Like most people, I never questioned the basis of the society that I lived in. Growing up in Leicester, it was assumed that multiculturalism was a fact of life. This has to be distinguished from seeing ethnic diversity as a positive thing, in and of itself. The fact that half of the city was non-white was just another quirk of geography, like living in a frost hollow or being more exposed to a sou’wester. A majority of people are political only in a provisional sense and those of us who spend our time browsing the wilder corners of the internet, never mind reading The Mail or The Sun, are in a minority. The average man has political opinions, often very deeply held, but they are not central to his life and nor are they consistent. I have seen people simultaneously support gay pride parades, castrating paedophiles, renationalising railways, wind-power, Gurkha immigration, repatriating blacks and reintroducing corporal punishment.
