"Britain seems to have become little more than a welfare state with a rusting navy attached." 

It’s ever harder to escape the conclusion that Britain is fundamentally broken.

Our government is completely incapable of controlling spending on benefits and, partly as a consequence, is all at sea when it comes to any remotely coherent plan to bolster our crumbling defences.

Britain seems to have become little more than a welfare state with a rusting navy attached.

Meanwhile, grim scenes of violence in Belfast show us how cavernous the gap now is between the government and the governed. Any sort of residual faith in the key institutions of the state seems to be melting away. Arson and rioting are the deplorable, yet tragically inevitable, consequence.

Perhaps the most depressing element of all – at least from a long-term perspective – is that we now seem to be almost incapable of having a meaningful debate about what is going wrong and how we might fix it.

Politicians of all stripes have been quick to condemn violence on the streets of Belfast. Of course, they are right to do so. But this needs to be a preface to an analysis about what needs to change in the UK, whereas it sometimes seems to be the final word on the matter.

In so far as any strategy is put forward at all, it seems to be based on the very vague assertion that “diversity and inclusion are our strengths.” They are sometimes even described as our greatest strengths.

This seems to me a form of madness. I can find no real evidence to suggest that diversity and inclusion are anywhere close to being the greatest strengths the country has.

Surely, the big questions are “How much diversity do we want?” and “How much inclusion do we think we should strive for?”

I can think of no one who wants Britain to be a place in which there is no diversity at all, but is “more diversity” always better? Some of our political leaders seem to think so – or at least imply this is the case.

Isn’t the reasonable position that diversity is welcome in our country, but (a) it is indeed possible to have too much of it and (b) there needs to be some basic universal agreement on how our society should be organised for inclusion to work?

Surely, there is some sort of Laffer curve as far as diversity is concerned? Too little across society and you stagnate and are closed off to valuable new ideas and experiences. Too much and you have not a melting pot but a tinderbox that could explode. Working out the sweet spot is not a perfect science (in the same way that the Laffer curve concept doesn’t automatically tell you the precise tax rate that would maximise revenues – it just reminds you that your rates may be so high that you could increase revenues by lowering rates).

My sense, though, is that we are now attempting to be too inclusive to too much diversity in the United Kingdom. We have reached a point where we seem so open-minded that we can’t keep anything in.

When a Unionist MP described the horrific attack on Steve Ogilvie as an example of “alien culture” on the streets of Belfast, the Northern Ireland Secretary, Hilary Benn, essentially chastised him for using such a term. Surely, however, if your culture is so diverse and inclusive that nothing can be described as alien to it, you have no real culture at all?

We need to have a forthright and very open debate about these topics. One that has been impossible to have for many years because those raising serious questions about the status quo are labelled as racist or far-right. This is just a tactic to avoid a necessary discussion.

To my mind, a key challenge for PopCon in the coming months will be to help develop a framework for “civic nationalism” that can act as an alternative to both the nihilistic version of liberalism we seem to have ended up with and to the worrying rise in ethno-nationalism in our politics.

Keep the flag of freedom flying!