In time both politicians and the public began to favour the wilfully optimistic version of events. So a minor or unimportant cultural trait – such as queuing or complaining about the weather in Britain – would be picked up on and run with. The fact that a particular immigrant enjoyed queuing or talking about the weather would be used as a demonstration that this immigrant – and by extension all immigrants – had become as integrated as anybody else. After the suicide bombers of the July 2005 attacks on London Transport were identified as British-born Muslims, it was discovered that one of them had worked in a fish-and-chip shop and had played cricket. Much was made of this, as though the hijacking of this perfectly English individual by a terrible hatred remained the main mystery. The idea that an entire culture had been transmitted to him through the medium of fish and chips was a way to delay facing up to the unpleasant discussions that lay beneath.

As the multicultural era started to break down, a scramble began to identify any country where the experiment had been working. During the aftermath of the 2005 attacks on London the British debated whether the model of French laicité did not perhaps point the way towards dealing with problems of integration. Then, after the growing number of home-grown terrorist attacks in France, there was a discussion over whether perhaps the Anglo-Saxon model had some merit. Meanwhile, much of the time Scandinavia was held up as providing a particular solution, until the problems of those countries in turn became clearer. Overall, members of the public could see what the policy-makers could not, which was that despite the differences between these various European countries, each one had failed in turn to assimilate the new arrivals.

There were criticisms of the ‘doughnut’ planning technique in French towns that seemed to keep the migrants to the edges of the city. But the same problems arose in countries that had tried to avoid such policies. So when a French politician would criticise the ‘parallel communities’ that had arisen in Britain because of the British model, precisely the same accusation could be made back in his own country.13 It would seem that although differences in planning laws between the various countries of Europe are a matter of interest, they are not in fact seismic. As for the educational systems of the various countries and their emphasis on one part or another of the curriculum, these are subjects of academic debate. But again, no one system seems to have worked especially well nor are any particularly more admirable than any other when it comes to the matter of actual results.