DAVID GOODHART

The diversity, individualism and mobility that characterize developed economies -- especially in the era of globalization -- mean that more of our lives is spent among strangers …. in a developed country such as Britain is that we not only live among stranger citizens but we must share with them. We share public services and parts of our income in the welfare state, we share public spaces in towns and cities where we are squashed together on buses, trains and tubes, and we share in a democratic conversation .… All such acts of sharing are more smoothly and generously negotiated if we can take for granted a limited set of common values and assumptions. But as Britain becomes more diverse that common culture is being eroded.

Greater diversity can produce real conflicts of values and interests, but it also generates unjustified fears…. The visibility of ethnic difference means that it often overshadows other forms of diversity.

The modern idea of citizenship goes some way to accommodating the tension between solidarity and diversity. Citizenship is not an ethnic, blood-and-soil concept, but a more abstract political idea - implying equal legal, political and social rights (and duties) for people inhabiting a given national space.

Europe is not America; one of the reasons for the fragmentation and individualism of American life is that it is a vast country. In Europe with its much higher population density and planning controls, the rules have to be different. We are condemned to share—the rich cannot ignore the poor, the indigenous cannot ignore the immigrant—but that does not mean people are always happy to share

Modern liberal societies cannot be based on a simple assertion of group identity - the very idea of the rule of law, of equal legal treatment for everyone regardless of religion, wealth, gender or ethnicity, conflicts with it.

As we grow richer, the ties that used to bind workers together in a risk-pooling welfare state (first locally, later nationally) have loosened.

The diversity, individualism and mobility that characterize developed economies -- especially in the era of globalization -- mean that more of our lives is spent among strangers …. in a developed country such as Britain is that we not only live among stranger citizens but we must share with them. We share public services and parts of our income in the welfare state, we share public spaces in towns and cities where we are squashed together on buses, trains and tubes, and we share in a democratic conversation .… All such acts of sharing are more smoothly and generously negotiated if we can take for granted a limited set of common values and assumptions. But as Britain becomes more diverse that common culture is being eroded.

Europe is not America; one of the reasons for the fragmentation and individualism of American life is that it is a vast country. In Europe with its much higher population density and planning controls, the rules have to be different. We are condemned to share—the rich cannot ignore the poor, the indigenous cannot ignore the immigrant—but that does not mean people are always happy to share

Modern liberal societies cannot be based on a simple assertion of group identity - the very idea of the rule of law, of equal legal treatment for everyone regardless of religion, wealth, gender or ethnicity, conflicts with it.

As we grow richer, the ties that used to bind workers together in a risk-pooling welfare state (first locally, later nationally) have loosened.

Greater diversity can produce real conflicts of values and interests, but it also generates unjustified fears…. The visibility of ethnic difference means that it often overshadows other forms of diversity.

The modern idea of citizenship goes some way to accommodating the tension between solidarity and diversity. Citizenship is not an ethnic, blood-and-soil concept, but a more abstract political idea - implying equal legal, political and social rights (and duties) for people inhabiting a given national space.