Earlier this month, I watched a recording of Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch’s Policy Exchange speech on integration. It was one of the better political speeches I had heard in quite a long time. I may not summarise it fairly here, but it raised the question: what is a nation state, a country, if not a place with defined borders, common laws, mores and accepted boundaries of manners and behaviour? Long term, can you have a safe, thriving and successful country if some part of its people wish to operate an entirely different set of laws, mores and accepted boundaries of manners and behaviour? Could we even call such a paradox a single society? Or is it more like Schrödinger’s country, a hidden parallel realm that both exists and does not, thriving in superposition until the box is opened and the incompatible realities collide?
3:12 PM
The Price of Love and the limits of a parallel society
A recent speech on integration and Sabatina James’s powerful memoir raise unsettling questions about whether a country can sustain two incompatible moral and legal worlds within its borders
Declan J. Ganley
4 min read
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