IEA Senior Education Fellow Dr Steve Davies has written for the Daily Telegraph warning that militant nationalism is unlikely to fade in the UK amid recent riots.

Steve wrote:

“The appalling riots that have suddenly started all over Britain are the product of something that has been brewing for a long time.

“What is that politics? The people trying to attack hostels and throwing bricks at police are not noted for articulacy. Their actions and the more fluent views of their influencers do though reveal what it is. It is a kind of radical nationalist politics, based around an idea of an English (not Scottish or British interestingly) ethnic identity that is seen as threatened by immigration but also by economic globalisation. The project is one of sweeping national renewal (palingenesis as it is technically called). This is associated with fantasies of threatened social collapse or even of a global racial conflict. There is a decided class aspect, a hostility to the professional middle classes and behind them a shadowy global elite.

“This has led to the slow growth of a kind of politics that is now widespread on the Continent and elsewhere, one that combines anti-globalism and nationalism with economic collectivism (not necessarily socialism however)…What we should not expect is for it to fade away – the failures of our political and media classes mean we will not be so fortunate this time.”

Read Steve’s full piece here.