The British migrant dream is thriving. It’s poor white boys who are in trouble.
The UK has a great story to tell on integration. It is one of the very best places on earth to be a newcomer
When London erupted in the summer of 2011, we heard from sociologists, economists and politicians all trying to make sense of the senseless. They tended to use the riots as vindication of whatever theory they had always been advocating – from a fatherlessness epidemic to nascent class war. Mick Jagger was in the city at the time and offered a rather different analysis “There’s no warning,” he said. “But it’s a regular feature of English urban life, if you think about it. Every ten years, you get some riots.”
The Jagger theory – that it’s hard to assign politics or logic to rare moments of fury – makes more sense than the Britain-at-war narrative peddled by social media and spreading world over.
Elon Musk has been promoting Twitter users who talk of “Muslim patrols” versus “British patriots”. Others speak of ethnic minority communities, intimidated and bullied by the far-Right. With arsonists targeting migrant hotels, as happened in Sweden years ago, some see Britain heading in the same direction: towards a two-tier society with a criminal subculture.
But Sweden has the world’s worst record of merging immigrants into the economy. Britain does far better. The riots take place not against a backdrop of racial tension but in a country where, polls show, people are more positive about immigrants than almost anyone else in Europe.
Not so long ago Britain had a Hindu prime minister, a Buddhist home secretary, a Muslim mayor of London, a Muslim first minister of Scotland and a black first minister of Wales. This tends not to happen in countries where skin colour is a serious impediment to progress.
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Having a government led by someone called Rishi Sunak is entirely consistent with a country where those of Indian heritage are twice as likely to have six-figure incomes as whites. Kemi Badenoch caused uproar when she said that Britain is the best country in the world to be black, but there is plenty of evidence to support her case. Race riots often come when an ethnic minority has been forced to the margins of society. That’s not really Britain’s story.
One of Keir Starmer’s big mistakes was to try to hitch himself to the Black Lives Matter bandwagon and release a photo of him “taking the knee”. The problem with importing the American theories of “white privilege” is that it’s hard, in Britain, to suggest that “people of colour” are at a serious disadvantage. Here, non-whites are more likely to be in top jobs than whites and there is plenty of evidence of what Michael Howard famously called the “British dream”. The UK’s highest earners are Indians, then the Chinese, then “white other”.
Take GCSE results, due next week. Passing at least five of the tougher subjects is now called the “English baccalaureate”.
Some 62 per cent of Chinese pupils took this challenge last year, as did 51 per cent of Asians and 47 per cent of blacks. White pupils finished quite a bit behind at 35 per cent. If you adjust for wealth, by looking at pupils eligible for free school meals, the picture worsens. Some 45 per cent of Asian pupils on free school meals achieve decent grades (grade 5 or higher) in English and Maths as do 40 per cent of black pupils. But just 25 per cent of the white kids do so. In no other ethnic group does poverty seem to have such an impact on academic attainment.
At the last count, 76 per cent of teenage girls with a Bangladeshi background went to university, as did 71 per cent of poor black African girls. But it was just 15 per cent for poor white boys, of whom only 2 per cent went to a top university. (Some 42 per cent of poor Chinese girls did so.) What is it about our social and education model that produces such staggering racial disparities? Why do working-class white boys do so much worse? And why is no one really interested in discussing it?
Letting go of voguish theories about disadvantage can be difficult – but vital, if today’s problems are to be addressed. When Rachel Reeves became Chancellor she said it should encourage all girls to shoot for the top. Where, precisely, does she see a lack of young female ambition? Girls are now far more likely to apply to university: it’s the boys she needs to worry about. The gender gap for uni applications is now almost as big as that between rich and poor.
Instead of American critical race theory, Starmer should look at the work of Angus Deaton, a Nobel laureate who has highlighted what he calls “deaths of despair” in white Americans.
This phenomenon shows those with low education turning to drink and drugs – and leading to deaths from overdose, liver disease or suicide. They don’t riot. But they shouldn’t need to, surely, to be taken seriously. Similar trends can be found in Britain, for those who take the trouble to look.
Let’s take those who appeared in the dock of Teesside Magistrates’ Court after the Middlesbrough riot. Each gave their address, from which you can work out neighbourhood deprivation. In the communities the accused came from, some 26 per cent were on out-of-work benefits, on average. More than twice the UK norm. Stacey Vint, accused of trying to ram police with a blazing wheelie bin, is from a Middlesbrough neighbourhood where almost half are on benefits. Quite something, in the middle of a worker-shortage crisis.
The British dream is working for a great many of those who came here to seek it – and we can be proud of that. But the British dream is not working so well for working-class whites and we should be deeply disturbed by that.
Now and again, politicians summon up the courage to talk about this – as Theresa May did when, on the steps of No 10, she spoke of the plight of white working-class boys. But nothing was done. Nothing ever seems to be done.
After the 1981 Toxteth riots, Michael Heseltine famously declared that the inner cities were in urgent need of regeneration and an agenda was born. The 2024 riots may not yield hard conclusions. But as we search for the truth behind claims of British racial tension and inequality, we do see the problem of left-behind whites slowly becoming a crisis. If Starmer wants to pick an agenda from the wreckage of the last few days, he needs look no further. DT.
