Loss of our values only fuels division
IN OUR warped political culture, support for open borders and leniency towards illegal migrants is often presented as a form of compassion. That attitude can clearly be seen in the mood of self-righteousness that has gripped the House of Lords this month.
Unelected peers, posing as social justice warriors, have repeatedly blocked the Government’s Rwanda Safety Bill that aims to deter the illicit racket in human trafficking across the Channel.
But the smugness is badly misplaced. There is nothing moral or humanitarian about allowing our immigration system to descend into chaos. On the contrary, it is the vulnerable who suffer most when the state loses its resolve to uphold our national integrity.
Tragically, that is what is happening in Britain.
This week it was revealed that in the first three months of 2024, a record total of 4,644 people crossed the Channel illegally, up by 23 per cent on the same period last year.
Just as worrying is the surge in legal migration. According to the latest official estimate, no fewer than 1.4 million migrants settled here in the last 12 months. Whatever the virtue signallers pretend, this influx is unsustainable. The Tories came to power 14 years ago, promising to reduce migrant numbers significantly. Instead they have presided over a revolution that has seen the fabric of our nation transformed, societal cohesion weakened and the capacity of infrastructure overstretched.
No longer at ease with itself, Britain is an increasingly overcrowded, divided land where public services are in permanent crisis, living standards continue to stagnate and the very concept of British citizenship is becoming an irrelevance. In the face of demographic upheaval, the Government and corporate Britain should have engaged in a massive drive for integration by promoting a unifying sense of national pride.
What the country needed was a spirit of solidarity. What we got, however, was a hysterical obsession with identity politics.
Far from encouraging national allegiance, the agencies of the state have engaged in a gigantic exercise in self-abasement. Within much of today’s officialdom, patriotism is regarded with hostility, while British history is portrayed as a catalogue of oppression. Even our national symbols are treated with disdain, as was highlighted by the saga of the England football team’s new kit.
Defending its refashioning of the traditional red cross of St George in purple hues that evoked the emblem of the gender fluidity movement, Nike claimed it wanted to “unite and inspire” the nation.
Well, it achieved the exact opposite, provoking resentment and division. Even more disingenuous was its assertion the new logo aimed to “celebrate the heroes” of 1966, when Alf Ramsey’s side won the World Cup.
As Ramsey’s biographer, I can say categorically that he would have been appalled at this politically correct nonsense. He was a ferocious patriot who regarded the white shirt as “a sacred garment”.
Instead of pulling us together, the political class has enabled alien extremism to flourish in our midst.
Dame Sara Khan, the Prime Minister’s adviser on social cohesion, warned this week that appeasement of mob rule and growing intimidation are destroying basic democratic freedoms, epitomised by the Batley teacher who was forced into hiding in 2021 after showing an image of Mohammed in a religious studies class.
Amid fear, self-censorship and harassment, we are paying a heavy price for border meltdown.
The solution is not more cultural cringing by the state, dressed up as social inclusion. It is to reassert the British values that built our civilisation.