By Paul Goodman
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Gavin Barwell wrote on this site last year that Lord Tebbit's cricket test should be torn up:
"I would love our Prime Minister, who has done so much to transform perceptions of the Conservative Party for the better, to give a speech doing to Norman Tebbit’s cricket test what he did to the Margaret Thatcher’s “There’s no such thing as society” quote. Yes, it is important to have loyalty to this country but your roots are important too."
I have put it a different way: it's time to end the Tory war on multiculturalism:
"First, because the word…means so many things to so many people, as now to be almost meaningless. Second, because it isn't helping the Party win votes…Third, because the M-word has become a dissipation of energies better focused "like a laser beam" on the struggle against extremism and the ideology that underpins it."
And set out some key facts separately:
"Migrants and their descendants are on the whole less likely to vote Conservative than the rest of the population. In 2010, the Tories…won only 16 per cent of the ethnic minority vote. The proportion of such voters was under one in ten in 2001. By 2050 ethnic minorities will make up a fifth of the population."
Bagehot has taken up the theme in the Economist (£), reporting Barwell's comments. He also notes that:
So what politically correct solution to the problem are those dastardly modernisers pushing? The shocking suggestion is…that we should simply work harder. Bagehot reports: "There is a striking consensus that the party could do better simply by appearing interested."
I made the same point in the David Davis-edited book The Future of Conservatism published just before the last Conservative conference. Ethnic minority voters are one of our big three strategic weaknesses, and they're growing faster than the other two – Scots and public sector workers.
Appearing – no, being – interested isn't much to ask for. It shouldn't be beyond our capabilities. Until or unless we are Labour will carry on eating us alive.