Little, Brown Book Group

Island of Strangers - Dr Ben Jones

'Few people have a better understanding of how endangered free speech has become in these islands than Ben Jones. This urgent cry for its restoration is a must read' Toby Young'To call Island of Strangers "unflinching" is to understate its tenacity and courage. It is forthright - territorial - yet it maintains a distinctive English politeness that will force its critics to address its argument: this is no polemic, but it is an unmistakable act of defiance.' The CriticBRITAIN IS BEING TRANSFORMED. IT IS UNFREE. AND IT IS GETTING WORSE. As mass migration reshapes Britain's population, an increasingly authoritarian state attempts to manage the resulting hyper-diversity by suppressing freedom of speech. We see this in two-tier policing, in attempts to criminalise blasphemy against Islam, and even in the private sector where thousands have lost their jobs or have been punished for expressing their beliefs. In Island of Strangers, Ben Jones - a director of the Free Speech Union - shows how multiculturalism came just as Britain was losing its sense of itself, as Christianity declined, and how its elite embraced a creed of 'diversityism'. Grounded in a long view of Britain's history, this book gets to the fundamental causes of why Keir Starmer's UK feels so unfree. The free speech crisis isn't just a passing problem. Silencing dissent is now built into how the fractured UK is governed. Different identity groups are increasingly locked in competition to protect their sacred ideas. The most potent challenge to Britain's tradition of free speech comes from within Islam. This book is unafraid to grapple with these truths. Increasingly it seems impossible even to define who 'we' are, much less what we believe or what unites us. Do we really have more in common than that which divides us? Increasingly it feels like we don't. Taking Keir Starmer's infamous line, this book argues that Britain has been transformed into 'an island of strangers'.

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