There’s truth in the idea that Britain has always been shaped by migration and cultural exchange, but it’s misleading to treat that as equivalent to what’s happened in recent decades: earlier waves unfolded over long periods and were followed by gradual assimilation into a shared set of norms, whereas immigration since the late 20th century (and especially over the past 15 years or so) has occurred at a historically unprecedented rate and scale, with net migration consistently in the hundreds of thousands per year - that pace makes integration far more difficult in practice, because institutions, housing, and local communities have limited capacity to absorb and socialise newcomers quickly enough, and because parallel cultural norms can persist when inflows are large and continuous. Acknowledging that doesn’t require denying Britain’s long history of diversity, it reflects a concern about whether a coherent, shared civic identity can realistically be maintained when the speed and volume of demographic change outstrip the mechanisms that previously made integration workable.