I went to a far-right rally last week.
It wasn’t big. Fewer than 75 people turned up. They were outnumbered by a left-wing counter-demonstration of nearly 500. The police outnumbered the right-wing protesters by roughly three to one.
At the heart of these arguments is integration: the idea that immigration has changed Britain and that some immigrant communities either cannot or will not integrate into British life.
I have always been sceptical of this claim.
For decades, census data has shown a consistent pattern. Immigrants do not remain confined to ethnic enclaves. Over time they spread out geographically, mix with the wider population, and become increasingly integrated into British society. Oddly, I suspect this success makes some people on the right even angrier. Their politics depends on a permanent sense of separation between “us” and “them”. The reality is far messier.
I have my own story about integration.
When I was married I acquired an extended Indian family, including a Punjabi auntie who lived in Chigwell. She refused to speak English. She had little interaction with her white British neighbours. She ate only Indian food and watched only Zee TV. On the surface, she looked like a perfect example of an immigrant who had failed to integrate.
The reality was more complicated.
She came to Britain reluctantly in the 1960s. She never wanted to leave the Punjab. Her husband, however, was ambitious. He came to Britain to make his fortune. Over the years he bought struggling businesses, built them up and sold them on. Corner shops. Launderettes. TV repair shops. Video rental businesses.
They experienced racism and hostility, but comforted themselves with the belief that it was temporary. They were only here to make money. One day they would return home. But there was always one more business opportunity. One more deal. One more fortune to make.
The return never happened.
By the time he died of a heart attack they had two sons, both born and raised in Essex. Both married local girls. Both had children of their own. Both had Spurs season tickets. Neither had any intention of moving to India.
And so she was trapped.
Unable to return home, she retreated into a sulk that lasted for years. She refused to embrace English life, but she would not leave her family behind.
This was not a story of failed integration. It was a story of successful integration.
Her sons had become so completely integrated into life in Essex that the family’s connection to India had become largely symbolic. The people who mattered most to her now belonged to Britain.
This is the reality of immigration for most people. The vast majority of immigrants integrate, succeed and prosper. A small number spend years living psychologically in a country they have already left behind. This is the “myth of return”: the belief that one day you will go home, even when every practical tie in your life now binds you to somewhere else.
At the rally I was reminded of that story.
The right wingers were a mixture of older people anxious about their place in the world, younger men looking for excitement, and a very small number of genuine hard cases. I have spent enough time around football crowds, pub fights and police cells to recognise the difference.
What struck me most, however, was the contrast between the two demonstrations.
The counter-protesters were diverse, prosperous and relaxed. The far-right crowd was entirely white, visibly poorer and considerably angrier.
One looked like modern Britain. The other looked as though it belonged to an older Britain.
There was one important exception.
The smartphones.
Everyone was filming. Everyone was livestreaming. Everyone was producing content for an audience that existed somewhere else. This is prominet far right politics botherer Richard Donaldson filming me taking a photo of him
The far-right protesters were not responding to the Britain around them. They were responding to a Britain they encountered online. A Britain of endless migrant crime videos. Endless warnings of civilisational collapse. Endless outrage. Endless threats.
Most people never see this material because social media algorithms show different worlds to different users. The internet no longer provides a shared reality. It provides personalised realities. Spend enough time in one of these algorithmic worlds and every news story becomes evidence. Every violent crime becomes part of a pattern. Every contradiction becomes proof of a cover-up.
The absence of evidence becomes evidence.
Journalists who do not report the story are dismissed as liars. Politicians who disagree are traitors. The gap between online Britain and real Britain grows wider.
And this, I think, is where the real integration crisis lies.
The people at the rally were worried about communities that supposedly refuse to integrate into British life. But they have done exactly that themselves.
Not geographically. Not ethnically. Digitally.
They had withdrawn into an online culture increasingly detached from the everyday reality experienced by most people around them.
For most of us Britain is a diverse, confident and reasonably successful country, albeit one with obvious problems and tensions. For them it is a nation on the brink of collapse.
The tragedy is that the first problem largely solved itself.
The Punjabi auntie in Chigwell was never the threat.
Her sons integrated. Her grandchildren integrated. The process worked exactly as it was supposed to.
It is the people who worry most about integration today are often the ones least integrated into the shared reality the rest of us inhabit.