That's the impression I get from this...
Multiculturalism is a hard sell to this crowd.
No shit. They’ve turned up to a rally headed by Robinson or Hopkins to protest immigration and immigrants and with Musk calling for the violent overthrow of a democratically elected Govt as an encore. Not a place to be selling ‘hug a refugee’ t-shirts.
Essentially, this is about race. You can dress it up as ‘culture’ or pride in our nation - well, the nation of the past, not the present - or whatever, but on the ugly surface it’s about race and underneath that a nebulous concern at how fast things have changed, are changing and will continue to change. But even more than that, it’s the loss of control.
It harks back to Brexit which was about control and taking back control. Giving control back to the people. Except we lost control. We have less control, because we absented ourselves from the place and institutions that decided the world we live in. So what’s next? Control our immediate environment and expel/exclude that which is foreign? There are ‘too many of us’ which means we need fewer of ‘them’ and that leads you to the stage of getting rid of ‘them’.
Except, we need more people, not fewer, so the reality of spending billions to deport 600k predominantly UK citizens…well for what exactly? To ‘protect ‘mainstream British culture’? Or our idea of what it is? And is it not different things for different people or something that means different things to different people and, even though I took the piss (couldn’t resist temptation - its a British thing), it is kind of ‘you know it when you see it’. So, it’s an idea, a concept, not a ‘thing’.
Talking of culture, ours is not one of overt nationalism and this idea we must ‘fly the flag’ and march for the UK is an alien one and makes most of us uncomfortable hence the derision for ‘flag shaggers’. All that unseemly flag waving we can leave to sporting events, the Proms and Jubilee’s. Outside of that and it’s just galloping insecurity. We’re British goddamit, not American.
We will probably flirt with a far right Govt of some description at some point and either regret the reality of masked police and troops on the streets and all the usual trappings of far right authoritarian Govt including economic incompetence or we adopt the Italian model of electing a fascist Govt and everything carries on as before with nothing changing because reality is a bitch.
Enough of me meandering on.
