Starmer’s Stunning Admission That Multiculturalism Has Failed is Still Based on a Lie

Keir Starmer was at it again this week repeating the dead lie that Britain has always been a tolerant and diverse country. Speaking about the Government’s new ‘Social Cohesion’ Strategy on March 9th, Starmer seemed to be speaking about himself and his Government’s recognition that communities are fighting like cats (hence the need for the social cohesion strategy) when he said:

One of my biggest concerns at the moment is that there are people in politics who want to set up grievances between different groups of people, to point fingers and divide and say that we can’t be one country, we can’t be one community. I totally disagree with that. I think one of the great things about this country is we’re a diverse country, where we prove that different people can live alongside each other in a tolerant way, with our values. Actually, that’s more than just an observation on who we are as a country. It’s what we are as a country. That is us.

Keir Starmer has said himself that he doesn’t read books, and I’m sure he’s far too busy to listen to The Rest is History, so perhaps we should forgive him for not understanding that Britain has never been a land of kumbaya with people living “in one community”. Instead, Britain has been forged by savage invasions by tribes and empires, (Roman, Angles, Jutes, Saxons and Normans), four civils wars (the Anarchy, the Barons’ War, the Wars of the Roses, the Civil War) the conversion and expulsion of different religious groups (Danes in AD 878 and Jews in 1290), uneasy and bloody unions and disunions with Wales, Ireland and Scotland. We are not, nor ever have been one community.

Plans are afoot by Alex Burghart MP, Tom Holland and others to celebrate the 1,100th anniversary of the birth of England in 2027 with a new statue of King Athelstan. Could this be a unifying moment for the nation? Not sure. We must not forget that Athelstan’s keeping together the polity of England happened thanks to the Battle of Brunanbruh in 937, where he fought and defeated the Irish, Scots and Norsemen. This is recorded cheerfully in the Anglo Saxon Chronicle as “Never a greater slaughter”. Our tolerant diverse nation was built on the bones of our once neighbours. A bit later on William the Conqueror “harried the North” whereby about 100,000 died by the sword and of hunger. I’m not sure the North has ever forgotten this devastating attack from Southern elites.

And if you think things may have moved on a bit since the 11th century, pick any decade and you’ll discover fractious hostilities, enmity and general bafflement simmering away across communities, different parts of the country and the class chasm. Disraeli famously wrote in 1845 Sybil, or Two Nations whereby he described the gulf that existed between the rich and the poor.

Two nations; between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other’s habits, thoughts and feelings as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets; who are formed by a different breeding, are fed by a different food, are ordered by different manners and are not governed by the same laws.

The industrial revolution further widened the chasm between the peasantry and the ruling class, with battle lines drawn between manufactory bosses and trades unions, owners and workers, and today, between those with protected characteristics and those without. Robert Jenrick and others make videos about different parts of the country as if conducting a zoological expedition. A friend who runs a Left-leaning think tank has never and will never eat in McDonalds. As Jane Austen wrote: “One half of the world does not understand the other.”

We mustn’t forget either the deep and vivid rivalries between different parts of the country: Yorkshire vs Lancashire, Manchester vs Liverpool, Newcastle vs Sunderland, Portsmouth vs Southampton, Oxford vs Cambridge, England vs Scotland, Wales and Ireland, North vs South, town vs country. And of course everyone else hates London and the South East. The village where I grew up had a long running feud with the neighbouring village over the use of lanterns in the dark (they were for, we were against).

Not to mention politics. While battles are no longer slugged out in person on blood drenched battlefields, political violence is alive and well. Let us not forget the post-Southport riots, the 2011 London riots, the poll tax riots, the miners’ riots, race riots, murder of MPs, for instance, as well as all the IRA bombing and post-7/7 Islamist terrorism. Certain once powerful concepts – such as Jacobitism, Chartism and Conservatism – were furiously fought and bloodily defeated.

Before the recent import of various religious antipathies between Sikhs, Muslims, Hindus and what remains of the Church of England, there used to exist in Britain a vigorous and bloody hatred between the Catholics and Protestants. Lots of martyrs on both sides and an understanding until well into this century that there was to be no intermarriage between such denominations. In my grandfather’s memoirs of growing up in 1930s Rochdale he wrote: “I was soft on a girl, but she was Catholic so that was that.”

In Keir’s mythical land of conformity and community, we also have all the football rivalries and gang territories to consider. I remember my mum (who was a teacher) embarrassingly telling a group of boys to stop hanging around the bus stop in Tewkesbury and instead “get on the bus and visit somewhere”. They looked appalled and said: “That bus goes to Worcester. They’d beat us up. And we’d beat them up. We hate each other.” And this was in 1980s Gloucestershire. In the course of writing this article today, I’ve had two calls from concerned parents in London who are worried about the latest trend of Red v Blue social-media-confected gang violence in secondary schools.

The actual gangs that grip our biggest cities are understood to be absolutely terrifying: British gangs of various heritages v Irish v Turks v Armenians v Kurds v Albanians v Pakistani v Vietnamese v Chinese v Somali. In no way do these people “live alongside each other in a tolerant way, with our values”, as Keir Starmer claims.

And if that isn’t enough there are also the persistent neighbourly rows over boundaries, garden hedges and noise that grip the mind of most householders at some point or another. We now live in a house where the former owners had a row with our former neighbours over a foot-long dog-leg in the garden that cost both parties £70,000. There is a reason that Jesus asks us to “love thy neighbour” – it is often an almost impossible task.

The letters from the medieval Paston family show us it is only through having decent laws (thank you Alfred the Great) and having these laws remorselessly enforced, that it’s possible to live without people trying to move into your house, kill your family and steal your animals. Thanks to enforced laws and the evolution of manners based on our Christian heritage, we can just about stagger on as a country without brawling in the streets all the time. But it’s well known that civilisation lasts only for three days without food before we revert to the Hobbesian war of all against all.

Yes, sometimes we come together as a giant community – generally when the French, Spanish or Germans try to invade, and strangely in lockdown – but otherwise the lesson of British history is that it’s a centuries’ long scrap with very clear winners and losers. Wise up, Keir.

Joanna Gray is a writer and confidence coach.