It pains me to say it, but on the ‘failure of multiculturalism’ in Britain Suella Braverman is essentially right. The upper classes never have integrated into the various cultures of the rest of Britain, or even tried to; by contrast with most of the foreign immigrants that Braverman seems to have had on her mind in her recent Washington speech (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrpAMttlIkQ).
Of course there are examples of Moslems, Jews and other cultural, national, religious or ethnic ‘identities’ deliberately keeping themselves apart from their British neighbours for years on end; but most of them have managed to ‘fit in’ quite comfortably in one way or another, with the cultures they brought with them surviving, but modified by their interactions with their hosts, and often – usually, I would say – enriching the latters’ cultures immeasurably. An obvious example is our culinary culture; but there are others too. (It isn’t widely known that fish and chips were introduced to England by a Dutch Jewish refugee.) The reason for this is that ‘national identity’ – Britain’s, at any rate – is not a static thing, set in aspic, essentially unchanging from (say) King Alfred’s time, and merely threatened by others, as Vladimir Putin seems to regard Holy Mother Russia’s; but always varied, disputed, changing: in other words alive, and all the more interesting and – usually – admirable for that. It certainly is to a historian. How dull, not to say inexplicable, would the history of Britain be otherwise? And change, and fertilisation by other cultures, are essential aspects of Britain’s ‘identity’ (or identities), as they are of most other nations’. We should rejoice in them.
The British upper classes, however, are different. If you want to know what an unassimilated minority looks like, they stand out far more obviously than any ‘racial’ group which is currently living in, or desirous of coming to, Britain. With their segregated schools, distinctive accents, snobbishness, peculiar customs, their own versions of history (vide Jacob Rees Mogg’s The Victorians), social exclusivity, class loyalties, arrogant avoidance of many of the laws and decencies that bind the rest of us (Bullingdon? Partygate?); here surely is an alien population living amongst us with no desire at all to integrate. As one popular slogan has put it, ‘It’s not the Estonians you should fear, but the Etonians.’
Of course they too started off as an immigrant wave, coming over the Channel in small (or smallish) boats in 1066. The difference is that these Norman newcomers stayed on only in order to dispossess and dominate the rest of us. None of our current immigrants and refugees is likely to do that. Unless, that is, they manage to assimilate with the settled upper classes – often via Eton and Winchester, or the Conservative Party – thus exchanging one form of ‘alienness’ for another. Braverman is one of those who has done this. I suppose one could consider that as an example of ‘multiculturalism’ that has ‘failed’.
In fact there is no such thing as a settled British (or even English, Scottish, Welsh or Irish) ‘identity’ or ‘culture’. My Britain’s Contested History. Lessons for Patriots (Bloomsbury, 2022) bears on this. Please buy a copy. (No-one else appears to have done.)
Porter’s Pensées 
Braverman’s wholehearted embrace of “National Conservatism” suggests that it will be a feature of British politics for some time to come, whether inside or outside the Conservative party.
A lot of thought is devoted in the UK and within the UK to how to respond to unplanned migration, but comparatively little to the reasons why people migrate: Western sins of commission and omission play at least some significant part in this.
I believe one of the biggest sins of omission is the failure to invest in Africa proportionally to its needs. Westerners usually immediately respond that this is the fault of African governments – corruption, dictatorship – with a degree of justification. But having told Africans that good governance is key to economic development, the West instead favours investment in… China! Maybe African governments are just not authoritarian enough for the City’s liking. At any rate, they’re now turning to China which until recently has had funds to spare.
Re the “Norman” aristocracy and British culture, Robert Knox, the notorious mid-C19 biological racist, pushed a form of Saxonism which was both racist and anti-aristocratic. Some later C19 “race patriots” seemed to see the British (or perhaps more narrowly the English) as a judicious blend of Saxon democracy and Norman steel. Maybe Rupert Murdoch (an anti-establishment outsider) has revived Knox’s populist form of racism.
A lot of our national traditions, many prescribed learning for aspiring British citizens, reflect a cultural cringe towards the aristocracy. The monarchy is one obvious case, but also the Downton Abbey syndrome and the hostility to take a more rounded view of the history of National Trust properties.
Are you proposing a Schumpeterian account of racism, to supplement his account of imperialism? It’s an interesting line – the Spanish empire and “limpieza de sangre” come to mind – but I can also see some obvious counter-arguments, so maybe not.
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The reasons for the migration are, no doubt, many but a major reason must be that “the West” has totally devastated the countries from which people migrate.
Again, many of those countries were hardly ideal ( which one is…?) having authoritian governments if not outright dictatorships. But they were stable and many were prosperous eg Libya…free education, free healthcare…wrecked because Gaddafi wanted to sell oil in currencies other than the the US $…
Incidentally by “the West” I mean US capital and its paid politicians of many countries…
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I did…it’s good.
But why do you have such an obsession with the “upper classes”, and the public schools, in particular Eton? You were educated at a minor public school and presumably the education was good, and any social attitudes it may have tried to inculcate obviously didn’t infect you at all.
The upper classes surely have very little real power; famously Thatcher replaced the estate owners with the estate agents. We are now ruled by a technocratic quangocracy of people appointed by their mates who have climbed the greasey pole. They are allegedly “experts”, but the results, for the mass of the population, are disappointing at best, but rather good for them. And they seem exceptionally prone to “inducements” from international capital, particularly lucrative sinecures after they have left public “service”. Of course politicians are prone to that…Blair, Major both now very wealthy men.
The Rich List..🙄…now comprises more people who have made their own money than those who inherited it. In any event those who inherit it usually manage to piss it away quite quickly… they don’t know how to make it, never having had to. They have very nice, but inconsequential lives (is any life consequential?…rather doubtful…)
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