generations assuming you haven’t erected barriers to prevent it.
The British experience of the past two decades shows immigration is not good for the economy. The past two decades have been economically stagnant in Britain at the same time immigration has exceeded any past historical precedents. The neoliberal and socialist economists can point to theory all the like, but it’s been an economic (as well as social, cultural and political) disaster
I think it only works well when the numbers are tiny and dispersed.
If you look at at even supposedly successful large scale assimilations in the USA – Italians, Irish, East Asians etc – assimilating them often changed the rest of America significantly even as it changed the the targets of assimilation.
Discovered Joys – I think it is hatred rather than indifference, but you may be correct and I may be mistaken.
Martin – assimilation only works with people who basically shared basic principles in the first place, or who sincerely want to adopt them – and are prepared to work at it.
But as the establishment of the West hates Western principles (and it is hatred for, not indifference towards, Western principles) why should immigrants adopt these principles?
By the way…
I am aware that evil social ideas were around in Britain long before the 1960s – I do know of such groups as the Fabians (H.G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, Mr and Mrs Webb, and other evil, profoundly evil, people) and the Bloomsbury group (with its Cambridge links) and-so-on – but all these groups amounted to a tiny group of people, their influence on how ordinary people lived their lives, even as late as 1960, was just about ZERO.
So “starting in the 1960s” is true – if we are talking about wider society (rather than a few freaks).
Autro-Hungary was a multi-ethnic, multi-faith country. So was Yugoslavia. How’d that work out?
Immigration used to work in the US, when we opened the gates for people who had success in their home country and could bring that success here. We ran immigration for our benefit, as we should.
Now, we open the gates for the people who will never have success anywhere, and we take on the burden of making them whole. It cannot be done. There are simply not enough resources to provide welfare for the subset of the world that has no value to anyone but themselves.
At some point, when your lifeboat is already full, you need to jettison the people who insist that you still have room. That point was reached several years ago in the US.
It is “the death throes of a regime” in that they, the regime, are destroying the nation that they, themselves, depend on for their very lives.
But if someone said to them “why are you doing this, do you not understand that you are killing yourselves and killing your own families?” their reply would be the same as the scorpion gives to the frog in the old story.
A scorpion begs a frog to take it across a river, to save it from a fire. “No” says the frog “you will sting me”. The scorpion replies “but if I sting you, I will drown, so, of course, I will not sting you”. And the frog agrees to save the scorpion.
Half way across the river, the scorpion stings the frog and as the frog dies he cries out to the scorpion “but you will also die, you will now drown – just as you, yourself, said”, to which the scorpion replies “it is my nature to sting you – even if it means my own death”.
This is the position of the British state – it is the scorpion.
There is big difference between bad economic policy, and bad social policy – the undermining of the culture, of society itself.
Economic statism was on the rise as far back as the 1870s (even as a proportion of the economy), but society itself was still sound – society, the vast majority of ordinary families, were just as sound in 1960 as they had ever been – in spite of the horrible ideas that had become fashionable among some of the elite.
Now, 2025, society itself is rotten, has deliberately been made rotten – so a change in economic policy, even if it happens (and there is no sign of statism being rolled back – quite the contrary, economic statism is advancing still further) it will not be enough to save society, to save the nation.
First the elite were corrupted – then society was corrupted more generally.
A fish rots from the head.
The very people who should have been guardians of the culture, were its destroyers – and ordinary people were betrayed.
Discovered joys: It’s worse than that – the Government and Establishment are completely indifferent to the concerns of ordinary people’
And are now making absolutely no effort to hide it.
In many respects we are currently seeing a shift from completely indifferent to actively hostile.
The bit about making no effort to hide it is spot on though.
Yes John – and I suggest reading the transcript of the 2024 Christmas broadcast of His Majesty (I do not know who wrote the broadcast – I am certainly NOT suggesting His Majesty wrote it) – I suggest reading the transcript, as one can avoid the use of the visual imagery which was used, as a distraction from the words, in the broadcast.
A Christian chapel (that of the former Middlesex Hospital) described as a “vibrant community space” (rather than a Christian chapel), and, turning to other towns, lots of talk of “the whole community coming together” in “understanding” to reject the British people who rose up in the summer of 2024, and how the Commonwealth also comes together in this “understanding” to “reject prejudice”. And on-and-on – with claims that “all religions” and, indeed “all philosophies” teach “peace” – which is just not true.
Again I do not know who wrote the broadcast (I have no idea), but they were certainly not making much effort to hide their hostile stance in relation to the British people.
How quickly does assimilation occur? Three generations? I think this is the wrong question.
My brother’s long-term girlfriend is from Tokyo. She has lived in the UK for quite some time. She speaks fluent English although with a disturbing to me (a joke – I am a Geordie) Sunderland accent. She now lives in Glasgow (she’s a glass-blower for the university chemistry department). She’s an extremely talented glass artist who is basically the authority on glass ships in bottles which is a North East England tradition that she basically brought back from the dead. I’d call that pretty integrated. I mean I was (jokingly) not concerned that my effective sister-in-law is from Tokyo but that she sounds like a Mackem! And if she spends enough time in Glasgow I’ll be related to Rab C Nesbitt.
On the other hand… Yesterday I went to the shops and there was a woman of South Asian origin. She spoke to the guy on the till in halting English but she also remonstrated with her baby in Urdu. That is not assimilation over an entire generation.
I honestly don’t understand it. I almost moved to the USA and I actually learned about baseball because I cannot understand moving to another country and not fitting in. I believe it is a form of self torture to live in a place you deliberately keep as alien from yourself. How much more fun is it to learn a different culture than to be permanently baffled and annoyed by it? It makes no sense. It makes even less sense that this is positively encouraged by the establishment.
I could go on and on about immigrants from and to this country but I will leave it at this: you will have a much happier time if you embrace your country of choice. My brother’s girlfriend has. My wife’s sister (who lives in Poland) has. She speaks fluent Polish and is noted in her town in Silesia for her ability to cook pork knuckles. Aparently to get it right takes 48 hours…
Just read this. Zoe Williams is so on plot. She even conflates Islamophobia with climate change “denialism”.
My Grandfather was ethnically Norwegian. He anglicised his first name and spoke with a gentle Scouse accent all his life. Were it not for his obviously Scandinavian surname, he would have been indistinguishable from any born Englishman.
He gave both of his children, including my mother, typical working-class English forenames that were popular at that time.
Again, apart from her surname, no one would know that my mother wasn’t ethnically English.
I obviously have my father’s surname (which is ethnically English), but I consider myself to be 100% English, and 100% integrated. I’d expect my mother feels the same.
My Grandfather’s family shared a Protestant Christian religion which may have helped, but they also wanted to integrate. I think that seems to be where other newcomers are missing out.