The language is stark, the message almost apocalyptic. Is Britain really ‘sleepwalking to segregation’, with ‘the walls going up round many of our communities’ and growing barriers to integration in cities where most of the population is non-white?

Not for the first time, the black chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, Trevor Phillips, is venturing into territory where few white politicians would dare to tread.

Didn’t the London bombings in July expose the dangers of a ghetto mentality encouraged by multiculturalism? Isn’t something very wrong when young British-born men are so alienated from the mainstream that they can plan mass murder against their fellow citizens?

If segregation is turning Britain into a ‘breeding ground’ for terrorists, as Mr Phillips argues, it is time to think again.

Should we encourage more Muslim faith schools, if they don’t cater for other religions too, as CofE and Catholic schools do? Can’t we at last find the courage to challenge the woefully misbegotten liberal obsession with multiculturalism?

Trevor Phillips has raised some serious issues. Don’t they demand honest debate?

Leader in the Daily Mail, 23 September 2005