Yasmin Alibhai-Brown: An eclectic country which retains its island mentality

One thing is for sure. I would never move to Easington in the north-east of England, the least diverse spot in Britain according to ONS figures. Kind though I am sure they are, the folk there would not, I guess, wish for such a move either. Brent is the most diverse local authority. (But even here, the dominant racial group is white.) Such places pulsate. You find them in city states like Venice once was and London has always been, global players, at ease with the cultural melange and mix - smells, textures and sights, thoughts, debates and challenges. World history walks here, drawn by a famous island nation. And in spite of racism and xenophobia, incomers settle. Natives embrace each new wave sooner than you might expect. Check out the number of marriages between Poles and white Britons, the latest romantic polluters of the gene pool. In local restaurants, schools, cinemas and streets mixed-race friends, families and lovers are the norm.

Institutions are changing - not fast enough - but more than I imagined in the days of Thatcherism. Her party stood for mean, little England; this week David Cameron invited the rest of us in. Labour and the Lib Dems are influenced at high levels by black, Jewish and Asian Britons. Millions of young people have imbibed anti-racism and internationalism. Objectors to the Iraq war were of all hues and cultures. We are living in the best of times and yet, simultaneously, the worst of times.

There is another island nation which fears the stranger, wants high walls to keep out the multiracial wash, is pitiless in its rejection of non Anglo-Saxon peoples and their ways - curries notwithstanding. (Remember 87 per cent of Britain is white and 75 per cent Christian.) Here things are getting appallingly hostile. The anti-Muslim riots in Windsor, the whites who voted for the BNP in Barking, blatant and shameless middle-class racism makes me wonder if there is a future for the Britain I praise. Muslim separatist fanatics feed the prejudiced. In small pockets there is a ghetto mentality if not quite the reality. White no-go localities are becoming lethal places for outsiders. (Why no official concern about these ghettoes?) Instead of being damned these working class anti-heroes get sympathetic attention.

Inter-ethnic and inter-religious rancour increases among the young and most-educated too. State policies have heightened tribal consciousness; unemployment rates among British-born ethnic groups are twice that of whites. People who have succeeded still fight for recognition.

But this is still the only country in the world for most of us. Why do you think so many immigrants die (literally in many cases) to get here? The US has lost its hold on the world's imagination; European nations have still to catch up with where we were in the 1970s. Britons, though, obsessively dwell on the negative and take the positive for granted. Real life acts up and into our fearful fantasies captured in rubbish books on "Londonistan", the country as it continually changes colour, liberates us all, releases chances, courage and creativity, links us to the past and great ideas of the present; it opens doors we never knew were there. The London explosions tried but couldn't obliterate that spirit. Our nation's psychotic preoccupation with bad news on integration and race will succeed where bombs failed.