The dangers of diversity

A Free Left Blog is written by Ben Cobley, a Labour supporter or former Labour supporter and the author of 'The Tribe: the liberal-left and the system of diversity', which criticises the British state's diversity ideology. I quote from it here partly to bookmark the blog for myself and for you and also to quote a good article on immigration, that in turns quotes 'development economist' Paul Collier on Radio 4 in 2013:

“Some diversity is good. It gives the society more innovation, gives it more variety. But if you have too much diversity, trust starts to erode; cooperation erodes; generosity erodes. And so there is a right amount of diversity. I can’t tell you how much the right amount is, but that’s what every society’s got to antagonise about.”

I'd have thought that was a truism but in England among the people who rule England, from the schoolmasters upwards, it is not.

Ben Cobley writes well about the diversity ideology here. He says the power of identity
politics 

“lies largely in how it has become established in our major institutions, like the media. Advocates have succeeded in presenting it as a moral necessity, as above politics, as apparently independent and beyond contest. In this way, progressive identity politics has become a main route for advocacy to enter our broadcast media. And progressive identity politics is almost completely aligned against Brexit, waging that culture war with Boris Johnson as its primary target.”

It is going to reorganise and to a large extent destroy the social fabric of a country that evolved organically over centuries. Tories like David Cameron and Theresa May have bought into it as much as socialists. Oddly the liberals (and British Liberal Democrats) have done so more than anyone else, though it is the antithesis of classical liberalism. 

I have to trot out yet again my favourite quotation from Disraeli, which defines my political creed.

"In a progressive country change is constant; and the great question is not whether you should resist change which is inevitable, but whether that change should be carried out in deference to the manners, the customs, the laws and the traditions of a people, or whether it should be carried out in deference to abstract principles, and arbitrary and general doctrines."