The myth of integration laid bare

Three recent high-profile public events suggest we might already be living in Starmer's ‘island of strangers’

Paul Embery is one of the most interesting, insightful and original voices to have emerged in British journalism for some time — Douglas Murray

I am quite certain that one of the reasons for the profound disconnect that exists in Britain today between those who run things and those who must bear the effects of their decisions is the former’s insistence on portraying the country in ways that are largely at odds with the latter’s own experience of it.

To the progressive elites, the nation is a marvellous patchwork of ‘communities’, all interacting happily while celebrating their differences. Multiculturalism is enriching and vibrant. Diversity is our strength.

So many of our institutions and industries – from politics to the arts, academia to entertainment – preach this particular gospel. Would that the gospel were true; life would be so much more simple. But it isn’t. Multiculturalism is demonstrably failing. And far from being our ‘strength’, diversity is proving to be one of our greatest challenges. We may lament this reality. But we cannot credibly refute it.

So when the prime minister warns, as he did earlier this week, that mass immigration risks turning Britain into an ‘island of strangers’, he is on to something. Except that he isn’t exactly being prescient. If anything, he is behind the curve. For the evidence shows that parts of our nation are already well beyond the point where a kind of soft ghettoisation has taken hold and sections of the local population are indeed estranged from each other.

Unsurprisingly, Starmer’s words elicited howls of fury from the well-heeled liberal commentariat – the type of people for whom mass immigration is a luxury belief and means not pressure on wages, public services or strains on social cohesion, but cheap au pairs and a wider variety of restaurants in the trendy quarters where they tend to reside.

Some have accused the prime minister of adopting the language of the ‘far right’. They really need to give their head a wobble. The suggestion that expressing the view, as Starmer did, that importing a population almost equal to the size of Birmingham every year has the potential to cause significant social and economic disruption in our communities somehow makes one a rancid reactionary is unworthy of serious debate.

I suspect these people rarely visit the provinces beyond our fashionable cities and university towns – what you might call real Britain – and thus have zero experience of the challenges facing these places. In some of them, different ethnic and religious groups are living largely parallel existences, rarely mingling and knowing little of each other’s lives. In fact, these communities are a testament to the degree to which parts of our nation are now distinctly unintegrated.

Three recent prominent public events brought this home to me.

First was the London marathon. As Channel 4’s Jon Snow might have said of it: ‘I have never seen so many white people in one place.’ Very few among the thousands of runners (elite competitors aside), and even greater numbers lining the streets, appeared to be from an ethnic or cultural minority background. Why was this so? I’m not sure I know. But given the capital’s general demographic diversity, and its status as a global hub, it sure looked odd. One might have thought that a feelgood event of this kind would attract individuals of all colours and creeds. But, no. It was a bit like stepping back in time. The homogeneity of the event was impossible not to notice.