Britain might have the most craven, treacherous elite in world history. In just a few decades, politicians from both parties have subjected the nation to a reckless demographic experiment, importing millions from foreign lands in the belief that, to a man, these new arrivals would become upstanding citizens of a multicultural paradise.
Many of these people, it should be said, make fine neighbours. But even the best among them, quite understandably given human nature, are inclined to identify more fervently with their ancestral background, be it religious or ethnic, than with the culture they find in existence at their chosen GPS location. This is no surprise. If I moved to Shanghai to work as a taxi driver, it would hardly be child’s play for me to shed the primacy of my Englishness and feel as Han Chinese as my passengers. Even if I managed to acquire a passport, it would at least take generations, along with a fair bit of intermarriage, before anyone bearing the name ‘Pitt’ in Shanghai became fully integrated into China. Why assume that the reverse task is any easier for masses of immigrants—not just lone individuals—settling in Western countries?
If it is just one person, there is no great problem. But at a scale of millions, intensely felt tribal loyalties to foreign stretches of the map, especially when combined with conflict in those far-flung regions, all of a sudden makes host countries like Britain—with no direct skin in the game—vulnerable to inter-ethnic strife and social chaos.
To many of us, the risk of unleashing such zero-sum divisions has always been a predictable, unwelcome consequence of multiculturalism. But following Hamas’ ISIS-style rape, murder, and kidnapping of over 1,400 Israeli civilians on 7 October, that danger became undeniable to any honest person with eyes to see. Far from an outpouring of sympathy for the victims of radical Islamic terrorism, we have instead seen scores of anti-Israel demonstrators, largely drawn from minority communities, indulge in militant triumphalism on the streets of Britain, glorifying their ethno-religious identity with a zeal that would land them in prison if they were white or Christian.
Moreover, such protests are not fringe affairs, but indicative of wider feeling among Britain’s 4 million-strong Muslim diaspora. As the polling expert Matthew Goodwin writes, “anti-Israel and anti-Semitic views, as well as sympathy for Islamist terror, are significantly higher among British Muslims.” Those calling for jihad and waving Islamist placards are merely the most fervid and least risk-averse.
Not that there is any great risk in openly exalting proscribed terrorist organisations these days. The Metropolitan Police has shown little interest in arresting, and still less deporting, the many ethno-religious supremacists who have gathered in London, Birmingham, and Manchester to celebrate acts of murder, express support for illegal terrorist groups, and tear down posters begging for the safe return of kidnapped Jewish children. Perhaps the urgent need to search every crevice of Lawrence Fox’s home and scour the depths of anon Twitter for ‘non-crime hate incidents’ has caused something of a staff shortage.
In any case, there is a lack of will. So far, the most disgraceful case of kid-glove policing occurred when the Met explained away chants of “Jihad, jihad, jihad” by adherents of Hizb ut-Tahrir, an Islamist group so militant it has been banned in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, with the observation that “the word jihad has a number of meanings…”
An Islamist group glorifies “Muslim armies” in the immediate aftermath of the deadliest spree of Jew-murder this century at the hands of fellow fanatics. Meanwhile, the Met invites us to marvel at the sheer mystery of what such poker-faced gentlemen could possibly have meant by their cryptic cries for further ‘jihad.’ Home Secretary Suella Braverman is set to challenge the police for offering pound-shop theological excuses instead of enforcing the law without fear or favour.
Still, it is hard to shake the suspicion that Braverman is less interested in meaningful action than she is in tough-sounding rhetoric. On one level, this is progress of a kind. After all, most of the Home Secretary’s cabinet colleagues—including Rishi Sunak, who was quick to distance himself from her speech last month on the failure of multiculturalism—cannot even hurl chunks of red meat. However, Braverman’s modus operandi has the effect of provoking hysteria in all the right quarters without achieving anything at the level of policy that would make the outrage of her bien pensant critics such a delicious spectacle. Better to be quiet and productive than vaunting and impotent.
She is far from the worst. Prime Minister Sunak has done more to shore up Israel’s national security in the last few weeks than he has ever done to strengthen our own. On his orders, spy planes and naval ships were sent to the Mediterranean in response to the Hamas atrocity. There is nothing wrong with this in principle. But I cannot help noticing that it constitutes a greater show of military strength than any British leader has managed to muster in the English Channel, where the RNLI continues to ferry in invading boats of fighting-age male immigrants every day of the week—many of whom, if the exultant cheers for Hamas around migrant camps in Greece tell us anything, are at the very least likely to sympathise with the barbarity visited upon innocent Jews a fortnight ago. It should go without saying that Israel has not only the right but a duty to defend its people. But so, too, the British government’s vow is to protect us.
So far, Sunak has yet to do the bare minimum of shooting down Scottish First Minister Humza Yousaf’s call—particularly suspicious given his evident contempt for Scotland’s native white population—for Palestinians displaced by a possible Israeli ground invasion of Gaza to be resettled north of the English border. The Immigration Minister, Robert Jenrick, only went so far as to say that it would be “premature” to consider such a course of action. It is worth pointing out that 44% of Gazans voted for Hamas in the 2006 elections. However much we may sympathise with their plight, this population is not likely to be any less militant in 2023, particularly if Britain gives its full moral and diplomatic support, as seems likely, to an IDF seizure of the strip of land Israel abandoned in 2005. The Palestinian territories are such notorious Islamist hotspots that even Arab countries pass on the offer of refugees from Gaza and the West Bank. If unthinking sentimentality about Palestinians is not in the interests of Egypt or Jordan, it can certainly do us no good. Jenrick should have responded with an unambiguous “No.”
The main duty of the British government must be to ensure that ethno-religious blood feuds in foreign lands are not allowed to flare up in our own towns and cities. If the tribal passions of certain individuals are such that they are willing to foment violence here in reaction to conflict thousands of miles away, their contempt for Britain should be honoured with immediate deportation. Under a serious government, this would apply not only to those on visas, as is currently the case according to Jenrick, but to dual nationals too. Meanwhile, sole British citizens (who are not eligible for expulsion) should face the full force of the law if they are found guilty of supporting a proscribed terrorist organisation.
Most important of all, a government that meant business would radically overhaul Britain’s immigration system—not only by reducing numbers to the tens of thousands, but by making cultural proximity the main criterion of entry, as should have happened decades ago. While a points-based system structured in such a way would cut in favour of high-income European countries at the expense of the more politically volatile, conflict-ridden parts of the third world, its uncontroversial purpose would be to serve the people of Britain.
Sadly, it seems to have taken a massacre in Israel for politicians in this country even to pay lip service to the idea that they owe a duty of care to the British public. Whether they will have the courage to pass any of the substantial measures listed above is another matter. For now, as ever, Britain’s political elite seems more keen on attempting the Herculean abroad than doing the basics at home.
What Ever Happened to Britain’s National Interest?
Jesus Salas Dual / Shutterstock
Britain might have the most craven, treacherous elite in world history. In just a few decades, politicians from both parties have subjected the nation to a reckless demographic experiment, importing millions from foreign lands in the belief that, to a man, these new arrivals would become upstanding citizens of a multicultural paradise.
Many of these people, it should be said, make fine neighbours. But even the best among them, quite understandably given human nature, are inclined to identify more fervently with their ancestral background, be it religious or ethnic, than with the culture they find in existence at their chosen GPS location. This is no surprise. If I moved to Shanghai to work as a taxi driver, it would hardly be child’s play for me to shed the primacy of my Englishness and feel as Han Chinese as my passengers. Even if I managed to acquire a passport, it would at least take generations, along with a fair bit of intermarriage, before anyone bearing the name ‘Pitt’ in Shanghai became fully integrated into China. Why assume that the reverse task is any easier for masses of immigrants—not just lone individuals—settling in Western countries?
If it is just one person, there is no great problem. But at a scale of millions, intensely felt tribal loyalties to foreign stretches of the map, especially when combined with conflict in those far-flung regions, all of a sudden makes host countries like Britain—with no direct skin in the game—vulnerable to inter-ethnic strife and social chaos.
To many of us, the risk of unleashing such zero-sum divisions has always been a predictable, unwelcome consequence of multiculturalism. But following Hamas’ ISIS-style rape, murder, and kidnapping of over 1,400 Israeli civilians on 7 October, that danger became undeniable to any honest person with eyes to see. Far from an outpouring of sympathy for the victims of radical Islamic terrorism, we have instead seen scores of anti-Israel demonstrators, largely drawn from minority communities, indulge in militant triumphalism on the streets of Britain, glorifying their ethno-religious identity with a zeal that would land them in prison if they were white or Christian.
Moreover, such protests are not fringe affairs, but indicative of wider feeling among Britain’s 4 million-strong Muslim diaspora. As the polling expert Matthew Goodwin writes, “anti-Israel and anti-Semitic views, as well as sympathy for Islamist terror, are significantly higher among British Muslims.” Those calling for jihad and waving Islamist placards are merely the most fervid and least risk-averse.
Not that there is any great risk in openly exalting proscribed terrorist organisations these days. The Metropolitan Police has shown little interest in arresting, and still less deporting, the many ethno-religious supremacists who have gathered in London, Birmingham, and Manchester to celebrate acts of murder, express support for illegal terrorist groups, and tear down posters begging for the safe return of kidnapped Jewish children. Perhaps the urgent need to search every crevice of Lawrence Fox’s home and scour the depths of anon Twitter for ‘non-crime hate incidents’ has caused something of a staff shortage.
In any case, there is a lack of will. So far, the most disgraceful case of kid-glove policing occurred when the Met explained away chants of “Jihad, jihad, jihad” by adherents of Hizb ut-Tahrir, an Islamist group so militant it has been banned in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, with the observation that “the word jihad has a number of meanings…”
An Islamist group glorifies “Muslim armies” in the immediate aftermath of the deadliest spree of Jew-murder this century at the hands of fellow fanatics. Meanwhile, the Met invites us to marvel at the sheer mystery of what such poker-faced gentlemen could possibly have meant by their cryptic cries for further ‘jihad.’ Home Secretary Suella Braverman is set to challenge the police for offering pound-shop theological excuses instead of enforcing the law without fear or favour.
Still, it is hard to shake the suspicion that Braverman is less interested in meaningful action than she is in tough-sounding rhetoric. On one level, this is progress of a kind. After all, most of the Home Secretary’s cabinet colleagues—including Rishi Sunak, who was quick to distance himself from her speech last month on the failure of multiculturalism—cannot even hurl chunks of red meat. However, Braverman’s modus operandi has the effect of provoking hysteria in all the right quarters without achieving anything at the level of policy that would make the outrage of her bien pensant critics such a delicious spectacle. Better to be quiet and productive than vaunting and impotent.
She is far from the worst. Prime Minister Sunak has done more to shore up Israel’s national security in the last few weeks than he has ever done to strengthen our own. On his orders, spy planes and naval ships were sent to the Mediterranean in response to the Hamas atrocity. There is nothing wrong with this in principle. But I cannot help noticing that it constitutes a greater show of military strength than any British leader has managed to muster in the English Channel, where the RNLI continues to ferry in invading boats of fighting-age male immigrants every day of the week—many of whom, if the exultant cheers for Hamas around migrant camps in Greece tell us anything, are at the very least likely to sympathise with the barbarity visited upon innocent Jews a fortnight ago. It should go without saying that Israel has not only the right but a duty to defend its people. But so, too, the British government’s vow is to protect us.
So far, Sunak has yet to do the bare minimum of shooting down Scottish First Minister Humza Yousaf’s call—particularly suspicious given his evident contempt for Scotland’s native white population—for Palestinians displaced by a possible Israeli ground invasion of Gaza to be resettled north of the English border. The Immigration Minister, Robert Jenrick, only went so far as to say that it would be “premature” to consider such a course of action. It is worth pointing out that 44% of Gazans voted for Hamas in the 2006 elections. However much we may sympathise with their plight, this population is not likely to be any less militant in 2023, particularly if Britain gives its full moral and diplomatic support, as seems likely, to an IDF seizure of the strip of land Israel abandoned in 2005. The Palestinian territories are such notorious Islamist hotspots that even Arab countries pass on the offer of refugees from Gaza and the West Bank. If unthinking sentimentality about Palestinians is not in the interests of Egypt or Jordan, it can certainly do us no good. Jenrick should have responded with an unambiguous “No.”
The main duty of the British government must be to ensure that ethno-religious blood feuds in foreign lands are not allowed to flare up in our own towns and cities. If the tribal passions of certain individuals are such that they are willing to foment violence here in reaction to conflict thousands of miles away, their contempt for Britain should be honoured with immediate deportation. Under a serious government, this would apply not only to those on visas, as is currently the case according to Jenrick, but to dual nationals too. Meanwhile, sole British citizens (who are not eligible for expulsion) should face the full force of the law if they are found guilty of supporting a proscribed terrorist organisation.
Most important of all, a government that meant business would radically overhaul Britain’s immigration system—not only by reducing numbers to the tens of thousands, but by making cultural proximity the main criterion of entry, as should have happened decades ago. While a points-based system structured in such a way would cut in favour of high-income European countries at the expense of the more politically volatile, conflict-ridden parts of the third world, its uncontroversial purpose would be to serve the people of Britain.
Sadly, it seems to have taken a massacre in Israel for politicians in this country even to pay lip service to the idea that they owe a duty of care to the British public. Whether they will have the courage to pass any of the substantial measures listed above is another matter. For now, as ever, Britain’s political elite seems more keen on attempting the Herculean abroad than doing the basics at home.
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