The nature of the problem

Ben Sixsmith has a useful Critic piece on predictable hand-wringing responses to Suella Braverman’s multiculturalism-critical speech.


Contra Braverman’s critics

Liberals and leftists wring their hands while avoiding the real issues

Now the dust has settled following Suella Braverman’s multiculturalism-critical speech to the American Enterprise Institute in the United States, it’s worth looking at some of the claims of her critics. Such is their tone of moral opprobrium and intellectual haughtiness that they must have torn the Home Secretary limb from rhetorical limb — no?

We can skip over the likes of Mehdi Hasan, who can’t get their heads around the fact that a child of immigrants might be critical of immigration. I thought it was us villainous right-wingers who were meant to believe that individuals should be defined solely by their ethnic heritage, but apparently it’s nice progressives. Ah well. You live and learn.

Easily the dumbest responses come from people who deny that there are problems at all. “What is the basis for the claim that many arrivals live a separate existence in a parallel society?” Gavin Barwell chirrups. “I live in one of the most diverse parts of the country. You’re talking about my friends and neighbours. It is untrue and deeply offensive to suggest they’re not part of our society.”


Sixsmith then goes on to blow Gavin Barwell out of the water by reminding us of a list of multicultural failings. The whole piece is quite short and well worth reading as another hint that the pendulum may just have begun to swing back. Probably too late though.


The plain fact is that there are no smoothly effective means of integrating immigrants on the scale that they have entered Western European nations — and, contra Braverman, one cannot draw a clear distinction between legal and illegal immigration here. Combine a lot of different ingredients together in one dish, in great quantities, and your cooking methods become less than wholly relevant. This is not to denigrate immigration, still less immigrants (full disclosure: I am one). It is a question of numbers, and our chin-stroking, forehead-rubbing discourse in the normal language of border management is not up to the job. Braverman at least appreciates the nature of the problem — even if, after decades of Conservative promises, words sound a lot cheaper than they should.