Well, this is a small, but encouraging sign. Trevor Phillips, the head of the UK’s often rather Orwellian “Commission for Racial Equality”, seems, at last, to be acknowledging that multiculturalism has its limits.

The Guardian notes that In a newspaper interview [he]… said that ‘multiculturalism suggests separateness’ and added that the UK should strive towards a more homogeneous culture with ‘common values … the common currency of the English language, honouring the culture of these islands, like Shakespeare and Dickens’.

That’s a statement of the obvious, of course, but it’s nice to hear him say it. The responses to these comments quoted by the Guardian (including those of Lord Taylor, a ‘Conservative’ peer who has long since established his credentials for cretinism) are largely predictable, and largely depressing, although the philosopher Roger Scruton, as so often, gets it right:

“Multiculturalism is a recipe for disintegration and instead we should have a common culture that also embraces differences.”

America please note.