Repeat after me ....

Aaronovitch weighs in on the Goodhart brouhaha. OK, not really. He stares at the wall and repeats his mantra.

There's nothing you could disagree with - except his conclusion of 'why worry ?'.

I've got immigrants in my family ... nice ethnic mix on the train ... yes, thank you David. He'll be telling us next some of his best friends are black.

"Most relationships are social constructs and vary enormously from place to place and time to time" - your point being ? A national culture is indeed a social construct, constructed in some cases over hundreds of years. One can also be constructed in a few years - usually a rather nasty one.

"Those who worry about the effects of immigration are missing the point: adaptability is part of humanity". Quite right - humans ARE adaptable. Where David goes wrong is assuming we're infinitely adaptable, and that our adaptation will always take desirable forms. Britain has in the past absorbed many different waves of immigrants successfully. A strong, self-confident nation can absorb and intergrate even higher numbers.

What worries me is

a) the numbers are historically unprecedented - witter about the Huguenots and Flemish weavers all you like, but this is on a totally different scale.
b) we haven't got a strong and self-confident national culture - or 'narrative' as the sociologists would say. Quite the opposite.

Keep those eyes tight shut and keep blaming the Daily Mail, or in this case the Express.