Imagine standing in a crowded town square, watching a mob chant about “taking our country back”, while a young man of South Asian descent clutches his dark blue passport — a document that legally declares “British Citizen” but is treated by the rioters as a worthless piece of paper.
I am keen to explore the phenomenon currently occurring among the far right, extreme right, and radical right in the UK context in relation to the weaponisation of the characterisation of who is British and who is not. What the far right is trying to do today is claim that any minority person not born on UK soil is not really British, framing them as a perpetual foreigner. This is, of course, culturally, legally, and intellectually wrong. The legal definition within the UK citizenship framework, as established by law, has been deliberately distorted into a particular formation concerning the idea that to be British is to be, essentially and exclusively, white and English.
If all British people looked at their passports, nowhere would they find the word “English”. In fact, when it comes to the question of nationality, it says simply and squarely: “British”. “British” is the concept used to define a citizen of the United Kingdom, and this applies to the four nations — England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland — that constitute the state. Under the British Nationality Act 1981, citizenship is a civic status bestowed upon all qualifying persons, regardless of background, encompassing naturalisation, descent, and registration. Therefore, in many ways, the idea of Englishness has never really been the overarching legal national category since the Acts of Union. Yet radical actors actively ignore this constitutional reality, attempting to overwrite a civic, multi-national legal framework with an exclusionary, ethno-nationalist fantasy that conflates statehood with a specific racial heritage.
From an ethnic point of view, somebody who is Welsh, Irish, Scottish, or English belongs to a very limited category; in practice, Englishness essentially suggests an Anglo-Saxon heritage particular to the land of England. This is all very confusing and therefore open to different interpretations and applications, as well as to the risks that come with mobilisation by the far right. Thirty years ago, it was almost impossible for ethnic minorities to call themselves English because of the heavy connotations associated with Englishness as an ethnic category and its particular heritage. It was far more possible to call oneself British, precisely because it was a civic status bestowed upon citizens of the United Kingdom. Today, however, the radical right has inverted this dynamic, aggressively promoting “Englishness” as a weapon of exclusion while attempting to strip the civic, inclusive label of “Britishness” from minority communities.
This weaponisation is not merely theoretical; it has been actively deployed by various far-right and radical-right actors in the UK over the last couple of years. For instance, following the tragic Southport stabbings in the summer of 2024, figures associated with the English Defence League (EDL), Britain First, and Tommy Robinson mobilised riots explicitly framed around “reclaiming our streets” for the “native English”, deliberately targeting mosques and asylum hotels. Similarly, groups such as Patriotic Alternative explicitly define British identity through “white European” ethnic heritage, directly contradicting the legal reality of the passport. Even in mainstream political discourse, rhetoric surrounding “illegal migrants” subtly reinforces the far right’s premise that non-white immigrants are inherently un-British. These actors consistently use the visual symbolism of the St George’s Cross not as a historical flag but as an ethnic boundary marker to intimidate minority citizens.
This aggressive posturing clashes directly with the demographic and legal reality of the modern United Kingdom, rendering such exclusionary narratives entirely obsolete. This remains the case today for the roughly 15 to 18 per cent of the country that is of an ethnic minority background, as recorded in recent census data. More often than not, these are British citizens, though there are also those who have yet to claim citizenship or are in the process of doing so — including immigrants, asylum seekers, and new migrant groups, some of whom are white as well as non-white in terms of skin colour. What the far right is trying to do today is claim that any minority person not born on UK soil is not British but a foreigner. This is legally false; the Home Office grants full citizenship through naturalisation every year, meaning birthplace is not the sole criterion for being British.
While thirty years ago it was very difficult for ethnic minorities to be called English, Englishness is now seen much more in cultural terms. Cultural belonging in relation to Englishness is far more acceptable among ethnic minorities, and in many ways, many who are perhaps now three generations UK-born are indeed culturally English. Similarly, three generations of ethnic minorities born in Scotland may very confidently see themselves as culturally Scottish — while also identifying politically with the local nationalism often found in Scotland among minorities and majorities who feel proudly Scottish, irrespective of ethnic heritage. England carries these complex dynamics too. However, because England is the dominant partner in the Union, the ethno-nationalist capture of English identity by the far right poses a unique threat to the civic cohesion of the entire United Kingdom.
Ultimately, today we need to push back against anyone who would appropriate ideas of Britishness as simply a white ethnic category, because this is wrong, wholly problematic, and implausible in a legal, constitutional, or even cultural sense. Britishness belongs to all citizens of the United Kingdom, bound together by law and shared civic values rather than blood or birthplace.
When we return to that young man in the town square, clutching his dark blue passport amid the chants of the mob, we must recognise that his document is not a worthless piece of paper but the very embodiment of the law they seek to destroy. The far right may attempt to rewrite the dictionary of nationality, but the legal and cultural truth remains unaltered: the passport says British, and that is exactly what he, and millions like him, plainly are.