London,
mega-trend, mega-city, 12 December. Two reports
this week past demonstrate both the sheer enormity and pace of change in this
world and the utter inability of democratically-elected Western European politicians to
deal with it.
Last
week the US National Intelligence Council (NIC) published Global Trends 2030, which
neatly captured mega-change. Yesterday a
report was published in Britain on the 2011 Census that implied a shocking
message; given the pace of hyper-immigration by 2100 England will have ceased
to be England. Far from crafting policies
that can begin to cope with the consequences of such change British politicians
are simply retreating into denial, renting ever wider the gap between leaders
and the catastrophically-badly led. It
is a phenomenon repeated across Western Europe.
Last
week’s NIC report makes for interesting reading. It suggest four mega-trends: individual
empowerment that will undermine state authority; a diffusion of power which
will undermine both states and their international institutions; an increase in
both migration and urbanisation and hyper-competition for food, water and
energy. In other words it is a dangerous
cocktail of global instability that will be reflected in what the report calls
a crisis-prone global economy subject to a governance gap with the potential
for conflict increasing, both global and regional. Conflict that will be both promoted and
countered by new technologies. This is
big change stuff.
Fast
forward to yesterday’s report on the 2011 UK national census and the street-level
consequences of big change are all too apparent. The UK report confirmed something the English
people have seen with their own eyes and yet government has repeatedly denied;
the forces of change reflected in the NIC report are changing the face of England. My use of England as opposed to Britain is deliberate as the census confirms it is England taking the brunt of change engineered by two Scottish politicians - Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. For
the first time in its history people who identified themselves in the census as
‘White British’ are now in a minority in London which to all intents and
purposes is ceasing to be an English city and is becoming instead the world’s first
Mega-trend Mega-city in which big change is being played out.
Watching
British TV last night was an exercise in elite denial. The usual apologists were trotted out by the
BBC. A changing England was a ‘good
thing’. We are all part of the ‘global
village’ and it is simply ‘globalisation in action’. Hyper-immigration is something to be
celebrated. At one level they are
right. London is certainly a ‘dynamic’ place. However, a vast number of ordinary decent English
people feel betrayed by a political class that has consistently refused to
listen to their concerns.
It is
frustration repeated across Western Europe.
This breakdown between peoples and their political leaders is pronounced
everywhere. Of course, such tensions
always exist during times of economic crisis but this is something much, much
deeper. Politicians are trapped in a
perfect storm of global change, uncontrolled mass migration, the consequences of
foolishly-relinquished national sovereignty, extra-territorial human rights
legislation and with it an inability to control national borders. All they can do in response is either pretend
they have control they do not, blame others for the fiasco (in Britain’s case
normally Brussels and the EU) or simply deny change is happening.
At the
end of next year transitional restrictions on the right of Romanians and
Bulgarians to settle in other EU countries will be lifted. Now, I have nothing but respect for both
countries as I have visited both often and if I was a poor Romanian and saw
opportunity elsewhere I too would vote with my feet. Typically, unable to prevent the next tidal
wave of eastern European immigration to Britain on the grounds London is bound
by EU treaty the British Government is implying only a few thousand will move
to the UK. Yesterday I had a chat on the
phone with a friend of mine who is a senior eastern European politician. I asked him how many Romanians and Bulgarians
he thought would move to Britain come early 2014. “Anything up to a million”, he said.
Neither
the fragile British economy nor its fragile society will cope with such an
influx and yet ministers are in denial. If
politicians are to regain any sort of trust three things must happen. First, they must begin to be honest with
their electorates about the nature of global change and that there can be no
refuge in nostalgia. Society is what it
is and change brings benefits as well as dangers. Second, those very real dangers big change
generates must and will be confronted and if needs be countries like Britain
will take back power from broken Brussels to ensure that. Third, Britain must really regain control of its
borders.
If
not then two things will happen. Social
unrest will break out and thuggish political extremists will emerge from the shadows
in which today they lurk. Democracy in
denial is democracy in danger.
Julian
Lindley-French
