The myth of “muscular liberalism”

Parsing through Britain’s headlines in the past few weeks, it felt like the country’s script had been taken over by some cruel comedian intent on rubbing in Britain’s decline. Too lazy to come up with characters’ names, Britain now has jihadist atrocities committed by men simply named “Jihad”. And yes, obviously Jihad was housed at taxpayer expense for good measure. 

For the British liberal of a certain age, the sorry and confusing turn the country has taken is rather worrying

Political scandals are increasingly confusing: after years of being told that we must be more open about acknowledging race and the central role it plays in society, a senior politician was hounded for acknowledging the stark racial segregation present in Britain’s second city. Apparently, acknowledging race is now dangerous and divisive. Luckily, help is at hand, as the world’s richest man, surveying the wreckage, has decided to help. But his chosen conduit is a former EDL leader turned crypto salesman. Meanwhile, in the background, a new government elected on a promise of “Change” seems unable to change anything other than its own personnel. Only ideas once consigned to the outer fringes seem to garner any enthusiasm; the centre is resented and dying.

For the British liberal of a certain age, the sorry and confusing turn the country has taken is rather worrying. With their political ideas matured just as History was meant to have ended, it seemed like Britain had it all worked out. The Second World War showed why nationalism was a deadly relic, with its horrors extinguishing any latent vestiges of antisemitism and racialism. The future was to be diverse and tolerant, with the I’d like to buy the world a Coke advert signifying a moral parable on how society ought to look, rather than a marketing campaign to sell more fizzy drinks.

Their worldview ascended into the halls of power, and migration was ramped up to record levels as Britain became a thoroughly multicultural society. The public had an annoying tendency to resist this change, but luckily the political elite who knew better simply ignored them and carried on at full pace to reshape Britain into a vibrant and diverse nation.

There persisted a quaint view that those who chose to move to Britain did so due to a deep affection for the country and an appreciation of its values, institutions, culture and way of life, rather than simply to advance their material interests. There was therefore no need to force those who came to this country to jettison the beliefs, customs and prejudices with which they came in favour of their British versions, for it was expected that passive contact with British society would be sufficient to facilitate integration. The interesting quirks that brought vibrancy — the food, dress, music, religious holidays — might persist, but all would ultimately be united by a shared belief in British values, and a harmonious and cohesive society thus created. 

But a faith that our commonalities as members of the human race would render irrelevant our differences was comically naïve, especially for a nation that saw decades of conflict, terrorism and civil war between two Celtic groups belonging to divergent factions of the same religion. That harmonious society never came, and as Britain becomes evermore diverse, things seem to be going backwards. Questions of national belonging and identity seemed settled; now BBC Radio 4 fills the airwaves by asking if former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is actually English. The scourge of antisemitism was thought extinguished; now Jews are run over and stabbed to death on their way to worship. The national flag had been detoxified and rendered an inclusive symbol; now it has become a marker of a nascent ethnic self-assertion.

Any time acknowledgment of the divisions and difficulties afflicting British society comes to the fore, the same safe, acceptable remedies are cycled through as solutions. Usually given tough-sounding names to signal their seriousness, we are told that some “robust multiculturalism” or “muscular liberalism” is all it will take to bring this island of strangers together as neighbours. Then, finally, multiculturalism will be made to work, and Britain will become the self-confident, diverse nation we were promised. 

The proposed remedy to our woes is to make national identity more intimately tied to the core values of the nation; crack down on radical agitators and clerics who spew division and hatred; invest more into state-backed schemes and NGOs that facilitate cross-communal integration; ban the most overt signs of social divisions like the burqa; fly the national flag proudly on every government building. Luckily, we need not rely on our imaginations to figure out how such an approach would play out, for our nearest neighbour France has taken exactly this approach. The result is a society with even worse social fractures than ours, and a litany of terror attacks that make those Britain suffered seem modest in comparison. 

Britain’s ageing liberals cling desperately onto the only dogma they know

Despite this, either through ignorance or fear of the alternatives, Britain’s ageing liberals cling desperately onto the only dogma they know. In the wake of the Manchester synagogue attack, ITV’s Robert Peston went on a hysterical rant, interrogating viewers as to whether you, yes you, are an antisemite. Self-evaluation over, Peston took aim at Britain’s political leaders: “none have a coherent, workable plan to roll [antisemitism] into oblivion”. Luckily, ITV’s political editor was on hand to diagnose the problem — “the cancerous politics of identity and nationalism” — and the solution: “curriculum changes in schools and universities [and] much greater vigilance of social media companies against hate speech”. Maybe, just maybe, if a few more PSHE lessons about tolerance were squeezed into the school curriculum, then those men who paraded around a heavily Jewish area shouting “Fuck the Jews, rape their daughters” would have realised that doing so was wrong, actually, and contrary to British values. Probably not though.

When relatively mild attempts to fix Britain’s fraught social fabric are offered, those same liberals concerned about the worrying trajectory the country finds itself on are quick to lash out. Reform’s proposal to remodel the visa regime so that leave to remain in the country goes from an indefinite to a defined period, including the termination of visas for those with a record of non-contribution and little integration, was met with shock, horror, and stern condemnation. Leading the charge, somewhat confusingly, was the man who had recently decried the “one-nation experiment in open borders” undertaken in Britain and raised the alarm about the social divisions running rampant. But Reform’s suggestion that the reckless experiment ought to be undone was labelled “racist” and “immoral” by Keir Starmer. More school PSHE lessons it is, then.

Too timid to go back on the assumptions that got us to this point, and too disgusted by those who dare to offer suggestions outside their moral framework, yesterday’s men demand we accept a bleak tomorrow of their making. The decline is too set in, the alternatives too scary, ideological self-reflection too difficult. So the rest of us — those too young to have known anything but this fractured version of Britain — must accept a future that no one really believes in. One in which Jews grow up thinking a security detail is just as much a part of synagogues as a rabbi. In which kids will think hulking security barriers and armed police are just as much a part of Christmas markets as gingerbread houses and the scent of mulled wine. In which not seeing a single other white face will be so commonplace as to not be worth remarking upon at all. And in which we’ll always be just one more PSHE lesson away from all getting on again.