by Madeline Grant, Spectator
Comfortable England has an empathy problem; it is willing to contort itself into paroxysms of emotion for migrants yet remains incapable of listening to concerns of the communities affected by mass migration
Like much of Radio 4’s output, Thought for the Day is something of a curate’s egg – sometimes enlightening and a source of inspiration or comfort. Often, however, it’s sanctimonious; auricular masturbation for the comfortable.
The BBC has been heavily criticised for its segment on Wednesday morning, featuring Dr Krish Kandiah, a theologian and author, discussing ‘fear’ in relation to the migrant crisis. His reflections amount to a series of boilerplate platitudes beloved by open borders advocates. He calls for ‘empathy over suspicion’, ‘listening before judging’, ‘building bridges not walls’. While the Church’s managerial class will have nodded sagely along to all this, I wonder how representative this sort of intellectually diluted, unexamined rehashing of comfortable tropes about ‘nasty xenophobia’ really is among the ordinary people in the pews. After all, plenty of churchgoers will know what the less rose-tinted practical realities of mass migration actually look like.
Read also: Thought for the Day guest doubles down on Jenrick ‘xenophobia’ claim by Tom McArdle and Fiona Parker, Telegraph