Ethnonationalism is rearing its head on Britain’s Right

Last week, Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner warned that the effects of immigration and social cohesion, among other factors such as rapid de-industrialisation, was having a profound impact on society and trust in public institutions. However, she expressed the belief that Britain was a successful multi-ethnic, multi-faith democracy – but how right is she? 

Rayner’s intervention would not have been out of place in the Sewell report published back in March 2021, which asserted that British ethnic-minority successes in education and the economy should be ‘regarded as a model for other white-majority countries’ and that the attention paid to racial equality in the UK is seldom found in other European societies.

There is no denying that when compared to major European Union member states such as France and Germany, Britain has fared better in terms of the social, economic and political integration of its ethnic and religious minorities – in part due to its robust anti-discrimination protections and considerable religious freedoms. The UK is also certainly a less racially and ethnically segregated place than the US, which is a relatively youthful experiment which continues to get to grips with the legacy of slavery and segregation. For their flaws, London, Birmingham and Manchester are all less ethnically and racially segregated than major American cities such as Los Angeles, New York and Chicago. 

The issue in modern Britain is not that mainstream society and its major institutions are discriminatory towards ethnic-minority populations, but that some of its most marginalised, alienated and distrustful citizens live in left-behind communities within a white-British majority which is consistently declining as a proportion of the national population. It is the mixture of economic precarity and cultural anxiety which has created ‘tinderboxes’ of disaffection and resentment across the country – pockets of material deprivation and social disconnection which have not only missed out on the fruits of globalisation, but have been left battered by it. Quite scandalously, these working-class communities have essentially been treated by Whitehall as dumping grounds for the ongoing small boats emergency.

What has made matters worse is the rise of the unholy BLM-inspired trinity of ‘diversity, equity and inclusion’. DEI has all too often been exclusionary towards members of the white-British mainstream and has failed to recognise class-based barriers to social mobility (with social class not being a protected characteristic in existing equalities legislation). Perfectly legitimate concerns over ‘two-tier policing’ in areas ranging from riot management to tackling grooming gang activity have been dismissed as far-right conspiracy theories, which risks adding fuel to the fire. Britain has made unquestionably significant strides in terms of strengthening racial equality for its minorities, but perhaps the pendulum has swung too far. 

The reality is that unprecedented levels of immigration and state-supported multiculturalism in one of the most regionally unequal economies in the industrialised world has left us with a largely disaffected population. Feelings of economic unfairness, social injustice and cultural alienation – especially in predominantly white-British parts of the country which are now rehoming illegal migrants at great expense to the taxpayer – present fertile ground for an anti-capitalist politics which is more ethnonationalist in nature. That is a momentous failure and major policy corrections are required if we are to shore up our multi-ethnic, religiously-diverse democracy. 

If a robust civic nationalism is to thrive in modern Britain, then the essence of the democratic nation-state – robust national borders – must be restored. The promise of an immigration system which attracts the brightest and the best in sensible numbers – ideally from English-speaking democracies with comparable living standards – must be delivered. Britain’s bloated welfare state must be streamlined and reorganised to serve the central purpose of tackling its domestic crisis of worklessness. Breaking the cycle of welfare dependency and incentivising work is integral to rehabilitating the UK after decades of addiction to mass immigration. It must also get to grips with the small boats crisis.

While there is the tendency to blame foreign institutions such as the European Court of Human Rights, the problem is much closer to home – namely the Human Rights Act and domestic judicial activism. Remodelling our human-rights framework so the collective security of British citizens is prioritised over the rights of foreign nationals is crucial, as is curbing processes of judicial review over matters of immigration and asylum. 

What should guide public policy is the central belief that much of Britain’s historic successes were ultimately down to its historically stable demography and managing to attract enterprising, highly-skilled and culturally compatible migrants in numbers easy to integrate. Deviating so far from this has undermined our reputation for being a successful example of an advanced diverse democracy. The currently concerning situation is certainly salvageable. But to neutralise the threat of ethnonationalist politics and keep the British civic-nationalist dream alive, significant policy changes are needed.

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