The government’s new integration and extremism policy exposes a regime in denial
The government’s new policy paper on integration and extremism, Protecting What Matters: Towards a more confident, cohesive, and resilient United Kingdom is one of the most fascinating, and wicked documents produced by the British state in many years. At times it is entirely deluded or misleading, at others shockingly honest, before veering into lurid paranoia.
It reveals a regime that has accepted the failure of multicultural Britain, while still being in denial about the reasons for that failure to such an extent that it ignores or denies material reality. The paper also shows how the state plans, or at least hopes, to manage the harm and decline it has created through decades of policy. It introduces the long-threatened “anti-Muslim hostility” code, and seeks to redefine simple words like “patriot” and “English” out of all recognition. Everyone should read it — especially those who want to understand how those who rule us think and what they want to do.
What you’ll discover when you do read it is also a document which is almost unbelievably poorly written. It is full of typos, including in the first line, and a misspelling of “England” in the section about improving education. The paper’s tone also veers wildly, notably between the forewords from the Prime Minister and Steve Reed, the Housing, Communities and Local Government Secretary, and the Executive Summary which immediately follows. All of it feels as though it has gone through heavy and repeated edits by different authors which were only completed very shortly before publication. Perhaps, this reflects tension within the state over how honest it can be.
Starmer’s foreword is particularly bizarre. In echoes of the “envy of the world” mantra endlessly repeated over an increasingly degraded NHS, the PM tell us that “the ease with which people of different cultures and races live side-by-side in our diverse democracy is both envied and feared around the globe”. This is only somewhat less absurd than claiming that the world envies the Afghan tourism industry.
The examples Starmer provides to demonstrate Britain’s success are the fact that “inter-faith marriages” exist and we have “religious freedom”. He can’t, surely, believe this nonsense, not least because the next section of the document states that social cohesion in the UK is under strain, with “trust in institutions…declining [and] tensions between communities…worsening”. Further on we read that “the risks are clear: more unrest on UK streets, [and] more people being radicalised towards extreme viewpoints”. Is this really envied across the world?
Starmer’s weak examples give the game away, as does the retreat in rhetoric compared with earlier reports. As Laurie Wastell observed, the 2024 Khan Review stated that “Britain’s most precious asset is our diverse and cohesive democracy”. Two years later, the best Starmer can do is assert that “by any fair standard, Britain can be proud about of [sic] its approach to social cohesion”, an approach which he tells us he intends to renew, despite its evident failure. In Starmer’s world the outcomes aren’t important. What matters is that our approach is “against the force of cohesion”.
The Prime Minister then moves on to patriotism. For Starmer “patriotic pride is … a collective act of community-building that is totally opposed to exclusion and those who seek to divide us”. This is utter nonsense. To be a patriot is to have a love for one’s own country, holding its interests above those of others. It is inherently, albeit not necessarily aggressively, divisive.
Starmer draws his own distinction, of course. On one side are those who accept his vision, and on the other “those who seek to divide us”. This theme is taken up Steve Reed in his foreword. The Secretary of State tells us exactly what Labour’s patriotism means:
This is our expression of real patriotism. A pride which is hopeful about the future for people’s communities and the country, not pining for some imagined past. Open to all those who call these islands home, regardless of the colour of their skin.
Reed goes on to explain who this patriotism isn’t open to:
We also know that people around the country are already conducting acts of service to their community and their country – from litter picking to volunteering teaching English to serving in our armed forces. Those people might not be as loud as those who seek to divide us but they are far greater in number. It is those people, who have already chosen to come together to make their country and their community better, that we are backing up. Our patriotism is being on their side.
He then goes even further, defining those ‘who want to divide us’ as threats to the nation:
Our first duty as a government is to protect our country. That means uniting those of us who are proud of the UK together in pursuit of a safer, stronger more prosperous country against those hostile actors who want to divide us.
Do as you are told, mouth platitudes about integration, conduct government-approved “acts of service”, and you will be protected by the state’s “patriotism”. Reject multiculturalism, or argue that mass migration is harming us, then you are a ‘hostile actor’ who this government believes it has a ‘duty’ to protect the country from. This is the denialism of someone who would blame a doctor for their diagnosis — giving one the sense of a crumbling, paranoid regime desperately looking for someone to blame rather than considering the material conditions which are causing the decay of order in Britain. At one point Reed seems to come close to understanding, noting that:
Economic shocks, austerity, technological change, demographic changes and a rise in extremism have each made people feel as if they have lost a sense of control over their lives, their country and their community.
What’s fascinating about this is that he correctly lists a number of major reasons that the country is less cohesive, less secure and less safe, before dismissing the results as something people merely “feel”.
This rejection of reality is present elsewhere in the paper, which tells us that asylum hotels “have been a focal point of community tensions in certain areas of the country, leaving residents worried about the consequences for crime and public safety”. The people writing these words must know that there have been numerous sexual and violent crimes committed by asylum seekers staying in places such as this. The “worries” are a response to what has actually happened.
Meanwhile, though, the paper is happy to blame other foreigners, claiming at various times that “malign foreign influence”, “malign foreign actors” and “hostile states” — “particularly Russia” — are responsible for “tensions”, “violence”, and “exploiting people’s frustrations and concerns”. Perhaps it really is safer and easier to blame foreigners than to accept the failure of decades of policy.
There are hints, reading the paper, of an original, much more honest draft by an earlier author. One which admits the failure of multiculturalism, and doesn’t seek to blame people’s feelings or foreigners. That voice tells us that the grave challenges facing Britain “require a deliberate, clear-eyed and resolute response”.
What the state has to offer is nothing of the sort. Its plan to prevent inter-ethnic conflict and an increasingly disunited kingdom is hollow. The anti-Muslim hostility code, and money for a charity dedicated to generating reports of anti-Muslim hate, are balanced with efforts to prevent Islamists and jihadists from infiltrating the charity and education sectors. Other than this, the state intends to hand out pots of cash to local communities and fund opaque institutions like the “Common Ground Resilience Fund”, a “cross-government Cohesion Support and Interventions Function”, an “Advisory Board” to help with tensions, and a new “Social Cohesion Measurement Framework”. That should do it.
The vision seems eerily similar to that Northern Ireland in the aftermath of the Good Friday Agreement. Pay off the different communities to pacify them, keep up the counter-terrorism policing, and hope that large-scale violence can be avoided. Yet in the end, Protecting What Matters accepts defeat. Now, even those who claim to favour multiculturalism recognise it tends to be a problem to be managed, not the strength they have so long claimed.
