Is multiculturalism a busted flush?
Is it a political ideology? Where did it come from?
Multiculturalism is a word that is loaded with meaning and garners strong emotional responses from both those committed to it and also from people who are at best, sceptical. Where did it come from and whose idea was it? More importantly, what are the justifications for multiculturalism, since it didn’t really exist until late in the 20th century? My starting point is with Philosopher Charles Taylor, who has been a prominent figure in the development of multiculturalism since the early 1990s. In describing multiculturalism, Taylor presupposes the equal worth of all cultures, and I think this is the root from which this ideology grew.[1] The main figure in political philosophy to advance multiculturalism more broadly was Canadian philosopher, Will Kymlicka. He advocated for changes, “within a liberal egalitarian theory…which emphasizes the importance of rectifying unchosen inequalities.”[2] This is an opaque way of advocating for equality of outcome and highlights the influence John Rawls’ political philolosophy has had upon Kymlicka. One must ask if a society such as the UK, which has imported many millions of immigrants since Brexit can reasonably run equality of outcome at scale. Kymlicka also sees discrimination through “linguistic advantage,”[3] which he believes gives the dominant culture economic and political rewards. A counter argument, however, would be that if immigration required a good grasp of the national language, then the immigrant would not face this linguistic disadvantage, much as I would not expect to get too far as an immigrant in China or Japan without knowing the national language.
So, there are two tenets to test in the ideology of multiculturalism: first, the idea of the equal worth of all cultures, and second, that a society has a duty to accommodate itself towards equality of outcomes. I’ll start with the ‘duty’ in this second point: it assumes that in a rational society, if you supply advantages to one group of people, there is a zero-sum game of reducing the lot of others, given the finite resources to go around – and I am basing much of this discussion on economics, as that is the proving ground for most political theory. To frame this another way, in the writings of contemporary philosophers Taylor and Kymlicka, they are essentially advancing the postmodern dialectic of oppressor and oppressed, where the former is the dominant culture and the latter the person from or descended from another culture and living within a Western society. It is worth pointing out that multiculturalism has only been passionately pursued in the West. Kymlicka and others are not advocating for China, Japan, Kenya, Bangladesh, Russia, Sudan, Morocco or El Salvador to adopt multiculturalism, which gives rise to the question, if it is so good for the West, then why not export it?
The idea of the equal worth of all cultures can be boiled down to being a tenet of postmodern moral relativism. Who goes to Rwanda to set up a physics research lab, or to North Korea to study for an MBA? This is not to say that the West is morally better than developing nations, but, rather, it has the benefits of a history of liberty, freedom of thought and expression and the inventiveness that lifted all boats for humanity at scale. What part of world culture and tradition brought to all humans such boons as electricity, cars, internet access and air-conditioning, never mind an independent judiciary? Sadly for the West, Europe is losing what it was good at, including its confidence to lead, which America has taken on the baton, so the West has not completely given up on itself for now.
Making objective comparisons between cultures is necessary.
Economic freedom could serve as a proxy for our purposes: the Institute for Economic Affairs (IEA), in their Economic Freedom of the World 2025 report had some eye-opening insights. The top 5 most-economically free jurisdictions were ranked as follows: Hong Kong (1st), Singapore (2nd), New Zealand (3rd), Switzerland (4th), the United States (5th). The UK came 13th in the ranking. A nation doesn’t have to be in the West to embrace values that have made both Hong Kong and Singapore successful. Other noteworthy findings stated that “The standard of living in the most economically free nations is far higher than in the least free. In comparing the economically freest 25 percent of countries with the least free, we find: Average incomes are 6.2 times greater.”[4] The multiculturalism project has naturally developed from economic roots as people from poorer nations have sought to better themselves by moving to richer nations. But surely it is colonialism that has held back these developing nations? the cry rings out! Colonialism doesn’t appear to have hurt the prospects of Brazil and India (6th and 10th, respectively in the world GDP rankings[5]), who are leading examples of successful nations that have embraced Western values of freeing up their markets and democratic government. People often forget that Brazil had a long period of military dictatorship and India suspended democracy in its mid-1970s state of emergency, but after shaking off these dark periods, good things came along. These are changes that were enacted politically and, as the saying goes, politics is downstream from culture.
We now see a UK police force that was declared institutionally racist in the 1990s to have swung the pendulum so far in the other direction that it is claimed by the justice secretary that police can’t be expected to treat people the same, including guidance published last year which advises officers to treat ethnic minorities differently.[6] And then we wonder why people decry a two-tier society, including lighter sentences for ethnic minorities that were introduced by the Sentencing Council in 2025 that took a political outcry for the government to legislate against the possibility of pre-sentence reports that would be considered necessary if an offender was from an ethnic, cultural and/or faith minority community.[7] When legal bodies seek to treat people differently according to who they are, public trust in institutions, such as the police and courts, erodes.
When multiculturalism as a project veers into the economic sphere by providing welfare benefits to immigrants (legal and illegal) then you push tolerance beyond its elastic limit, especially when prominent government minister, Pat McFadden, complained to Peter Mandelson in files published recently that backbench Labour MPs are constantly asking, ‘Who can we tax in order to pay benefits to others’?[8] This belies an attitude that doling out state benefits is their main function – currying favour with their constituents. Or bribing them, if one is being less charitable.
Anxiety about multiculturalism is not extremism, nor is objecting to it or having concerns a form of hate. As with any ideology, it is possible to question it on the basis of it not being compatible with objective reality, which covers national security, economic resources (housing, schooling, healthcare services) and social cohesion. It is not wrong to make claims about the high achievements of Western civilisation. After all, this computer I am typing on is entirely the product of Western invention.
Gaslighting by government involves the manipulation of public perception through two main channels: misinformation and denial of facts. This is an attempt to maintain control or influence over citizens, leading to confusion and distrust, and we wonder why people have such low levels of trust in both our political leaders and institutions. In his resignation speech last month, Sir Kier Starmer boasted of his record in office that he was, “Ripping out the poison of antisemitism, restoring trust on the economy, defence, and national security.”[9] Maybe he was talking about a different country, but it didn’t ring true of Britain, and people have become particularly weary of his constant gaslighting. On the latter point of national security, this matter is perhaps at its lowest level in decades.
Assimilation has been optional for too long and lack of it creates societal rupture when multiple parallel societies operate without a unifying set of values. The USA is an economic powerhouse and has prided itself on integration into the American way of life. That way of life requires immigrants to embrace the culture, values and civic virtues of the USA. Generally, the idea goes, one does well by working hard and being part of a community. The net result aims to bring about citizens who contribute to their nation and its ongoing prosperity: we only have to look at the median income gap between the USA and UK, which is £36k for UK households compared to a British pound equivalent of £57k for US households across the pond.[10] Lower taxes and a smaller welfare state means US earners take home more. Economic innovations have seen US wage growth vastly outpace the UK since the 2009 financial crisis. All of this is to say that going to the USA generally requires immigrants to implicitly agree to a social contract to integrate and be net contributors to their society.
The equal worth of all cultures as a declarative statement is false. And how could it be otherwise if you believe in objective truth? The question of whether society needs to tend towards equality of outcomes is simply a tenet of socialism and has always failed: today this just entails more government spending (i.e. borrowing on top of the existing £3 trillion debt mountain) and increasing taxes at every opportunity. The focus needs to be on governing for the national interest, which benefits everyone and does not need to favour any particular group. Solving inequality and a lack of social cohesion is best served by creating wealth, which is a unifying mission for all citizens.
The West needs to remember its strengths and not loathe its culture, Christian faith, history and traditions. Socialism wants to forget the past and build a utopia, whereas remembering how to lift people out of poverty and give them positive expectations for the future, personal liberty, God-given laws and freedom of speech and thought are very much part of a culture worth celebrating.
[1] Charles Taylor, (1995, “Irreducibly Social Goods,”, in Philosophical Arguments, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, pp. 127–145).
[2] Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 109.
[3] Will Kymlicka, 111.
[4] IEA, Economic Freedom of the World: 2025 Annual Report, 25 September 2025, (https://iea.org.uk/publications/economic-freedom-of-the-world-2025/, accessed 11/2/26).
[5] Wikipedia, List of countries by GDP (nominal), (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal), accessed 6/7/26).
[6] Telegraph, Lammy: Police can’t always treat races equally, 5 June 2026, (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/06/05/lammy-police-may-need-to-treat-communities-unequally/, accessed 28/6/26).
[7] The Law Society Gazette, Sentencing Council blocked from referring to race or ethnicity in guidance, 0 June 2025, (https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/sentencing-council-v-lord-chancellor-two-tier-guidance-shelved/5122872.article, accessed 28/6/26).
[8] LBC Radio, ‘Who can we tax in order to pay benefits to others’: Labour minister’s bleak assessment of backbenchers released, 2 June 2026 (https://www.lbc.co.uk/article/pat-mcfadden-welfare-tax-labour-keir-starmer-peter-mandelson-5HjdZzH_2/, accessed 28/6/26).
[9] BBC, Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s resignation speech in full, 22 June 2026,
(https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c621nnq4pm7o, accessed 7/7/26).
[10] Telegraph, Why American families are so much richer than us, 25 September 2025,
(https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/consumer-affairs/why-american-families-so-much-richer-than-british/, accessed 7/7/26).