Читать книгу Start Again: How We Can Fix Our Broken Politics - Philip Collins, Philip Collins - Страница 19

During the tempestuous and uncivil strife of the referendum campaign, Britain did not sound like an open and tolerant nation. The nation is divided along many fissures and it can easily seem as though the chasm between those who have profited from globalisation and those who have been its victims is unbridgeable. This division of values is gradually supplanting economic self-interest as the primary index of electoral allegiance and politicians of the main parties, who have seen their traditional coalitions fracture along these lines, have shown no sign of knowing what to do.

In part the task of leadership is about the renewal of revered British institutions. The most important is the Union of the constituent nations of the United Kingdom, but there are other more surprising elements of a common wealth, such as the monarchy and the Church of England. Action will also be needed to protect the indispensable institution of free speech against the threat it faces from technology – or rather, the threat it faces from uncivil argument conducted too freely on social media platforms. But there is also a task of moral leadership to be undertaken which involves helping to define the sort of nation we wish Britain to be, who is a member of this nation, and what we expect of its citizens. There is no aspect of our life in common in which this form of leadership has failed us more comprehensively than in the argument about immigration. Britain is leaving the EU in large measure because nobody has yet managed to articulate a coherent position on immigration which wins the British people over to the manifest need for this country to remain open to the people of the world.

Britain has a claim to be the most successful multi-cultural experiment on the globe. That does not mean its integration has been perfect – far from it. Indeed there is more we should expect from people of all backgrounds if we are to forge a common life governed by rules adhered to by all. The stringent application of the law is critical for any liberal society. That would then, in turn, permit the most extensive personal freedom in private for worship and style of life. In The Wealth and Poverty of Nations David Landes has argued that a liberal and open culture is one of the reasons that Britain became a global force in the first place. To be open and receptive to the world is to be an influence in that world. At a time when the United States of America is led by a President who appears to have no enduring appreciation of diplomatic friendship and when Britain has chosen to abandon its long institutional alliance with the various forms of the EU, the question remains – the final question Britain faces – of what its place in the world should be.