Well, Yes, But Gradually Our Tolerance Has Been Thrown Back In Our Faces...

...and so our tolerance has simply run out.

How should the UK deal with the increasing fracturing of multiculturalism right now, and how we are all being pitted against each other?

So asks Jason Okundaye, an assistant opinion editor at the 'Guardian' who declares of the current Labour government:

...there is no real moral authority to speak on hate and division, and thus any authority to heal or rectify it.

I wonder why…. 

The gravity of this void could not be more apparent, with tolerance having so plainly broken down in Britain. At the weekend, during a football match at Elland Road stadium in Leeds between Leeds United and Manchester City, Muslim players were openly jeered as they broke their Ramadan fast to eat. As the ipaper’s chief football writer, Daniel Storey, says, these breaks were “introduced in 2021” and “for most of the last five years, it has barely merited a mention because, well, it just happened”.

Perhaps it's a result of other things that are 'just happening'? Things like stabby migrants going on rampages near nursery schools, and the the insistance of the authorities that we shouldn't believe the evidence of our own eyes? Perhaps it's the evidence all around us that tolerance and gratitude is not driving those migrants, but instead conquest?

It’s not just our football pitches. Last year, Syed Usman Shah became one of eight people from an ethnic minority background to feature on a “welcome to Heathrow” poster, writing at the time that this was “probably one of the highlights of my life”. But this quickly descended into a nightmare for him, as he revealed for a Radio 4 documentary, A Place in Politics for British Muslims. He faced a barrage of racist abuse, with comments including claims that the UK “is under siege” and particular aim taken at his choice to wear traditional dress.

You can see this playing out on so many different fronts – on social media, it is now commonplace to see a picture of a primary school class lifted from the school’s social media pages and spread around hateful accounts who remark on the number of ethnic minority pupils.

Ah, social media! God forbid people pay attention to what it shows us, when we should instead listen to our state broadcaster, for whom there is never any issue that might throw unwelcome light on the problems in our midst! Or on our police force, once the envy of the world, now so utterly cowed that they will arrest or otherwise discourage people from exercising their rights if it might cause them work.  

And this all spills into real danger, too. As Spencer referenced in her speech, on Tuesday last week, a white British man allegedly entered a mosque during Ramadan prayers wielding an axe and carrying zip ties and a balaclava. Criminal proceedings are under way and any motivation has yet to be established – yet this incident speaks to the climate of terror and fear that presides over Muslim people, and other minorities, as they go about their ordinary lives.

What about the ‘climate of fear and terror’ that they themselves are spreading? 

So, where has this all left us as a country? We are a nation in which intolerance is increasingly in vogue, and where there is little political heft behind attempts to relieve such tensions. There is no official political role focused on alleviating these tensions and bringing communities together, unlike in Australia, where there is a minister for multicultural affairs.

Yes! Another useless Minister will do it!