France had the Terror and Spain the Civil War, England had a few yobs rioting against our Caribbean community in the 1950s, a few scuffles between left and right in the 1970s, and a smattering of burning and looting 13 years ago.

You’d have to go back to the English Civil Wars of the 17th century to find an example of internecine violence here. Our national self-image is one of extreme stoicism; “Musn’t grumble,” my parents’ generation replied when asked how they were, which infuriated me as a teenager but for which I yearn now. 

Lately it seems like there’s a new combination of conflagrations every week — a fresh riot every night. The climate of unrest started with the October 7 massacre in Israel, after which central London became a no-go area for Jews each weekend as angry Muslims demanded “jihad.”

We’ve also had a Black customers versus Asian shopkeepers ruckus, an intra-Bangladeshi scuffle, a Roma riot and, since the stabbing of three little girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dancing class in a seaside town by the son of Rwandan immigrants, violent protests in London and beyond.

The country is like a melting-pot, yes — but a melting-pot of molten anger. The government has laid the blame with everyone from “the far-right” to “the Russians” but this is to woefully and willfully misunderstand the unprecedentedly fractious and factional nature of modern Britain. 

Vast levels of immigration — bringing cheap labor for the rich and decreased wages for the poor — is at the core of much of this anger. “White Riot, I want a riot of my own,” the left-wing Clash sang back in the day, but now any white rioter will be called “right-wing” simply because of the color of their skin. 

This is exacerbated by the two-tier policing we have had for some time here. When non-whites riot, police tend to retreat, whereas when whites riot, police tend to charge. Prime Minister Starmer’s first in-office nickname is “Two-Tier” Keir — not an auspicious start for a man who promised to bring national unity.

White working-class boys are currently the most likely to fail at school and the least likely to succeed in life, yet they are told that their skin color confers “privilege.” Now they’re being told by the liberal establishment that their riots are the “wrong” kind of riot — but after applauding the riots of Black Lives Matter, it’s hard to put the genie back into the bottle just because he’s paler than they would prefer.

The election of the Labour government will only make matters worse; they have already reframed illegal immigration as “irregular migration,” leading to suspicions that the boats carrying thousands of young men (rarely children, women, or the old, which you generally find in genuine waves of refugees) will be turning up on our beaches even more frequently, thus making an already fraught situation worse.

“We tell ourselves stories in order to live,” wrote Joan Didion. Britain told itself a story of exceptionalism, of a small and united country whose heroism defeated Hitler because we were “all in it together,” king and Cockney suffering the same Blitz. We weren’t like those hot-headed Europeans, with their riots and vendettas and arcane partisan loyalties harking back to some older and darker idea of patriotism.

It turns out that we are. We had eight riots on Saturday, with more expected on Sunday; for a country as small as Britain, this feels momentous. The criminal courts will be open 24 hours a day to deal with those apprehended; there is talk of sending the army into the streets if they continue next weekend.

Draconian measures look unlikely to stop this wildfire. Thugs and opportunists on both sides are drawn to the riots  — but so are ordinary people baffled by what has happened to their country, a country they no longer recognise.

Matthew Arnold wrote in “Dover Beach” of a people “Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight / Where ignorant armies clash by night.” We are all on Dover Beach now, looking out to sea for a leader who will never come, to take our island people safely home, to a place that no longer exists.