Dear George Walden,
You may be surprised to find me writing to you from the pages of the New Statesman. But given that Time to Emigrate is written as a letter to your son, it seemed appropriate for me to present my thoughts in a similar fashion. Though your book is specifically addressed to your son, it is directed more generally to anyone with "a young family on average earnings in a dramatically changing country". The country you describe is plagued by House of Lords reform, teenage binge drinking, gambling and immigration. You argue that mass immigration has affected the state school system, weakened a common sense of being British and left the health service struggling. You identify a decimation of quality of life with an angry and alienated underclass on the rampage and a middle class living in fear of crime and terrorism. Your verdict is that "the underclass the British have spawned is the largest, the least literate, the most drunk and drugged, the most antisocial, the most violent and the most stubbornly unresponsive to treatment".
Time to Emigrate reads like a companion piece to Steve Lowe and Alan McArthur's Is It Just Me Or Is Everything Shit?, currently one of this country's bestselling books. What do you think that says about Britain? Recent emigration figures seem to confirm your arguments. More Britons are leaving the country than ever: 380,000 people last year, a number that has risen by more than 100,000 in the past ten years. This could be because they agree with you. But it could also be that these days more people have the means to do so than during the years when the Conservatives were in power and you were a Tory MP.
There's a common argument that emerges every time anyone from an immigrant background behaves in a way that seems to challenge mainstream British society. Someone will inevitably say: "If you hate this country so much, why don't you just leave?" If the prospects are as bleak as you suggest, I am not surprised your son is considering leaving. But your son has no intention of emigrating. Why would he? One of your sons is a jazz musician, the other is a landscape gardener, and your daughter is a journalist. Your letter is addressed to an "imagined son", and the incident that apparently prompts this musing on emigrating "did not necessarily happen".
There are things I dislike about modern Britain. But I do not feel glum about its future. Despite the challenges, I would rather be living in the present than 20, 30 or 40 years ago. It is easy to romanticise the past, just as it is easy to imagine that other countries do not have their problems. I love living in Britain and I want to do my part in making it better. Maybe that's how your children also feel - your actual children, rather than the son you imagined for the purposes of your gloomy and grumpy little book.
Sarfraz Manzoor's "Greetings from Bury Park: race, religion and rock'n'roll" will be published by Bloomsbury in 2007
