They Don't Even Speak English Proper

The Prince in Waiting has extruded another pronouncement on Britishness and how to enhance it. He wishes those who have settled in Britain and who have "so far resisted learning English" to be required to learn it. This sounds sensible enough, but I wonder how many immigrants really have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the greatest language in the world? "I would insist on large numbers of people who have refused to learn our language that they must do so," his waitingness insisted, demonstrating what the English language can do when freed from the confines of speechwriters. "If someone is unemployed who doesn't speak English, they should have to learn English to make themselves employable. If you take preachers coming into this country, they should be speaking the English language and not refusing to speak the English language."

Just how many people are there in Britain who refuse to speak the English language? Is it not possible that, even after almost a decade of Blairite reforms, there might be some slight paucity of teachers; particularly teachers who will do a competent job at a price the average immigrant (say, somebody slightly poorer than Rupert Murdoch) can afford? Of course, his waitingness may merely be exercising due caution. If we outlawed mere inability to speak the language we'd have to deport half the population and eighty per cent of Parliament, which seems a bit draconian even for Blairism in its present and hopefully terminal phase.

The Prince also said that immigrants should be given an understanding of British history so that they could learn values of freedom, liberty and tolerance, which apparently do not exist in foreign cultures. Perhaps he could take a lesson from the Japanese, who will soon be obliged to indoctrinate their children with "an attitude that respects tradition and culture, loves the nation and homeland that have fostered them, and contributes to international peace and development". Patriotism in the Land of the Rising Sun "comes with unpleasant historical baggage", something that could never happen in the empire on which the sun never set; but even a small island people with a violent imperial past and a masochistic devotion to royalty might have something marginally useful to teach us.