Fear, Hope and Loathing in England

Having now read Searhlight's "Fear & Hope" report I'm at a loss as to what to say, it reads like it was written by a bunch of sixth formers.

And it's almost impossible to make sense of without repeatedly referring back to those ludicrous labels into which they have compartmentalised English society. I say ludicrous because I find it difficult to pigeonhole myself into any of their definitions. However, if pressed I'd say that I was a mixture of Mainstream Liberal and Cultural Integrationist.

Mainstream Liberals (16%)
These people are optimistic, self-motivated and for the most part educated to at least degree level. They see immigration as a net benefit to the country, and usually differ from Confident Multiculturals only in their level of enthusiasm about it.

Cultural Integrationists (24%)
Generally older and more prosperous than other groups, many are (or have been) professionals and managers. They are more likely to view immigration as a cultural issue with concerns about the impact of immigration on national identity and about immigrants’ willingness to integrate. This group forms the largest segment of those identifying with the Conservative Party.

I see immigration as a benefit but mass immigration has been a failure and a betrayal. I worry about how immigration affects English national identity, societal cohesion and competition for housing and jobs more than I worry about how immigration directly affects me and my family. When historians look back to the New Labour era I believe that mass immigration and its irrevocable changes will be seen as Blair's Legacy. It's a legacy of betrayal of Labour's traditional supporters (of which I am not one, but who constitute a large swathe of my countrymen) that Labour are only just beginning to come to terms with, as David Miliband's recent admission hints at:

The story of the last two decades is of an economy divided between high-skill, high productivity sectors and low-skill jobs.

At the same time, economic migration and greater labour market flexibility have increased the pressure faced by those in lower skill work.

Such issues were a challenge for the Labour government as the introduction showed.

The lesson is that a focus on growth is important, but not enough.

Have they really only just realised that? They ran the country like a business (UK-PLC) instead of a homeland, as I wrote in Blair's Legacy:

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 now UK-PLC has no jobs and no money, the 'far right' is on the rise, and the 'progressive left' are looking to salvage the situation. Back to Searchlight.

I suppose the main message that we should take from Searchlight's report is that it appears to be a strong vindication of civic nationalism. National identity is important and strong across all groups, whereas ethnic identity is regarded as not so important. Surely then the 'progressive left' - and everyone else for that matter - ought to be promoting what unites us: National identity.

With this report Searchlight appears to have given the green light to the EDL to form a political party. They've even written a prospective manifesto:

A new party is going to be set up which says it wants to defend the English, create an English Parliament, control immigration, challenge Islamic extremism, restrict the building of mosques and make it compulsory for all public buildings to fly the St George Flag or Union Jack.

However, Searchlight have bugger all to say on the issue of an English parliament other than to mark its cards as a far-right, but potentially populist, issue. Here the shallowness of their thinking is exposed. If - as the report suggests - national identity is what unites us, and if "Englishness is back on the political agenda and it is absolutely an avowed and expressed identity of a significant number" and if "national identity..[.].. has to be real and link to the everyday experiences of ordinary people"; then surely we must be looking to build an English identity based upon inclusive institutions of English democracy and governance.

Breaking the English* down into The New ‘Tribes’ of British Identity Politics as Searchlight has done does not unite us as English or provide any basis for a shared democratic future. As Sunny points out "You need a sense of national identity too – a social glue that encourages people to believe they have something more in common with each other than simply being political citizens living in the same geographical unit". Hopefully this is an area that will be covered in the forthcoming book from Nick Lowles and John Cruddas.

* Searchlight's report was based on a Populus survey of 5,054 people in England (not Scotland or Wales or Northern Ireland)