Integrate, migrants are told. But can they ever be good enough for the likes of Blair? | Aditya Chakrabortty

Be more British is the message from his thinktank. Why does the responsibility for racism always seem to fall on its victims?

Rarely do I associate Tony Blair with my mother. After all, they have little in common. One was prime minister and marched the UK into five wars in six years; the other taught for decades in east London primary schools, to which she drove in a cheery red Nissan Micra. But seeking respite from the oven of this weekend, I began reading Blair’s latest remarks on migrants – and found myself thinking instead of a beaming lady in a classroom.

Like so many of us, the former Labour leader is worried about “far-right bigotry”. However, he has a solution. It is simple. It is confident. It comes in his trademark declarative sentences. And it says that to beat racist thugs, their targets must try harder to blend in. They should be forced to do so by the government, acting as “an enforcer of the duty to integrate”. You see, “failures around integration have led to attacks on diversity and are partly responsible for a reaction against migration”.

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from The Guardian http://bit.ly/2vjHRTT