Authored by David Betz and Michael Rainsborough via The Daily Sceptic,

Despite spending much of the past half-century apologizing for the Empire, the British establishment is rediscovering its favorite method of rule. The old colonial district officer, accustomed to keeping the peace between rival communities, cultivating local notables and reporting troublesome political sentiments to his superiors, would find much to recognize in contemporary Britain. He might struggle with the current terminology, but once someone explained what a Cohesion Support and Interventions Function actually did, he would probably feel quite at home.

In an essay we wrote six years ago called 'Empires of Progress', we argued that Western governing elites were increasingly abandoning the assumptions of the nation-state in favor of an imperial conception of political authority. A nation-state presumes a people sufficiently conscious of belonging together to accept common institutions and obligations. An empire governs different peoples, often possessing competing interests and loyalties, through a combination of accommodation, patronage, arbitration and coercion. Nations require citizens; empires administer subjects.

What we then identified as an emerging tendency has since acquired a more distinct institutional and political character in Britain. Successive governments, having encouraged mass immigration and multiculturalism, increasingly employ methods familiar from imperial administration to manage the communal divisions arising from those policies.

More significantly, these arrangements threaten to transform the relationship between the governing establishment and the historic British population, whose national attachments and political preferences increasingly conflict with the assumptions of those exercising power. Here, we examine how communal brokerage, differentiated accommodation and preventive security contribute to this estrangement, weakening the common national allegiance upon which the legitimacy of the state depends.

The imperial reflex, imported into the British domestic realm, we suggest, will prove considerably more destabilizing than its practitioners anticipate.

Divide, rule, cultivate allies

British imperial administration depended upon an intimate knowledge of the populations it governed. Officials classified communities by ethnicity, religion and customary authority, cultivated influential intermediaries and distributed recognition, privileges and patronage to secure cooperation.

Such arrangements reduced the costs of government while giving selected local leaders a stake in the preservation of imperial authority. The British also secured the allegiance of particular populations whose interests became closely associated with the existing political order.

Governing through intermediaries and building dependent constituencies were complementary techniques, although the interests of the two were not always identical. By recognizing communal leaders as representatives of distinct populations, imperial administrations could also reinforce the divisions that sustained their authority.

In British Malaya, for example, colonial economic development encouraged large-scale Chinese and Indian immigration, transforming the demographic composition of the peninsula and creating competing communal interests. The colonial economy developed along pronounced ethnic lines, with Malays concentrated in agriculture, Chinese communities prominent in commerce and mining, and Indian labor recruited extensively for plantation work. While not absolute, these divisions established a political landscape in which economic interests and communal identities became closely associated. British administrators also relied upon recognized communal intermediaries, including Chinese leaders known as Kapitan Cina, who mediated relations with Chinese communities and whose commercial privileges and political influence could become closely connected with the colonial power.

After the Second World War, the proposed Malayan Union of 1946 sought to extend citizenship to much of the immigrant-origin population while reducing the authority of the Malay rulers. Malay opposition forced the British to abandon the scheme in favor of the Federation of Malaya in 1948, with more restrictive citizenship provisions. The subsequent establishment of the Communities Liaison Committee in 1949 brought leading Malay, Chinese and Indian representatives together to negotiate questions of citizenship, economic interests and national identity. Political authority rested upon negotiations among recognized communal organizations, culminating in the Alliance between Malay, Chinese and Indian parties that helped secure independence in 1957. The British authorities, in effect, created the demographic and economic circumstances that made communal bargaining an indispensable feature of the constitutional settlement that followed.

At home, the contemporary British state confronts comparable divisions arising from a demographic transformation shaped decisively by the policies of governments of both major parties.

However, unlike their imperial predecessors, who openly administered distinct communities as separate populations, British governments profess a commitment to integration and the creation of a common national identity. Yet the methods adopted to manage the consequences of mass immigration merely reproduce the colonial administrative logic of communal representation.

Despite their professed commitment to integration, British governments rely upon recognized community organizations to secure cooperation, granting intermediaries access and influence in return for their capacity to speak for particular constituencies. Such practices facilitate political negotiation while strengthening the position of 'community leaders' and preserving the distinctions upon which their influence rests. The result is a contradiction between the declared objective of a cohesive national society and methods of governance that perpetuate, and often exacerbate, the very divisions they are intended to overcome.

The consequences of this contradiction can be seen in electoral politics, where methods resembling imperial communal brokerage acquire a new significance within a democratic polity. In parts of Britain with substantial Pakistani-origin populations, for example, established kinship networks, commonly known as biraderi, play an important role in mobilizing voters, recruiting party members and influencing candidate selection. The Labour Party in particular has benefited from communal bloc voting, while the mobilization of kinship networks has given those controlling them considerable influence over local party organization and the selection of candidates.

The resemblance to imperial indirect rule lies in the reliance upon communal blocs and their intermediaries, but the domestic setting introduces a significant complication. Colonial administrators could promote, reward, bypass or ultimately abandon their intermediaries according to the requirements of imperial government. Political parties operating within an ostensibly democratic polity, by contrast, must compete for electoral support, giving communal brokers considerable leverage over those seeking office. The resulting dependence creates a mutual interest in preserving communal allegiances, reinforcing the very divisions that the government's professed commitment to integration seeks to overcome.

Communal brokerage is not confined to electoral politics. It also finds expression in public administration, where official recognition of community representatives can confer influence over local policy, policing and the allocation of public resources. The dangers of reinforcing communal divisions through such arrangements have long been recognized within government itself. The 2007 Commission on Integration and Cohesion, for example, recommended a presumption against public funding for single-identity groups, warning that such support could reinforce separation rather than encourage common civic participation. The broader problem arises when public institutions treat organized communal leadership as the natural means of representing entire populations. Individuals can then find themselves spoken for through identities and intermediaries they have never chosen for themselves.

Importing techniques of imperial management into the domestic realm also has the potential for a reversal of political advantage. Leaders initially valued for their ability to secure cooperation can acquire sufficient influence to demand further concessions or challenge the authorities upon which they originally relied. The emergence of pro-Gaza independent MPs at the 2024 General Election illustrates how electoral support previously enjoyed by Labour could be redirected against it. Four such candidates defeated Labour opponents and subsequently joined Jeremy Corbyn in forming the Independent Alliance. Networks capable of delivering electoral advantage can thus become independent centers of political power, challenging the very parties that previously benefited from their support.

When communal sensitivities override justice

The consequences of communal politics are visible in the administration of justice as well as electoral politics. Where maintaining relations between ethnic groups becomes an overriding concern, public institutions find themselves constrained by the very divisions they are supposed to manage. The governing commitment to multicultural accommodation introduces a pressure when officials fear that confronting wrongdoing within minority populations will expose them to accusations of racism or undermine social cohesion. The resulting reluctance to act recalls an older feature of imperial administration: the subordination of vulnerable populations to the preservation of a political order built upon differential treatment and communal sensitivities.

The systematic sexual abuse of children by predominantly Pakistani-origin grooming gangs in several British towns exposed the consequences of these grave failures of public authority. Professor Alexis Jay's 2014 inquiry into the abuse in Rotherham estimated that approximately 1,400 children had been sexually exploited between 1997 and 2013 (the tip, we now know, of a very large iceberg). Police and council officials repeatedly failed to protect victims through failures of leadership, professional judgment and safeguarding, while concerns about the ethnicity of perpetrators contributed to their unwillingness to confront the offending. The victims, most of them vulnerable white working-class girls, encountered authorities whose concern for communal sensitivities obscured crimes that demanded investigation and prosecution.

More than a decade later, Baroness Casey's 2025 national audit exposed the continuing consequences of official sensitivities surrounding the ethnicity of perpetrators. National records omitted this information for approximately two-thirds of suspects, while police data from three force areas revealed a disproportionate number of Pakistani-origin men among those suspected of group-based child sexual exploitation. Some police forces also reported that local authorities had discouraged publicity about successful prosecutions for fear of inflaming ethnic tensions. The problem was therefore not confined to failures of safeguarding: it extended to the collection and disclosure of information essential to understanding the scale and character of the offending.

Such failures strike at the foundations of public trust in the impartial administration of justice. When concerns about ethnic sensitivities compromise the protection of victims and the pursuit of offenders, citizens have reason to question whether the law applies equally to all. The state thereby undermines its own legitimacy, as institutions professing to protect social cohesion revive an imperial preference for managing relations between distinct populations at the expense of their fundamental obligation to protect citizens equally under the law.

When community management becomes security policy

Surveillance and the management of political loyalties were important instruments of imperial rule. British administrators relied upon intelligence about political allegiances, networks of informants and the monitoring of organizations capable of mobilizing opposition. Their purpose was to anticipate threats to public order and intervene before disaffection developed into organized resistance. Colonial authorities accordingly treated political opposition as a potential security concern, subjecting dissent to intelligence gathering and preventive intervention. A comparable administrative logic is discernible in contemporary Britain's developing cohesion apparatus, where the management of communal tensions is becoming more closely associated with preventive security.

The government's 2026 strategy, Protecting What Matters, proposes a "Cohesion Support and Interventions Function", bringing together local authorities, police chiefs and national-security specialists to respond to communal tensions. A "Social Cohesion Measurement Framework", supported by local assessments of emerging tensions, would identify potential flashpoints, while information-sharing with Prevent and other agencies would facilitate earlier intervention. Such arrangements raise an important question about the limits of state authority: at what point does the monitoring of communal tensions extend into the scrutiny of lawful political disagreement?

Sir William Shawcross's 2023 independent review of Prevent demonstrated that the danger was far from hypothetical. The Home Office's Research, Information and Communications Unit (RICU) had incorporated mainstream conservative commentary, expressions of patriotism and support for Brexit into its analysis of so-called Right-wing extremism. RICU classified works by established conservative writers as nationalist ideological texts and associated a former Conservative minister with audiences described as sympathetic to the far Right. Neither nationalism nor opinions characterized as extreme, whether on the Right or Left, constitute grounds for security intervention merely by virtue of their political content. In a constitutional democracy, the relevant considerations are evidence of violence, incitement or other unlawful activity, not whether particular beliefs offend prevailing political orthodoxies.

Imperial administrators could monitor political loyalties without violating the principles upon which their authority rested, since the consent of the governed was neither required nor assumed. The same approach, transplanted into a democratic polity, strikes at the foundations of constitutional government. The principle of popular sovereignty requires government to derive its authority from the governed and remain answerable to their political preferences. When the state assumes responsibility for supervising the political temperament of the population, however, that relationship is inverted. Citizens cease to be treated as the source of political authority and become objects of management by a governing establishment claiming the prerogatives of imperial administration.

The estrangement of rulers and ruled

Government through communal intermediaries, preferential treatment and preventive security does more than enable the state to administer a divided society. By recognizing particular communal interests, granting favored groups access and influence and subjecting certain political attitudes to administrative scrutiny, the state undermines its claim to represent a common political community. Citizens who perceive that their interests, identities and political opinions are treated according to different standards have reason to question whose interests the institutions of government ultimately serve.

The governing Establishment's conception of its own authority compounds the problem. The government's 2018 Integrated Communities Strategy Green Paper, for example, presented integration as a reciprocal process, requiring adaptation from established communities as well as newcomers. The significance of this formulation lies in the assumption that the inherited character of the national community is itself subject to revision as part of a government-directed program of social change. The established population is consequently placed in the position of having to accommodate a transformation of its own society, without democratic endorsement, whose terms are determined by those administering it.

The question is therefore no longer simply how newcomers are to be incorporated into an existing national community, but who possesses the authority to determine what that community should become. By assuming responsibility for defining the national identity to which the population, old and new, is expected to subscribe, the state transforms a dispute over immigration and integration into a more fundamental disagreement about political authority. Such imperial paternalism presumes that those exercising political power are entitled not merely to administer society, but to prescribe the identities and allegiances of those they govern.

The resulting estrangement is especially acute for large sections of the historic British population whose inherited national attachments and political preferences conflict with the assumptions of the governing establishment. The 2016 Casey Review documented how rapid demographic change and persistent segregation had generated tensions within established communities, sharpening disagreements over the character and future of British society.

Repeated electoral promises to reduce immigration have gone unfulfilled, with actual levels far exceeding stated commitments and raising fundamental questions about democratic accountability. When objections to demographic and cultural transformation are treated as evidence of prejudice or extremism rather than legitimate political disagreement, institutions risk compounding the failure of political representation with the administrative marginalization of dissent. The relationship between rulers and ruled consequently acquires an increasingly adversarial character.

The governing class thus confronts a predicament familiar from imperial history. Its capacity to administer competing populations may expand even as its ability to command their political allegiance diminishes. A state can maintain order through negotiation, patronage and coercion for considerable periods, but democratic legitimacy depends upon more than the successful administration of society.

Estrangement may initially be directed against particular governments or governing elites. Once substantial numbers of citizens cease to regard the institutions of the state itself as expressions of their political community, however, opposition can, and almost certainly will, shift from contesting government policies to questioning the legitimacy of the governing order.

The imperial endgame

The methods by which empires maintain their authority can ultimately become the instruments of their destruction. Differential treatment, communal patronage and government through favored intermediaries or settler populations can preserve order for a time without securing the political allegiance upon which lasting authority depends. As resentment of unequal treatment and political subordination grows, opposition ceases to seek merely a better bargain within the existing system and begins to demand an end to the system itself. The history of 20th-century decolonization is, in large part, the history of populations rejecting the legitimacy of rulers who claimed to govern on their behalf.

Britain's governing establishment is reproducing this predicament at home. A population that regards its demographic composition and national inheritance as having been transformed without its consent, its interests subordinated to competing communal claims and its objections dismissed as morally suspect can come to regard the state as an authority imposed upon it rather than an expression of its collective will. The language of citizenship may remain, but the relationship begins to resemble that between imperial administrators and disaffected subjects. The grievance then extends beyond particular government policies to the more fundamental question of who possesses the authority to determine the country's future.

Political estrangement carries the seeds of violent conflict. Revolutions, insurrections, insurgencies and civil wars arise when conflicts over political authority can no longer be contained within the existing governing order. Democratic institutions provide an alternative so long as electoral competition offers a credible means of changing the policies and governing arrangements that have alienated the electorate. When substantial sections of the population lose confidence in those mechanisms, particularly where demographic transformation and competing communal claims have weakened the state's credibility as an impartial arbiter, opposition can, and almost certainly will, shift from contesting government policy to challenging the legitimacy of the governing order itself. Under such conditions, political estrangement will develop into organized resistance and violent confrontation.

The irony is that Britain's governing class, having repudiated the moral pretensions of its imperial predecessors, has revived elements of its administrative repertoire in the name of progress and social cohesion. The old empire discovered that populations unwilling to accept their subordinate status could not be governed indefinitely through patronage, arbitration and coercion. Britain's rulers are now discovering the same truth at home. A state that treats its citizens as subjects should not be surprised when they begin to regard it as an alien power, and resistance to its authority as a struggle for national liberation.

David Betz is Professor of War in the Modern World at King's College London; Michael Rainsborough is Professor of Strategic Theory and Director of the Centre for Future Defence and National Security, Canberra.

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