The ethnicity debate has now gone from the far right fringes of politics and into mainstream. We’ve had Suella Braverman (correctly) stating that she is not English, and Ben Obese-reJecty MP claiming he is (even though he’s Ghanaian, and previously said as much), and Rishi Sunak saying he feels English therefore he is, despite having Indian parents, marrying an Indian, and raising his children in the Indian tradition. Meanwhile, we’ve seen David Aaronovitch and Dan Hodges asserting that English isn’t an ethnicity at all. They’re all over the shop.
There's a lot of resistance to the idea that the English are a distinct people even among English people. The multiculturalist indoctrination runs deep. But there’s more to it than that. A great many English people will think of their friends and colleagues of another ethnic origin as equal in all things (apart from the Welsh) - and couldn't, and wouldn't tell them otherwise. That does not mean English ethnicity does not exist. It just speaks to the fundamental decency of most English people.
We tend not to like blood and soil ethno-nationalism, and regard it as a little grubby because it is not generally in our nature to exclude people on that basis. It is part of our Christian character. Our sense of decency overrides it. While I do see the logic in ethno-nationalist arguments, and very often agree, there is still something I really don't like about it on an instinctive level - not least because of what it leads to when you follow it to its logical conclusion.
You see this when you grow up in a place like Bradford. Where I lived, there was a Pakistani corner shop, and one day the owner's car was daubed with racist graffiti. "Pakis go home it said".
Generally speaking, Pakistanis aren't liked in Bradford and that was the case before grooming gangs were heard of. Not least because they came here without our consent. They were not needed or wanted, and their presence hasn't been beneficial. But nobody condoned the racist graffiti, everybody rallied round to offer support. Whatever our feeling about mass immigration, we frown on racist harassment.
That's still my basic software. I hate mass immigration. I want most of it reversed. And while you may find it difficult to believe, I detest racism against the person. I hold what could easily be regarded as racist attitudes because there are certain cultures I really do not like and will never be persuaded out of that. I do not believe any culture of faith is above criticism. It is, however, not in my nature to be abusive without proper cause.
There's carve-out for behaviour on social media, of course, because it’s a political platform where we do politics, and its a space inhabited by the worst race grifters who actively court racist abuse, and deserve what they get. I like a racist shitpost as much as the next guy - because good satire always has some basis in truth.
As such, stepping over the line from where my politics are to where hardliner ethno-nationalists are is a bridge too far for me, especially when it encompasses Jews who have made a massive contribution to the economic, social, and cultural life of the country. Jews are behind some iconic British brands such as Triumph motorcycles, Airfix, and Tesco (founded by JE Cohen, who flew in Royal Flying Corps in the First World War).
It just falls apart when I'm expected to accept that anyone who holds a British passport is "just as British as me" where there are virtually no barriers to obtaining a British passport - and when recent immigrants are low IQ garbage from the third world who will never contribute anything, and whose presence makes Britain objectively worse. It has cheapened and diluted the very concept of citizenship, in a way that is very difficult to repair. Ethno-nationalism is an inevitable consequence of this.
Ethno-nationalism, though, is not a useful ideological/policy framework because there are some people of all ethnic backgrounds who have a right to be here and in fact deserve to be here - not least a great many Europeans - some of whom are as dear to us as our own families.
This is why I think it's a mistake for political parties to get sucked into the ethnicity debate. Some would have it that its a binary question much the same as biological sex, but there are nuances to ethnicity and there is no workable ethnicity based system to ascertain who should be here and who shouldn't, unless your objective is an exclusive ethno-state where belonging is contingent on skin colour and not a lot else. That's not practical or reasonable, or even likely - and this is where Peter Hitchens is right. Any attempt to bring it about would likely be monstrous. The last such European attempt is still within living memory, and it's what historians have often described as "bad".
At the opposite end of the policy spectrum, meanwhile we have the multiculturalist, whose answer to this predicament is to deny the very existence of British ethnicities, and base our society instead on nebulous humanist values, and make no demands of incomers to fit in. That won't work either. It's part of the reason we are seeing a resurgence of ethno-nationalism.
I'm of the view that if you want the ethnicity debate to go away then you have to make nationality mean something more than just an official document. If you want a society built on "British values" then you have to define them and uphold them - and exclude people who do not exemplify them. Certainly, it means nothing if a nation does not have borders.
As to what defines those values, that's a broader philsophical question. The English are an island race. Our culture and psychology evolved separately from the continent. We are different - and we have different values, which is why we have different politics, a different national psyche and fundamentally different attitudes. As such British values are not abstract from British people.
I could have a pretty decent stab at defining them, but right now I am more interested in the emergency fixes to avert a broader societal unravelling that could easily take us to the brink of civil war. The philosophical debates can wait. Right now we need to deport all illegals, abolish ILR, reverse the Boriswave, and end Islamic sectarianism once and for all - even if that means shuttering mosques, banning the burka and deleting all welfare entitlements for anyone whose parents were not born here.
I don't know if that will be enough to repair the social fabric but it sounds like a pretty good start to me. I'd rather get cracking with that before we break out the DNA testing kits, and bore ourselves into extinction with protracted debates over who is and isn't English.
I am English. My name means forest dweller, as you might deduce.
I can trace my maternal blood line back to Elizabethan England. I guess that makes me English to such extent as any of us are purely anything.
My friend is English in the sense he was born in Morley. His parents were Serbian. They came here to escape the nazis. His father, once here, joined the Royal Navy and fought in WW2. BUT, he is not ethnically English. He is Serbian and he looks Serbian. Nonetheless, he has every right to be here. For practical purposes he is English but he is in fact just British. We agree on this. He has a British passport which was earned by his father at the very least.
You can become British but you cannot become English, Welsh, Scots or Irish.
What I am suggesting is a civic sense of British nationalism, which isn't very satisfactory if you can just rock up and get one the next day, which is where we are at.
British passports need to be earned and that means behaving in a way commensurate with that status.
I found out today that we now have people coming here from Sth America to escape socialism and being granted asylum on that basis.
This has to stop and all aliens need to be deported.
It’s somewhat amusing that this has come up at the same time as the Sheeran debacle.
Sheeran maybe 1/4 Irish and self identifies as ‘culturally Irish’ but he isn’t Irish anymore than I, as a Brit with an Irish mother. I’m Anglo Irish, and to my culturally sensitive cousins, a Brit.
I can’t choose otherwise: I can’t opt in. I might over time if I so was inclined live a long time in RoI and be accepted by locals as Irish, but slapping a label on me (O’im oirish so tharr) because I feel I am does not make me so.
I am however English according to my cousins. Or certainly British.
For me? I identify as British not least because I can cover all bases there: 2 Irish grandparents, 1 English, 1 Welsh. British is a coverall for multiple identities. Always has been always will. But opting into English without a birthright means effectively claiming something you aren’t. I don’t think that makes me an Ethno: I just accept that the British label works for me because I am a mix and comfortable with that. I speak with RP and my cousins identify me as English but I know I am a mix. And that’s fine.
A bit like the Sheeran situation: a man who knows little of Ireland has decided he knows how the post independence, post civil war mindset possibly works with regards to politics. Because he is ‘culturally Irish’.
No he isn’t. And no he doesn’t. Hanging out in Galway listening to folk bands does not entitle you to that label.
Had he done the ‘I’m no longer British, but Irish’ I suspect he might have got more leeway. But ‘culturally’? Dead in the water. And that’s the point of ‘Britishness’: it’s a coverall for multiple identities: it was designed for Welsh, English, Irish and Scottish identities. Or even those who apply for a passport.
It is expansive and can be made more so. English however is somewhat more prescriptive. And should be. As per RoI you don’t get to nominally opt yourself into that label because frankly you don’t ‘know’. I think Konstantin Kisin has the right of this. He is as British as I am. He is not ‘English’ and neither really am I. And that’s cool. Both of us *want* to be British. And there is no reason why that shouldn’t be so. Provided we cleave to British values.