It is depressing to discover that four in 10 adults in this country agreed with the statement that “having a wide variety of backgrounds and cultures has undermined British culture”. After all, such mainstays of British culture as curry, the Notting Hill carnival and bearded Muslim sports heroes were at one time all viewed as inimical to it. Cultures are dynamic things, developing organically from communities. They do not exist in isolation or remain static. Having a range of cultures in Britain is normal, not novel.
If so, then why are so many still resistant? There is a straightforward economic analysis: austerity has shrunk the space we might share, be that schools, parks or hospitals, while growing inequalities supply people with new opportunities to scapegoat minorities. Then there is a barrage of claims about a government policy of encouraging cultural difference at the expense of national cohesion. There is no state-led segregation policy today. British governments are not in the habit of sacrificing the nation on the altar of imaginary cultural preferences. Yet years of anger stoked around this falsehood found, unfortunately, an outlet in the Brexit referendum.
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