David Goodhart’s new book, The British Dream, is an important study of postwar immigration into the UK, its successes and failures. He explores the tension between growing diversity and national solidarity and examines the meaning and significance of national identity.
In his introduction he quotes a conversation he had over dinner at an Oxford college in the spring of 2011. He told his neighbour that he intended to write a book arguing that liberals should be less sceptical about the nation state and more sceptical about large-scale immigration. His neighbour, described as one of the country’s most senior civil servants, said: ‘I disagree. When I was at the Treasury I argued for the most open door possible to immigration. I think it’s my job to maximise global welfare not national welfare.’
The man sitting next to the civil servant, one of the most powerful television executives in the country, said he believed global welfare was paramount and that therefore he had a greater obligation to someone in Burundi than to someone in Birmingham.
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