Many thanks for your comment. Glad you enjoy the blog. I agree with your assessment. It was the SNP’s improvement in the past couple of decades that I intended to bring attention to, and with a bit of luck there will be a similar improvement in the outlook of parties such as the EDP.

As an English person I’m really, really embarrassed by the amount of racist lickspittle you’ve had to read on this thread.

Please rest assured that most people down here don’t think like this.

I’m from Leicester, & we have benefitted from cultural integration for many years & are very proud of it.

This is why I liked your post. Though I find them a strange party in some areas, the SNP recognises the benefits from immigration wheres the BNP, UKIP & the English Democrats ignores the success stories such as Leicester & overload on the propaganda, such as “indigenous cultures being destroyed by the enemy muslims” crap.

I personally think that the English Democrats are where the SNP were in the 70s & 80s. Run by largely crude figures who rely on objects of blame to promote their minority views. This thread can be used as proof of that.

I’m just really sorry that you have been subjected the spEak You’re bRanes set.

Thanks.

Luke.

p.s- Love the blog!

Who is the “indigenous race” of England?

I do not go around the place describing myself in terms like “Scottish” or “European”. I am happy being myself, and I do not need to attach myself to national symbols in order to give myself an identity.

Thanks again for your comment.

I don’t think the migration statistics you bring up are too worrying. Migration is another natural phenomenon, and I don’t find cross-border migration any more offensive than migration between areas within a country. Not many people would bat an eyelid if I moved from Kirkcaldy to Glasgow or from Glasgow to London (though I don’t know, maybe people in the EDP would?). Why it should be so awful that I should move from London to, say, Tallinn or vice-versa, I don’t know.

I think in your penultimate paragraph you are implying that there are relatively few nonwhite people in Kirkcaldy. You would be correct in that, although I find it interesting that you felt safe to assume so. The fact that you have to list a few specific areas such as Bradford or Leicester is evidence that the “problem” is actually not very widespread, and confined to a few instances.

Finally, population forecasts are notoriously unreliable and I would not trust any population projections 40 years into the future very much. Even so, if the EU were to be 20% Muslim, that doesn’t seem to be too much of a problem to me. For one thing, that would still be 80% non-Muslim. Today, the EU is majority Christian, which as an agnostic puts me in the minority — but I don’t feel remotely threatened by that fact.

“cultural evolution”
What is currently happening is not cultural evolution it is more akin to having your cultural identity conquered. I know that you will think that this is just rhetoric but truly it isn’t.
Have you seen the stats?
Each year we are taking in over 500,000 people whilst we loose nearly 150,000 British people each year. Both of these numbers are accelerating.
England has

“England is an inherently multicultural nation, always has been”
There is no time in our history where we have had so many different cultures, and each so numerous, as now. Previously we have had waves of Jews, Dutch, French, Scandinavian, Irish but all of these came in a different phase of our past and none of these were close in the numbers that we see today (either actual or by % of population).

Seriously – I don’t know what it is like in Kirkcaldy, Fife, as I have never been lucky enough to visit that part of Scotland, but come down to Bradford, Leicester or (of course) London and take a look around.
Two recent studies, one in the US the other in the EU, came up with similar numbers for the changing demographics of the world. By 2050 the EU will be 20% Muslim. Holland, France, Spain and Britain will be a higher percentage than this long before this. And that is just Muslims – what about the rest?

I, like you, welcome the INFLUENCE of other cultures upon our own. This is the way of things and we are all better off for this. HOWEVER there is a difference between influence and making up (lets say) 30% of the population.

You make some fair points.

Certainly, when it comes to supporters who may be more extreme than the official party line, that is indeed true, and I even brought that up myself in my original article when I mentioned the Cybernats. I was surprised, though, to find what I would consider to be extreme viewpoints posted by the administrator of the official EDP Facebook page. You certainly wouldn’t see language like that coming from an official SNP source.

As for your point about foreign nationals on benefits, that is a difficult puzzle to which there is no perfect answer (if only we could live in a utopia, huh?). While a more open approach towards immigration will probably have an effect on the benefits system, you would not want to get rid of either immigration or benefits. Suffice to say that I think the “problem” is massively overblown by the likes of the EDP. Do you really think, like many EDP supporters on Facebook appear to, that 99% of people on benefits are foreign? This apparently widespread belief among supporters of the EDP brings it into question.

I think bringing a halt to cultural evolution would be counter-productive and detrimental to any country, whether it is Britain, England, Scotland or wherever. England is an inherently multicultural nation, always has been, and the evolution of culture is a naturally occurring process which I don’t see the point in trying to avoid.

In fact, the influence of other cultures is to be highly welcomed in my view. Even if immigration led to a reduction in economic output (which it doesn’t — quite the opposite, in fact), it would be worth it for the extra cultural value it brings.

Update:

I’m sorry to say it, but the official EDP Facebook page is doing my work for me. Now Steven Uncles has baselessly accused me of being a “Racist Scot” on the Facebook page. You would certainly struggle to find a senior member of the SNP behaving like this.

Do you believe that there are not foreign nationals on benefits within the UK that are sending money home? And would you consider this perverse? There is nothing racist in this. Benefits are provided to people to survive within the UK not to be sent home to support others.

Your question regarding my fourth point is, frankly, contemptible.
I neither said, nor alluded to, a complete stop to immigration or the removal of all foreign nationals.
Do you not believe that there is an entire chasm between the two extremes? And that it should be possible to work within that grey area?

My comment about a country being more than just an economy is something that many people feel and is, currently, not represented within the three main parties in England.
We should be able to protect and encourage our own culture and traditions whilst maintaining our economy.

Vile? I couldn’t possibly comment.

Hereward the Waker — You may believe that the British nation or the United Kingdom nation do not exist. I would posit that any widely-accepted definition of the word “nation” (which is admittedly a relatively fluid concept) would consider Britain to be a nation. I would be interested to hear your definition of “nation”, if it is one which means that England is a nation but Britain is not.

You ask me to read the names of the parties. I would say that the name of the British National Party is a pretty strong indication that it is a party that contends that Britain is a nation.

Kieran — I will deal with your points using your numbering.

1. Where did I say that the BNP and Ukip are English parties? If you are referring to where I say, “In England, Ukip and the BNP have cornered this market pretty well,” that is exactly what I mean and nothing else. They have done a good job of campaigning on a nationalistic basis in England — more successfully than other parts of the UK.
2. You are right that the BNP are racist, but this article was concerned with nationalist parties. The BNP, Ukip and the EDP undoubtedly all are nationalist parties.
3. Fair enough, but the EDP does seem peculiarly obsessed with people of other ethnicities.

   For instance, in my very brief tour of the party’s official Facebook page, one entry posted by the administrator states: “6 Million claiming benefits, how many are foriegn nationals?”

   The administrator goes on to say: “and are they also claiming child tax credit and still sending that “home”
   Remove all foreign nationals from our benefit entitlement and see what happens”

   This entry attracts a number of dubious comments from supporters including:

   • “Out out out out out em all.”
   • “kick out all not british people and give the jobs and this country back 2 us”
   • “get out off england”

   Is that official party policy?

4. Am I to take from this statement that you think it would be better for the whole of England to live in squalor as long as there were no foreign people in it?

Elaine — I think I made fairly clear why the SNP’s form of nationalism is civic nationalism. They favour European integration, they do not oppose immigration and make no reference to concepts such as “indigenous” Scots.