Our country, for all of its strengths, is a more anxious and fractious society than any of us would want, something exacerbated by a more febrile and volatile world than anyone can remember. But how do we change that? And how does government identify what its national leadership role means for cohesion? Those are the questions that Protecting What Matters, the government’s new social cohesion action plan, published today, seeks to answer.
Keir Starmer got into trouble trying to talk about cohesion last Spring. He retracted his own language about “the risk of becoming an island of strangers, not a nation that walks on together” after launching his immigration white paper. He hoped, in future, he would get across better what he wanted that positive, shared goal to be. This plan is his attempt not just to talk differently, but to set out how to act differently too.
So the Prime Minister’s foreword asserts a pride in British progress, pluralism and decency, with consciously balanced language about a “distinctively British” understanding of integration, “grounded in the fairness of the two-way street” of rights and responsibilities. He does not resile from recognising the dangers and high stakes of such volatile times, arguing that the social contract must be strengthened with intentional action to be fit to weather the storms of the world, and that past governments have tended to take a more ’hands off’ approach, hoping cohesion would somehow look after itself.
For the last quarter of a century, governments have responded to integration flashpoints – including the riots in the summer of 2024 – but without finding the stamina for a sustained strategy when the headlines move on. Indeed, the argument here is that the major crises since the 2008 financial crash – of Brexit, the pandemic and the impacts of conflict in Europe and the Middle East – have often put cohesion under pressure, while also pushing the issue further down the list of government priorities.
The narrative echoes the analysis of British Future and Belong in The State of Us report: that economic pessimism, declining trust, polarised politics and a more febrile online ecosystem is putting cohesion under pressure. It has an unapologetic focus on practice rather than theory. Opposition leader Kemi Badenoch sees it as important to differentiate between the idea of a multicultural and a multiracial society, to signal her commitment to integration. The Starmer government shows less interest in navigating contested conceptual debates about models of identity and cohesion. Politicians over the last two decades have often put more energy into critiquing the limits of past models of multiculturalism rather than saying what should happen next instead. This government’s voice on cohesion is mainly underpinned by a common-sense ethos of wanting to respect the everyday reality of a multiethnic society of many faiths and none while focusing its energy a little less on celebrating difference and rather more on strengthening what can bring people together.
Beyond pulling together existing programmes of work, and expanding the government’s recently launched “Pride in place” local initiatives, there are a number of new policy developments. These include requiring those being home-schooled to be registered; a local media strategy to help make local journalism sustainable; and a review of English language provision by this Autumn, to recognise universal fluency as an essential foundation. The Charity Commission will also get stronger powers to sanction the misuse of charitable status for extreme ends. And online streaming services will face similar regulatory boundaries to broadcast television.
Online eco-systems are recognised as a major accelerant of potential cohesion threats – with the risks of “echo chambers” and “rabbit holes”. There will be more focus on transparency about whether major platforms are complying with their legal duties – but both regulators and government have been too hesitant to enforce the law when there is compelling evidence of their systemic failure to even try, such as in Elon Musk’s X routine and active defence of unlawful racist hate crimes.
The action plan recognises how the extraordinary spike in immigration levels in the last parliament, and the mishandling of asylum dispersal to local hotels, have put cohesion under more pressure. Immigration levels have now fallen more rapidly than anybody expected – but this has done little to shift increasingly polarised debates about immigration. An expanded community sponsorship programme offers a promising way to increase contact and cohesion.
The government’s own settlement reforms are sharply contested: tripling how long it takes to become British and creating anxious periods of temporary unsettlement of two or three decades for refugees would make integration harder. Indeed, the policies are inspired by Scandinavian societies like Denmark and Sweden, who have struggled much more than Britain with successful outcomes for migrants and their children in education, work and public life.
There is a commitment to deepening work on antisemitism. Governments have worked on Jewish community safety and tackling hatred with community partners for three decades. The murder at the synagogue in Heaton tragically demonstrated that this is not sufficient to deal with the contemporary threat.
There are new foundations to address anti-Muslim hatred, too. The government is adopting a new “non-statutory” definition of anti-Muslim hostility, and introducing a new advisory role, analogous to the existing advisory role on antisemitism. It makes sense for the new definition to move away from the term “Islamophobia” – since the policy aim should not be to protect a faith, Islam, from critique. What it should do is protect its followers – Muslims – from unfair hostility or prejudice against them on the basis that they are Muslim. Past governments have often used the terms Islamophobia and anti-Muslim hatred as interchangeable synonyms over the last quarter of a century. Indeed, it was the last Conservative government which made a commitment to seek a stronger consensus on how to define Islamophobia or anti-Muslim prejudice back in 2019, before abandoning that effort three years later. Kemi Badenoch, as equalities secretary, placed a good deal of emphasis on why “anti-Muslim hatred” was a clearer term. Despite winning that argument, the opposition may critique whether it does more harm than good to focus on this specific prejudice, though there is a broad consensus for doing so on antisemitism.
Most people would able to agree that it is not prejudiced to critique ideas from any faith or political perspective; nor to debate, in good faith, the challenges of identity and integration in Britain today. But we should be able to seek common ground too on agreeing that it is prejudiced to discriminate against Muslims for being Muslims, to hold all Muslims responsible for the actions of an extreme minority, or to have the type of conversation about Muslims that nobody involved would expect Muslims to be part of. A “non-statutory” definition will not change the legal boundaries of what is considered criminal. Violence, abuse and harassment are against the law: those crimes can be aggravated by racial or religious hostility.
What few people realise is that much prejudice is lawful speech. For example, “never vote for a Jew or Muslim – they can never be loyal citizens of our country,” is lawful yet clearly prejudiced speech. That is not a matter for the police or courts. But civic institutions – including political parties – should seek to exclude such sweeping prejudices. That principle should apply consistently across all groups, while focusing resources on the most urgent issues. The action plan notes that there were 4,478 religious hate crimes against Muslims in the year to March 2025, representing almost half of all religious hate crimes recorded. So the government’s focus on addressing religiously motivated hatred across different target groups matters. At the same time, the government’s thinking about how to address the underlying causes of racial hatred – where there were around 100,000 recorded hate crimes – are considerably sketchier, despite its acknowledgment of a rising climate of racism.
Protecting What Matters acknowledges that it is an attempt to provide the foundations for further action, more than the final word. Keir Starmer takes aim at the “digital grifters, hostile states, politicians of grievance” with a vested interest in division in his call to action. Yet the government’s plan is more confident about how to strengthen local resilience than in what is can do to contest the acceleration of division in real time – such as those who do not just fear inter-ethnic tensions could generate civil war, but often seem to be trying to make that a self-fulfilling prophecy.
In pressured and polarised times, it is undoubtedly difficult to challenge competing zero-sum claims and grievances about what feels unfair and who feels unheard. The action plan outlines some of the core responsibilities of government to provide the foundations. A stronger story of why this matters might catalyse more action from institutions outside of government, and citizens ourselves, to make our contribution too.
