Where does Danny Boyle's Britain go from here? But Miliband was not addressing mobility. He was tackling its more complex consequences: how does a society cohere as its composition changes? Last week's Census showed that 13 per cent of the population of England and Wales in 2011 were born overseas, while less than 45 per cent of Londoners describe themselves as white British. In his call for integration, the Labour leader correctly rejected both assimilation (compared by the Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, to life in a country house where all must dress identically for dinner) and separation (or as the Labour leader put it, life in a hotel where "you are simply a paying guest who can put the 'do not disturb" sign outside the door"). On the latter point, I would like to hear more from Miliband about the damage done by Labour town halls in the past, encouraging local Balkanisation through a combination of moral relativism, disdain for anything which smacked of British tradition, and a confusion of cultural diversity with cultural anarchy. The phrase "political correctness gone mad" is usually a lazy cliché, often misused to sneer at simple good manners and courtesy: but, in reference to the Labour municipal ideology of the Eighties and Nineties, it is aptly applied. That said, Miliband is right to put the learning of English at the centre of his argument, to give it priority over translation services, to insist upon its inclusion in home school agreements where foreign-born pupils are struggling, and to expect care workers to have a firm command of the language. This is the heart of the matter, embracing opportunity and dignity. What chance does a child born in Somalia have in an inner-city comprehensive if he cannot speak English? What is the 90-year-old war widow, living alone on the 20th floor of Caliban Towers, to make of the well-meaning Slovenian care worker to whom she cannot communicate her needs and anxieties? No subject attracts platitudes and bromides like this one. Even so, a sharp strategic divide is emerging between the two main parties on integration - a divide that needs to be excavated from all the polite language and Whitehall jargon. The Government's position is set out in "Creating the Conditions for Integration," issued by the Department for Communities and Local Government in February. I find it hard to read, let alone take seriously, any document that uses the phrase "going forward." None the less, the paper makes clear the Government's belief that national strategies and new laws are much less effective than local initiatives. "Our new approach is focused on how we create the conditions for integration to happen," the document states, drawing particular attention to the Localism Act of 2011. In contrast, Miliband's approach remains unashamedly centralised: he wants stronger regulation of the private rental sector to prevent the squalid segregation of immigrants, new "labour standards" and inspection of employers to identify those "where there are more than 25 per cent migrant workers." Business will undoubtedly fear protectionism-by-stealth and uncompetitive intervention in the labour market - one of many economic anxieties that Miliband and Ed Balls will have to allay. Behind every such speech or policy intervention lurks a deeper fear. The starter pack for anyone addressing these issues is the Cantle Report of 2001 into the riots in Burnley, Oldham and Bradford ("There has been little attempt to develop clear values which focus on what it means to be a citizen of a modern multi-racial Britain"). More recent is David Lammy's excellent book on the disorder of 2011, Out of the Ashes. "These were not race riots," writes Lammy. But they could have been. There was more than one moment when a racial powder keg was close to exploding. To curb the dual forces of extremism and disaggregation, we need "an encounter culture in which it becomes commonplace and rewarding to interact with people from other backgrounds, races and religions." Easier said than done, of course, though Lammy is not short on practical suggestion. On Friday, his party leader strode on to the same perilous terrain. He intends to return - as does the Prime Minister. This is especially welcome at a time of economic hardship. As the great American community organiser Saul Alinsky observed: "When a bus has only a few empty seats, the crowd trying to get on will push and shove; if there are many empty seats, the crowd will be courteous and considerate." Right now, empty seats are pretty scarce. Control of immigration is essentially a question of efficiency: building an administrative machine that works. The nurturing of integration is infinitely more complex. It is a matter of simple observation that we inhabit a pluralistic society, a house of many mansions. What takes courage is to identify, and insist upon, the points of non-negotiable conformity: the area of common ground beyond obedience to the law. There is no issue more delicate, or more pressing, for the 21st-century politician than this, for at its core pulses the most basic question of all: in an age of hectic change, how are we to live? Answers on a postcard, please.