Given today’s deeply disturbing news out of Britain, this article in the latest London Spectator is very timely. It’s overstated, and its central thesis goes too far, but there is something to be said for the idea that the ceaseless denigration of Britain, its history and its institutions, by the country’s liberal elite has done a great deal to hold back the assimilation of the country’s more recent ethnic communities. Here’s an extract:

“No, the real answer to why Britain spawned people fuelled with maniacal hate for their country is that Britain hates itself. In hating Britain, these British suicide bombers were as British as a police warning for flying the union flag. Britain’s self-loathing is deep, pervasive and lethally dangerous. We get bombed, and we say it’s all our own fault. Schools refuse to teach history that risks making pupils proud, and use it instead as a means of instilling liberal guilt. The government and the BBC gush over ‘the other’, but recoil at the merest hint of British culture. The only thing we are licensed to be proud of is London’s internationalism — in other words, that there is little British left about it. It wasn’t always like this. The Great Exhibition in 1851 and the Festival of Britain a century later both unashamedly celebrated Britain’s achievements, fuelling an infectious sense of pride in being British. But then the Left and the multiculturalists waged an intolerant war of attrition against British identity and social cohesion, culminating in a report by New Labour’s Lord Parekh calling for Britain to become a ‘community of communities’. By 2000, the best Britain could come up with for the Millennium Dome was an embarrassing display of giant lice in giant pubic hair. But self-loathing in a nation, like self-loathing in an individual, is alienating. Someone who despises himself inspires greater contempt than affection, and a country that hates itself cannot expect its newcomers to want to belong.”

Yes, that’s right, New Labour’s Lord Parekh; Tony Blair’s Lord Parekh. As the writer of the article makes clear, this process may be beginning to show a few signs of slowing (or evgen going into reverse), but as this story from the Daily Telegraph makes clear, there’s a long way to go:

“The councillor who called for Land of Hope and Glory to be scrapped from Remembrance Day celebrations yesterday dropped the idea and apologised to war veterans. Peter O’Neill, a Labour councillor, had recommended to the working party putting together the Nov 7 Remembrance Day festival programme in Wolverhampton that Edward Elgar’s work was too political and should be replaced by Rod Stewart’s Sailing.”