Never believe that anti‐ Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti‐Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past. It is not that they are afraid of being convinced. They fear only to appear ridiculous or to prejudice by their embarrassment their hope of winning over some third person to their side.
- Jean-Paul Sartre
I get you, but English is the only language required throughout the UK because of similarly xenophobic policies in the past.
My argument isn't meant to be the final gotcha and suddenly Keir will reverse policy, it's to give another perspective, another point of attack, another reason on top of all the others as to why this is a bullshit policy. A reason not likely thought about by monolingual English speakers.
Gaelic was exterminated through various government policies. Yes it was slowly, naturally, losing to English anyway but instead of allowing a bilingual society to thrive it was stamped out through force, both at the end of a gun and at the end of a belt in classrooms.
Cornish, Welsh, Irish, are all as native a language to this island as English. Why does English get priority? Because of colonial oppression. And this is another oppressive policy. More authoritarian policy from a supposed left wing Labour party. More pandering to racists like Reform.