London Diary: 'Island of strangers'

If you are a Brit, especially an Asian Brit, you are more likely to feel alienated from the rest of society than your native White neighbour.

According to a recent survey, 47 per cent of said they felt like a ‘stranger’ in their own country, compared to 44 per cent White Britons.

Overall, a sense of ‘disconnectedness’ pervades British society as it struggles to deal with widening social and economic disparities amid growing culture wars and the rise of right-wing politics.

‘Britons feel disconnected from society, wary of other people and worried about community tensions,’ the survey said. Economic insecurity and concerns over unchecked immigration were cited as some of the main reasons why people feel disenchanted.

The public was split on whether multiculturalism benefits or threatens Britain’s national identity, with 53 per cent calling it an asset and 47 per cent finding it a ‘threat’ to social cohesion.

“The polling puts into sharp relief something that will come as no surprise to many Britons: a growing sense that we’ve turned inward, away from each other, becoming more distant and less connected,” said Luke Tryl, director of More In Common, the think-tank that commissioned the survey.

The findings appear to vindicate Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s recent statement that Britain risked becoming an “island of strangers” if immigration numbers continued to rise unchecked.

He has been accused of pandering to the populist right with echoes of the Conservative xenophobe Enoch Powell’s notoriously inflammatory 1968 speech warning that “rivers of blood” would flow in Britain if immigration from Commonwealth nations was not stopped.

The sight of a Labour prime minister echoing a racist demagogue has shocked many party colleagues and triggered calls for an apology.

An Indian expat’s riposte

After listening to Starmer’s speech, a British national of Indian origin Dr Abhay Vaidya, who has spent a lifetime serving the National Health Service (NHS), said Starmer’s statement had sent a ‘chill down my spine’.

Dr Abhay Vaidya

‘Starmer and the Labour Party argue that the speech was not racist, and acknowledge the contribution of legal immigrants over the decades, but that does not change lived experience. I am a British national of Indian origin who has given years to the NHS. My wife worked for the NHS and my son now does too.

‘But when a car drives past me and someone shouts, ‘P***, go back to your country’, they see my skin colour, not what we have contributed to the NHS, the economy and society. To placate a few, Starmer has used a language that will do a lot of harm to the morale of Britons from ethnic minority communities, and damage social integration,’ he wrote in an anguished letter to The Times.

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Think before you sigh

There would be few bosses who wouldn’t be guilty of having heaved, on occasions, a deep sigh while listening to a subordinate go on and on or taking too long to explain a point.

But henceforth, bosses in Britain would have to pretend to be all ears to everyone, however irritating, if they don’t wish to be sued for ‘passive harassment’.

Representative image

An employment tribunal has ruled that using ‘non-verbal’ expressions of disappointment or irritation can breach equality laws. The tribunal was acting on a complaint by a software engineer who has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

Robert Watson claimed that his manager’s ‘sighing and exaggerating exhales’ were discriminatory. He said that after starting a course of medication for the condition, he took four days’ sick leave. When he returned to work, his boss told him that he would have to do several days of additional work to make up for his absence. He was also said to have joked to Watson about “putting your ADHD aside for a moment”.

Aneurin Bevan

Over subsequent weeks the manager continued to criticise Watson. The tribunal, accepting his claim, ruled that ‘reactions from others, verbally or as a gesture, can [have] a damning effect on his self-esteem and anxiety’ and awarded him compensation, with the amount to be decided in due course.

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From boring Britain to polarised Britain

The once famously staid and often boring British politics is becoming increasingly partisan and polarised with more and more parties abandoning the centre. This has prompted an animated debate over the need for a new centrist broad-tent party to cater to ordinary middle-of-the-road voters.

Contrast this with what the legendary Labour politician Aneurin Bevan, one of the architects of Britain’s welfare state, had once said, frowning upon centrist positions: “We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run down.”

Gives us some idea of how much British politics has changed over the years.

And, finally, reports of the decline of the semi-colon have prompted many Brits to dig up their memories of the out-of-favour punctuation mark. Here’s Lynda Sinclair, a Londoner, telling The Times: ‘Many years ago, an attractive friend of mine who was head of English at a highly selective grammar school told me of her difficulty in finding a partner. She said it was because she could never be seriously interested in a man who didn’t know how to use a semicolon.’