Blair's Legacy

Some people, people like Sir George Young for example, believe that Blair’s lasting legacy is the botched asymmetric constitution, and they’re right to highlight the constitutional vandalism that has taken place under New Labour. But the thing about political constitutions is that they are not permanent; they can be undone (even if it is highly unlikely that Scotland and Wales will ever again embrace unionism). For me the real legacy of Blair lies in the permanent altering of the physical constitution of the English people. In this month’s Prospect Magazine Robert Colls explores this:

Leicester, where I live now, is ready to become the first majority Asian city in Europe. It will not be the last. Immigration into English cities has reached record levels and continues unabated. In the last three or four years, Leicester has taken more than 10,000 Somalis, and Poles are the latest wave. For a long time, you were not supposed to notice this. Or talk about it. But now demographers refer to the "third demographic transition," where, if current trends continue, national ancestry will be "radically and permanently altered by high levels of immigration… in combination with sub-replacement fertility and accelerated levels of emigration of the domestic population"—the quote is from the Population and Development Review in September 2006. I am not a demographer, but if this is true, in the long run this is what historians will remember New Labour for. Not achievements at the treasury, nor the NHS, nor even in Northern Ireland, but presiding over a fundamental and irrevocable shift in the physical and historical constitution of the English people.

I think this is true. This is Blair's legacy, and what's worse is the fact that he hasn't equipped England to deal with the problems to come. In the ten years that he was in power the UK saw a population increase of two million people (that we know about). That may seem like a paltry number but when you consider that England is a country of massive housing shortages, congested roads, water shortages, groaning infrastructure, encroached upon greenbelt, built upon flood plains and creeping urbanisation you do begin to wonder exactly why we need more people. Of course, that figure of two million disguises the true irrevocable shift in the constitution of the English people because record numbers of Brits have been leaving the UK to live abroad, with one in ten Brits now living in a foreign country and even more desperate to leave.

The south east of England is now more densely populated than Bangladesh, a fact that should challenge David Blunkett's claim that there is ‘no upper limit’ to immigration into the UK. On its own England has the World's 24th highest population with a population density of 383 people per square kilometre compared a European average of 117.

I've often heard Labour politicians scoff at Maggie Thatcher's claim that there is no such thing as society, and well they might, but it seems to me that the degradation of society that began under Thatcher has been accelerated by the Blair years. The economic prosperity that Britain has enjoyed has ameliorated the problems but still there are signs that society is becoming polarised along religious and ethnic grounds. There's also a growing chasm between a socially immobile and educationally impoverished underclass and those of us affluent enough to enjoy sitting in complete gridlock on our way to work, the gulf between ‘rich and poor’ is now at a forty-year high and relative poverty appears to be on the increase.

The problems caused by immigration, overcrowding and competition are felt most acutely in England, and more acutely still by those living in relative poverty (whether they are black or white, or new or old-Britons). The UK as a whole has a population density of just - I say 'just' - 246 people per square kilometre but it's to England that the overwhelming majority of the new arrivals come and settle. Unfortunately, and despite a tidal wave of English self-awareness and renewed national consciousness, England lacks - and has been actively denied - the constitutional apparatus to integrate these arrivals as new Englishmen and Englishwomen. The new arrivals are informed that they are British in accordance with the doctrines of New Labour Multiculturalism, and more often than not they view the English as just another ethnic group, albeit the majority, that make up the ethnic patchwork of multicultural England.

I have little doubt that many in the Labour Party care not one jot for England, its heritage, history or culture. England is an embarrassment to them, a repository of horribly white, right-wing, Europhobic, culturally inferior, binge-drinking yobs; Englishness, insofar as it exists in any meaningful sense for them, is the most base of all European identities and cultures, characterised by xenophobia, social awkwardness and class prejudice - the very antithesis of progressiveness and newness. England is redolent of imperialism, it has an embarrassing history, it is Britain’s dirty little secret.

England, as opposed to Britain, has an unfortunate history around the world and within the British Isles. Terry White, Labour Party Communications Officer

The main rationale behind the massive and unprecedented immigration into England is the economy, stupid. It’s all about economics. Immigration means cheap labour and an increase in GDP (proudly heralded as Gordon Brown's economic miracle) due to the larger workforce. Immigrants get to do the jobs that we don’t want to, and best of all they do it for cheap, and the extra competition for low skilled work drives down wages at the lower end of the scale. ‘You’ve never had it so good’ claim the Government, and to an extent they’re right, the anti-inflationary effect of immigration benefits us all by driving down the costs of service industries, agriculture and labour, not to mention the economic benefits of employing highly-skilled third-world doctors and nurses so that we don’t have to go to the expense of training, or employing, our own (which is just as well since they are all going to live in Australia).

But there’s another positive spin off from all this immigration: cultural enrichment. England was always a mongrel nation, ethnically, but despite that, because she had successfully integrated small waves of immigrants throughout the centuries, England was a monocultural wasteland, a homogeneous sterile culture; it just didn’t really feel like the new country we all apparently wanted; and quite out of keeping with ‘New Britain’, which was essentially a big version of London: multicultural, progressive, diverse, dynamic, exciting, and international. Essex man, Worcester woman, white van man, Middle England in general, needed diversity to free them from themselves, to rid themselves of their own embarrassing Englishness, to help purge themselves of their xenophobia, to open up their eyes to the wonderful world that existed outside of their own boring cultural norms, or those that they experienced on the Costa Brava.

To an extent this has worked, England today is a country more comfortable with alternative identities and ethnicities; we are a more plural and racially tolerant country. But only to an extent. Whilst the overwhelming majority of us were, and still are, prepared to accept and welcome newcomers, the sheer scale of the influx now resembles an invasion. There are now very real concerns over the loyalties of the new immigrants, and about their effect on the social cohesion of our communities. The English are looking at their ghettoised cities and saying ‘no more’. There’s a growing realisation too that England is a nation and culture unique unto itself, and no less worthy of nurture and protection than any other indigenous culture anywhere else in the world. Whilst the Britishness of Gordon Brown capitulates to alien interests that undermine our common culture, the bedrock of Britishness – Englishness – provides a port in the storm for all those that are tired of New Britain and the politically correct illiberal social engineering that embodies it; Englishness is not so much a retreat as a safety net – a warm blanket- to catch us, as everything that once rendered Britain meaningful and worthwhile is stripped away.

There is evidence that the more diverse an area is in racial terms, the less likely its residents are to feel that they trust each other. This is an important argument and it is important that we examine it. - David Blunkett MP, Home Secretary, to the Institute of Public Policy Research, 7th July 2004

In the early years of New Labour anyone that raised these concerns was immediately denounced as a racist, but not anymore. The social awkwardness that the English previously displayed when talking about race, identity and nationalism has disappeared. Today it’s the people that don’t talk about these issues, or who try and prevent others from doing so, that are denounced, and rightly so. The integration of immigrant communities (the multiculturalists revealingly still talk of communities rather than individuals) is high on the Establishment’s ‘to do’ list, but given the continuing influx it’s difficult to see what practical measures they can take, other than to impose illiberal, authoritarian and un-English policies to coerce the immigrants into ‘Britishness’ at a time when the native populations are ‘retreating’ into Englishness, Welshness and Scottishness. Devolution to Scotland and Wales has created a confident political sense-of-self to match the cultural assertiveness of those nations. In England, with the destabilising effects of devolution, Britishness has become nebulous, amorphous, ill-defined, the subject of many a prescient obituary. English is the new British. And as the English dessert Britishness in favour of an older, more stable, established English narrative to describe ourselves, we retreat into more exclusive, more ethnic identity, leaving Britishness to the new-Britons. Because 'Englishness' is a cultural historic ethnicity, because Englishness has no constitutional form or political expression, we new-improved English are politically disenfranchised as a nation, and the new-Britons that we leave rattling around in Britishness are culturally and emotionally disenfranchised by their isolation.

In the domain of culture and values, a socially cohesive society is one in which the members share common values which enable them to identify and support common aims and objectives, and share a common set of moral principles and codes of behaviour through which to conduct their relationships with one another. (Kearns and Forrest, 2000)

It’s too early to say what the result of this divergence (diversity) of identity will be on England. Are people in diverse societies more anti-social, are we becoming less trusting and more fearful of our neighbours? Possibly. Are we in danger of becoming ‘too diverse’ and undermining our common culture, and with it the social contract that underpins our welfare state and the altruistic nature of our society? Most definitely yes we are.

For a long time we’ve been informed that the English are a xenophobic bunch; that under the tolerant liberal surface lurks a simmering cauldron of racist beliefs and attitudes. Well, perhaps, but recent history has shown the English to be remarkably tolerant bunch when measured against other nations. What is being called for now is reciprocation of that tolerance, in equal measure, from the people that come and live here. It is noteworthy that the backlash against immigration in England is coming not from the men in bomber jackets claiming Aryan superiority and demanding the repatriation of aliens. Instead it comes from normal people concerned that immigration is damaging the integrity of the country, many of them are Labour voters or first and second generation immigrants themselves.

In England, in particular, opinion is mobilising against the UK Government’s immigration policy. The message is this: We don’t want more people, we already have too many. Under Blair England’s population surpassed 50 million, in the next 25 years that total is predicted to rise by 6 million – the equivalent of the combined populations of Scotland, Luxembourg and Malta upping sticks and setting up home in England’s formerly green and pleasant land.

Even now, even with ‘just’ 50M people in England, Scotsman Gordon Brown is facing stiff opposition to his plans to concrete over England with 3 million new homes (and that’s just to tackle the housing shortage that we have already!)

It may be, for example, that immigration helps nations keep their bills down. But the interesting thing is that connections between immigration and social dislocation have been made, and not just by men in jackboots. For the sake of Britain, is it time to raise the drawbridge? The Economist, The kindness of strangers? Feb 26th 2004

I personally wouldn’t take such a harsh line. Immigration is vital for the health of the economy, and for the cultural well being of the country. We need a points system that gives preferential treatment to people investing wealth in our country, or those that are highly-skilled and highly marketable. Let’s take down the drawbridge and install a revolving door: one out one in. Or even better: two out one in.

The Government’s favourite buzzword is ‘sustainability’, but the sort of immigration that has occurred over the past ten years is anything but sustainable. It is irresponsible and unsustainable - economically, environmentally and socially.

It’s not immigration itself that is the problem, it’s nett immigration. The ridiculous level of immigration into England, and the resulting increases in population, is threatening the beauty our country and endangering our quality of life. England needs to be given time to assimilate the new-Britons into English society, to make Englishmen and Englishwomen out of them and their children. We must pause to release the pressure valve on the crisis affecting our housing, infrastucture and public services, and our national sense of self.

Just like tolerance, identity is a two way street. In order to belong you must identify with a group, and that group must recognise you as one of their own. The immigrant populations and the indigenous population need time to acheive this.

Building more and more new houses and ramming them full of new people, then building new roads, hospitals and schools to service them, is not the answer. It never was. Blair's legacy must lie in the fact that he appeared to think it was. Anyone that voted for Blair more than once, and who now complains about traffic congestion and house prices, deserves only slightly less of a kicking than the man himself.