Some things in the government’s leaked social cohesion strategy will be deeply neuralgic to many. There is the creation of a “special representative on anti-Muslim hostility,” which will almost certainly hand an official bully pulpit to an activist such as Baroness Gohir, who has attacked media coverage of the grooming scandal as “disproportionate” and being “used…to fuel racism and Islamophobia,” or to a figure such as Dominic Grieve.

The leaked strategy is clear that Islamism is the country’s greatest extremist threat

The leaked strategy is clear that Islamism is the country’s greatest extremist threat

There’s a claim that last summer’s widespread flying of English, Scottish and Union flags were “tools of hate” and the “misuse [of] national symbols to exclude or intimidate.” There’s the statement that “integration is a two-way street” – that the indigenous community must adapt to the practices of newer arrivals. And there is the party-political tone of the first chapter, jarring for something meant to be about bringing people together, which blames austerity and “immigration policy under the last government” for social tensions with far older, deeper, more complex roots.

The strategy creates clear free speech risks, pledging to crack down on “divisive content” online. But “division,” or disagreement, is necessary for democratic debate. If everyone agreed, or was forced to agree, it would not be a debate.

There are also, however, some policies here that would constitute major........

© The Spectator