THE ENGLISH

English nationhood has been the major issue emerging from the Labour conference. An attack on Englishness was spearheaded by both the new Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, and Keir Starmer, the prime minister. In her speech, Shabana Mahmood said:

‘It is an honour to address you for the first time as a Labour Home Secretary … it is an honour I never expected. And it is one that would have been unthinkable to my parents when they first arrived here in the 1970s. But if this is a story of progress, it is a contested one … On 13 September, 150,000 people marched through London. They did so under the banner of a convicted criminal and a former BNP member … Twenty-six police officers were injured as they tried to keep the peace. And while not everyone chanted racist slogans, some did, clear that in their view of this country, I have no place. It would be easy to dismiss this as nothing but an angry minority – heirs to the skinheads and Paki-bashers of old. And make no mistake, some were. But to dismiss what happened that day would be to ignore something bigger, something broader, that is happening across this country. The story of who we are is contested.

Patriotism, a force for good, is turning into something smaller. Something more like ethno-nationalism, which struggles to accept that someone who looks like me, and has a faith like mine, can truly be English or British … but there are others, a growing number, who are on a path from patriotism towards ethno-nationalism, and this can be stopped.’

Of immigration, Shabana Mahmood said that ‘people feel like things are spinning out of control’ and that there was a need to secure the borders, which would ensure that the public would continue to accept asylum seekers and be ‘tolerant and generous’. She believed that Labour needed to ‘fight for our belief in a greater Britain, not a littler England. That work begins at our borders, where we must restore order and control … The British public will accept those fleeing peril. But they will not do so if there is chaos at our border.’

Shabana Mahmood further said that there would be a review of the rules around indefinite leave to remain and was minded to increase the period ‘from five years to 10’ along with some conditions before an immigrant qualified for that status. She finished by repeating her condemnation of ‘a smaller, more divisive ethno-nationalism’.

In his speech, Keir Starmer asserted that ‘Britain stands at a fork in the road. We can choose decency. Or we can choose division. Renewal or decline. A country – proud of its values, in control of its future. Or one that succumbs, against the grain of our history. To the politics of grievance.’ The alternative to grievance, we were told, was ‘The path of renewal. There will be a new country. A fairer country. A land of dignity and respect. Everyone seen. Everyone valued.’ Keir Starmer continued: ‘That’s national renewal. A Britain built for all. But there is another path. We can call it the path of decline – but in truth it leads to ruin. To chaos. To Britain being poorer in every sense … There’s a quick fix. A miracle cure. The Brexit lies on the side of that bus. “Click here for your new country”. We can all see these snake oil merchants.’ Keir Starmer wanted ‘A Britain built for all’ – a term he used repeatedly.

Keir Starmer believed that the problems started with the financial crash of 2008, ‘When a new Britain should have been born.’ Instead, there was complacency. ‘We placed too much faith in globalisation. The establishment – across so many institutions in hock to its lazy assumptions. That immigration is all we need to give us the workers. Infrastructure will always be there because we built it decades ago. The world always on hand to give us the goods. “It doesn’t matter if our industry leaves”.’ On this, Keir Starmer was closer to the UK’s true problems. But that was as far as he went.

In fact, the UK has been in relative economic decline for around 150 years. More recently that decline has been absolute. Growth barely exists, GDP per capita is falling, and even Third World countries are now overtaking the UK.

Keir Starmer was in an aggressive state of mind: ‘Because this is no time for dividers. This is the time for bringing the whole country together … Because while we must come together to fight Reform, with everything that this movement has. We must go into that battle armed, not just with words and condemnation. But with action. And that means tackling all the problems that they prey upon. All the problems.’

That included immigration, of which Keir Starmer stormed: ‘But conference, conference… secure borders are also vital for a decent, compassionate country … And there’s nothing compassionate or progressive in a vile trade that loads people into overcrowded boats, puts them in grave danger in the Channel, and ultimately exploits human desperation and hope. So mark my words we will stop this. We will smash the gangs. We will crack down on illegal working. We will remove people with no right to be here. And we will secure Britain’s borders.’

Keir Starmer used the issue of free speech to take a swipe at the English:

‘Free speech is a British value – and we have guarded it for centuries. But if you incite racist violence and hatred, that’s not expressing concern – it’s criminal … And if you say or imply that people cannot be English or British because of the colour of their skin; that mixed heritage families owe you an explanation; and that people who have lived here for generations, raised their children here, built lives in their communities, working in our schools, our hospitals, running businesses, our neighbours – If you say they should now be deported, then mark my words, We will fight you with everything we have because you are an enemy of national renewal.’

So far as Shabana Mahmood’s condemnation of ethno-nationalism is concerned, the debate about ethno-nationalism versus civic nationalism has been around in academia since the 1980s. Shabana Mahmood did not mention the term ‘civic nationalism’, but she advocates it nonetheless. Nationalism is simply love of nation, and patriotism is simply love of country.

A country’s nation is its Staatsvolk (state’s people) – an academic term – who are the people who formed a country, and are responsible for its culture and institutions. The Staatsvolk of England are the English. They called themselves the Engle and created Engle-land: England. The Romans called them the Angles, or Anglo-Saxons to encompass the Saxons too.

Although nationality and citizenship are terms used loosely, nationality is inherited and citizenship is conferred by the state. Immigrants, if awarded citizenship, become British citizens. There is no such thing as English citizenship. The English are an ethnic nation within the UK, and England is the country they created and developed. Immigrants cannot become English.

The role of the Staatsvolk is not controversial. That role was acknowledged in the Parekh Report of 2000, in which the multiculturalist bigwigs set out their plan to create a ‘multicultural post-nation’. That report expressly stated, without criticism, that ‘to be English is to be White’. They had no problem with that. Likewise, the Frankfurt School’s Jurgen Habermas, who proactively promoted civic nationalism in the 1980s and 1990s readily acknowledged a country’s Staatsvolk. He spoke of pre-political nationalism and contrasted that with his definition of republicanism. His aim was to cut the loyalty of the state to the pre-political nation and purge that nation’s culture from state institutions while promoting immigrant interests. This is what Labour are now intent on doing.

It is not the manner of immigration that has got the English riled up, but the scale of it. The Boriswave of immigration has put the English into a situation whereby they will become a minority in England in the foreseeable future. They are already a minority in London and are poised to become so in other cities in the near future. A falling English birthrate and the high immigrant birthrates are a major factor, meaning that self-preservation requires a policy of remigration. There is widespread support for such a policy and that support is growing.

Mass immigration must end. The Boriswave and their families need to return to their home countries as their visas expire. They should not get indefinite leave to remain, another visa, nor citizenship. Criminals and those hostile to the English need to be deported.

Keir Starmer’s attempt to bring skin colour into his attack on the English is stupid and irrelevant (‘if you say or imply that people cannot be English or British because of the colour of their skin … If you say they should now be deported, then mark my words, We will fight you with everything we have because you are an enemy of national renewal’). Skin colour does not come into being English. The English are White. As are other Europeans. A White immigrant from any other country in Europe is not English nor can become so. It is Keir Starmer and Labour who are stirring up hatred. They are peddling race war politics and anti-Whiteism.

The allegation that immigrants become English is antisense (Marxist, malevolent, pre-meditated gibberish). It is as much antisense as the allegations that men can become women, women can become men, or that men can give birth. Pure gibberish.