Conservatives and multiculturalism

For the best part of 10 years, I represented the largest number of Muslim voters of any Conservative MP. During the last parliament, I was the party's spokesman on integration in the Commons. I worked happily with people on the left who took an uncompromising view of Islamist extremism, agreeing with them that since it saw no distinction between religious and secular law it was incompatible with liberal democracy. So my article for Davis's book could reasonably be expected to excoriate the M-word.


I agree with some on the left and most on the right that integration is a good thing and cultural relativism a bad one. For example, female genital mutilation shouldn't be tolerated in Britain simply because it's a cultural custom in parts of Africa and Asia. But I have come to see that the ultimate modernisation for the Conservative party isn't to back gay marriage or promote more women. It's to end the Tory war on multiculturalism. In saying so, my essay for The Future of Conservatism therefore bucks the stereotype, and is based on a simple truth: that multiculturalism means different things to different people.


To some, it means Mohammad Siddique Khan, the British-born 7/7 suicide bomber, a chilling example of what can happen when integration fails (though, blessedly, a very rare one). To others, it means the Notting Hill carnival or Manchester Pride – or the Bible, that meshing of Jewish, Greek and Roman culture. But it's no great mystery to guess what Tory condemnations of multiculturalism mean to many ethic minority voters. When Conservative lips mouth "multiculturalism", they hear multi-racialism – a verbal assault on people of a different ethnicity.


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