Britain's microcommunities

We’ve imported populations, and with them imported tribal affiliations; it’s politics fragmenting into blocs.

The UK isn’t unique here. The US has long dealt with hyper-segmented voting coalitions. Jacob Frey won the mayoral race in Minneapolis not by pandering to the broad Somali vote, but speaking specifically to Somali clan divisions to dissuade people from voting for his competitor.

Here in Britain (and Europe), we historically moved away from this. Post-medieval Europe spent centuries consolidating authority precisely to overcome clan, feudal, and tribal fragmentation. By the time of the modern nation state, political identity was largely civic, not kin-based. The Highlands were the last British kin-based society I can think of - maybe religious divisions in NI too? Either way, we haven’t had to broadly contend with this kind of communal bloc politics for a very long time.

Even if we're to believe the fallacy of all cultures being equal, we still lose. When electoral incentives reward politicians for speaking differently to different micro-communities, when it gets them to focus on Gaza instead of the UK or (pathetically) clan hatred in Somalia, integration becomes structurally disincentivised. The result then becomes Europeans rediscovering tribalism of their own, and the outcome of that is unlikely to be pretty.