How Star Trek: The Next Generation Shaped My Politics and Gave Me Hope for Britain

When I was little, my dad used to watch Star Trek: The Next Generation. He’d sit in the living room, quiet and focused, and I’d wander in and join him. We didn’t say much, but we were both watching, sharing something bigger than ourselves. He was watching a vision of the future. And I think, I was watching it too.

The Enterprise wasn’t just a ship. It was a symbol. A place where people from wildly different worlds, literally, worked together, lived side by side, and faced the future as one. A Klingon warrior. A blind engineer. An android who longed to understand humanity. An empath. A captain guided by logic, principle, and peace. They all had their own quarters, their own beliefs, their own ways of life, but when it mattered, when the call came, they stood together on the bridge. And they flew forward, together.

That show has stayed with me all my life. And looking back, I realise: that’s where my liberalism was born. “We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity,” Picard once said. That idea stayed with me.

I saw it again yesterday. Not in space. But on the Underground. I was travelling in my wheelchair, navigating busy trains, inaccessible platforms, stairs where lifts should be. And it was people, real people, from every background imaginable, who came to help. They didn’t stop to ask where I was from or what I believed. They just saw someone who needed help. And they lifted me. They carried my chair. They helped me up the stairs, down the stairs, on and off the train. No one was in uniform. No one was being paid. It was kindness. Human instinct. Human culture.

And there it was again, the Federation. Not science fiction. Real life.

We could build that. Right here. In Britain. We could be the nation that shows the world what happens when diversity is embraced, not feared. When we stop clinging to a past that no longer fits, and start writing the future together. But right now, we’re at a crossroads. One part of this country wants to move forward. The other wants to rewind.

We’re told that “British culture is under threat” but what does that even mean? A particular accent? A uniform past? Tea without spice? Culture isn’t porcelain. It’s not something you keep in a glass cabinet and dust off now and then. Culture is alive. It breathes. It shifts. It absorbs. It learns.

Trying to protect it by freezing it in time is like trying to keep a flame alive by sealing it in a jar. You don’t preserve the fire, you smother it.

And here’s where the contradiction becomes painful.

We hold such reverence for the Second World War, and rightly so. We remember the courage of those who fought. We celebrate their sacrifice. But we forget why they fought. British soldiers weren’t just defending Britain. They were defending France, Poland, India, Africa, Jewish life, and ultimately humanity, against a regime that believed one culture should dominate all others. That war was not a fight for cultural purity. It was a fight against it.

So when people today call for a singular “British culture” and reject multiculturalism as a threat, they forget the very principle we claimed to fight for: the freedom for people and cultures to exist side by side, not under domination, but with dignity.

The truth is, no culture survives by standing still. The world has seen it over and over again: civilisations that refused to evolve eventually disappeared. Empires that tried to dominate others collapsed under their own weight. Languages faded, customs disappeared, and walls crumbled, not because of invasion, but because they stopped adapting.

Progress doesn’t destroy culture, it transforms it. And transformation isn’t loss, it’s life.

Britain is not a single thread. It’s a tapestry. We are made of Romans and Saxons. Normans and Celts. Jews and Huguenots. Caribbeans. Bengalis. Nigerians. Poles. Somalis. Syrians. Each culture that arrived here brought something new: a flavour. A rhythm. A proverb. A tool. A joke. A thread. If you try to pull one thread out, the whole thing unravels. But when each thread is respected, the tapestry becomes stronger.

Imagine a Britain where we understood that. Where the Pakistani doctor and the Welsh nurse work side by side to save a life. Where the Jamaican bus driver and the Polish carer share a joke in the staff room. Where a Muslim mother and a Jewish father sit beside each other at a school play. Where a white British man in his seventies is helped off a bus by a young Eritrean woman who smiles and calls him “sir.” Imagine a Britain where these everyday moments aren’t seen as exceptions, but as the norm. Imagine a Britain where difference is ordinary, and cooperation is heroic.

That’s the Britain I believe in. That’s what my dad and I were watching on the bridge of the Enterprise, without ever saying a word. That’s what I felt in my wheelchair on the Underground yesterday, when hands reached out from every corner of humanity to lift me. That’s what liberalism means to me. Not bureaucracy. Not theory. But people. Helping people. Free to be who they are, and united in a shared mission.

We don’t all have to look the same, worship the same, speak the same, or live the same. But we do have to walk the bridge together. Because the future is coming. Whether we’re ready or not.

As Captain Picard once said: “The first duty of every Starfleet officer is to the truth, whether it’s scientific truth, or historical truth, or personal truth.”

This is mine. And maybe it’s yours too.

Set a course for unity.

Set a course for compassion.

Set a course for the future.

Engage.