‘Multiculturalism’ is damaging our society. There is only one way to stop it.
It was foolish to think we could integrate so many people from different cultures in so little time. We must reduce immigration – and fast
BEN HABIB18 March 2024 •
Successive British governments, Labour and Tory, have spoken out against racism while passing regulations which have only served to embed it.
Tony Blair did not seem to care for our nation state. He preferred governance from unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats both here and in Brussels. It suited his brand of left-wing politics for EU nations to lose their values and identity: far easier to hand more power to Europe if national interests and cultures could not get in the way.
Mass migration, at least in the short-term, also worked economically. With an eye on the single most important metric to judge prosperity, New Labour realised immigration would boost growth. With growth in the population would come growth in GDP, a demand for housing and infrastructure and cheap imported labour to power British business. This merry go round would apparently keep working as long as the population kept growing. But in reality, it was a Ponzi scheme.
Cheap imported labour has kept a lid on wages and removed the need for businesses to upskill and automate. Our economy is now being run on the lines of a developing country; productivity in the UK has been poor for years. Millions of British citizens are “economically inactive”. Our public services are buckling and our housing shortage is chronic.
Arguably a bigger problem was the lack of will and inclination to culturally integrate those coming to the UK. And so “multi-culturalism” was born. This didn’t create a “melting pot”, but rather led to the celebration of discrete new cultures running parallel to and isolated from the British one.
David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak, one after the other, played the same game. Johnson and Sunak took immigration to staggeringly high levels. Last year, net migration reached 745,000. Some 5 million foreigners have been given visas to the UK since 2019 – that is 8 per cent of our population.
This drastic increase coincided with, or was perhaps the trigger for, the rise of Diversity, Equality and Inclusion regulations. And these new rules and guidelines have, perhaps unintentionally, given rise to progressive discrimination based on ethnicity, religion, sexual preferences and/ or gender identity.
DEI is now practised by virtually every institution, government department, public service, educational establishment and business. The Armed Forces’ spending on diversity and inclusion personnel has doubled to nearly £2 million over the past half decade. It was revealed last year that the RAF had instructed staff to stop choosing “useless white male pilots” for training courses.
There is a very real risk that meritocracy has been all but ejected in Britain today, along with equality in the eyes of the law. If we continue too far down this path, how much which is traditionally British will survive? There has been a near-constant assault on our language and our past. We’re told that both need decolonising, that celebrated historical figures were “racist”.
It is surely hard to deny that DEI is becoming a Trojan horse for the hard-Left to promote ideologies designed to destroy the idea of the nation state. That it has become an excuse to peddle “critical race theory” and the idea that some races cannot be subject to discrimination. We ought to have a shared language, history, culture and territorial integrity; a settled social and cultural construct. If DEI celebrates and protects some cultures but excludes others, it is open season on everything traditionally British. If some groups are being discriminated against, how can we describe multiculturalism as anything but a failure?
People are waking up to the prejudice created by DEI and damage done by multiculturalism. A by-election has just been marred by sectarianism and accusations of intimidation. Anti-Semitic slogans have been projected onto Big Ben. The Tories seem to believe the answer lies in a new definition of extremism - but this will not tackle the root cause.
We must dramatically reduce immigration, institute a programme of integration for people living in the UK, require the primacy of our British culture, end the obsession with DEI, require all are treated equally and proudly teach our children the truth about our wonderful history.
Martin Luther King had it right. People should be judged not by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.
Ben Habib is deputy leader of Reform UK
Blogger: multiculturalism is a surrender to the practices and beliefs of incomers. It destroys social cohesion and your nation's culture.
BTW. WHATEVER HAPPENED TO INTEGRATION? (I fully supported that until its mysterious disappearance.)
