Liberals are in denial over the devastating cultural impact of mass migration

There are few activities modern-day politicians relish more than imposing bans on the rest of us, and this week it’s first-cousin marriage on the chopping block. Former Tory chairman Richard Holden – a man so principled he staged a chicken run just before the July election – has tabled a proposal to outlaw these unions on the grounds they increase the risk of birth defects and “control women”.

Does he have a point? Scandinavian countries are moving towards a clampdown, with Norway adopting a ban earlier this year. The risk to offspring of consanguineous couples is certainly greater – by one to two percentage points according to some estimates – but is still very low; roughly the same as it is for mothers over 40. But we don’t ban sex among quadragenarians. And I doubt those opposed to cousin unions would accept them among the over 60s.

Throughout Western history attitudes towards cousin unions have fluctuated. Eleanor of Aquitaine’s marriage to Louis VII was annulled on the grounds of consanguinity; she then married Henry, Duke of Normandy, to whom she was more closely related. Queen Victoria wed her first cousin, as did Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein. Rudy Giuliani annulled his marriage to a second cousin once removed on the grounds they hadn’t received dispensation from the Catholic Church, which prohibited the practice in the early Middle Ages.

The scholar Jonathan Schulz considers this ban a turning point for Western societies, one which fostered individualism, independence, higher trust of strangers, and lower conformity and nepotism. Until Rome intervened, marriage among cousins was common practice, gelling tribes together and leading to demarcation with other clans. After the change, our societies opened and flourished.

In the Commons yesterday, Independent MP Iqbal Mohamed – whose speech has been subsequently sneered at, as though only a fool could defend cousin marriage – reminded us how common it remains in parts of the world, noting “an estimated 35 per cent to 50 per cent of all sub-Saharan African populations either prefer or accept cousin marriage”. One academic has put the rate of cousin marriage within Britain’s Pakistani community at between 38 and 59 per cent.

Even assuming Holden’s objections are legitimate, the challenges of enforcement are being ignored – as is so often the case with knee-jerk prohibitions foisted on us by our illiberal ruling class. Would we jail people for marrying their cousins? Separate children from parents or break up existing unions? Some couples would choose to cohabit rather than tie the knot, some might go overseas to marry. Others would wed their second cousins: what does the government do then?

No problem would be solved with this legislation, but a few might be created. Given how concentrated consanguineous relationships are in certain communities, a move designed to facilitate integration could have the opposite effect, stoking resentment and ill-feeling. When Roma children were taken into care in July, it sparked days of unrest in Leeds. Then there’s the likelihood that existing couples – and their offspring – would feel stigmatised.

Press opponents of this practice and you may discover their real discomfort stems not from an arrangement made between two consenting adults, but the failure by successive governments to fully integrate the millions who have flocked to Britain in recent years. UK cities are home to insular communities, where, mentally, some residents are still living in a foreign village.

There are genuine concerns that cultural norms which are anathema to Western liberal values are being imported and enduring through generations, with certain groups as sequestered from wider society as they were two decades ago. Migration Observatory research indicates some 17 per cent of recent migrants cannot speak English well or at all. Over a fifth of non-EU born residents are living in a household where no people have English as a main language.

Nowhere is this bifurcation from society and our economy more pronounced than among women, with the worklessness rate for those of Pakistani and Bangladeshi heritage much higher than among white or Indian women. This flows into other areas: under-fives of Bangladeshi heritage are much less likely to be in formalised childcare, meaning they risk missing out on bonding with peers at an early age. The Left might argue these cultural practices are a welcome by-product of our multi-ethnic society, but they call into question our hard-won progress in areas such as gender equality.

Banning cousin marriage is unlikely to remedy these issues. It’s yet more displacement activity, a way for politicians to pretend they’re correcting mistakes of the past while achieving nothing. In the West, consanguineous relations might feel “icky”, but the same could be said of fat men in Speedos. Let this sleeping dog lie.