Tony Blair has warned that migrants “have a duty” to integrate themselves more in British society as the country faces a rise in “far-right bigotry”.
The former prime minister said the word multiculturalism has been “misinterpreted” as a way to justify a “refusal to integrate” as successive governments had “failed to find the right balance between diversity and integration” since he left office in 2007.
Blair was writing in a report published by his Institute for Global Change, which indicated policy makers were “avoiding difficult questions” in fear of stoking more division.
Blair writes: “Over a significant period of time, including when we were last in government, politics has failed to find the right balance between diversity and integration.
“On the one hand, failures around integration have led to attacks on diversity and are partly responsible for a reaction against migration.
“On the other hand, the word multiculturalism has been misinterpreted as meaning a justified refusal to integrate, when it should never have meant that.
“Particularly now, when there is increasing evidence of far-right bigotry on the rise, it is important to establish the correct social contract around the rights and duties of citizens, including those who migrate to our country.”
He goes on: “We make it clear that there is a duty to integrate, to accept the rules, laws and norms of our society that all British people hold in common and share, while at the same time preserving the right to practise diversity, which is fully consistent with such a duty.
“Without the right to, for example, practise one’s faith, diversity would have no content; but without the duty to integrate, ‘culture’ or ‘faith’ can be used as a way of upsetting that basic social contract that binds us together.”
His comments suggesting migrant communities were not doing enough to integrate provoked an angry backlash online.
The report backs forcing schools to have an intake that reflects local diversity, creating a compulsory citizenship programme for teenagers and toughening enforcement against the perpetrators of hate speech.
It also calls for compulsory citizenship education, a ban on segregated shift patterns and the creation of a new cabinet post created to oversee integration.
The report backs a return to Blair-baked ID cards - or “digital identity verification” – that caused huge divisions when the idea was floated but abandoned by his government.