July 10 2026 - 7:00am
A new report has found that two in five Britons believe that Muslims cannot integrate into British society, while more than half think the country’s national identity is disappearing due to “diversity”. Authored by the UK’s first counter-extremism commissioner, Sara Khan, the survey also found that over three in five people believe the “social contract” through which the public put trust in UK institutions and norms has broken down. Are we witnessing a steady unraveling of Britain’s multi-ethnic, religiously diverse democracy?
The three “I”s of immigration, integration, and identity now occupy the heart of British socio-political discourse, following an era of unprecedented immigration-driven population change. Net international migration has driven nearly 98% of the UK’s population growth in recent years, with natural change — the number of births minus deaths — accounting for a tiny fraction.
In a report last year for Policy Exchange, which called for an emergency census in England, I found that an estimated 4.83 million people arrived in the UK from mid-2021 to mid-2025 in the form of long-term international migration. This has taken place despite the British electorate consistently backing democratic choices favoring lower immigration — with the “Boriswave” taking place after the June 2016 referendum on EU membership and a Conservative Party landslide victory in December 2019.
Evidently, a significant proportion of the public does not believe that the UK is an integration success story, and feels that the current level of ethnic, cultural, and religious heterogeneity has complicated our society. Much of this is centered on the growth of Britain’s ethnically diverse Muslim population — a relatively youthful demographic which is becoming more politically assertive and predominantly prioritizes faith. Ahead of the recent English local elections, one poll found that 63% of Muslims across key electoral battlegrounds ranked their religious identity top, with only 12% doing the same for their British national identity.
While it is true that British Muslims are becoming more educationally and economically integrated, there is a major values chasm between this religious grouping and the general public – especially over Gaza, blasphemy, and gender segregation. The recent surge of pro-Gaza independent councillors in cities and towns across the country demonstrates that an emergent Islamic political separatism is gathering pace.
The progressive-liberal establishment view that “diversity is our strength” has taken a beating in recent years. Along with the reality that Islamist extremism remains the principal terror threat in the UK, atrocities such as the 2024 Southport murders committed by Rwandan-heritage teenager Axel Rudakubana have put British attitudes towards diversity to the test. So have the ongoing small-boats emergency and the cases of sexual assaults associated with it, often against underage English girls by illegal migrants from countries such as Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, increased national awareness of grooming gangs — driven in some parts of the country by Mirpuri-origin biraderi-style clans — means more attention is being paid to the dark underbelly of multicultural Britain. And this is all before coming to the threat of intercommunal violence, exemplified by the 2022 riots in Leicester which took place primarily between young Hindu and Muslim men.
The UK may be in a better place in terms of migrant integration than European counterparts such as France, Germany, and the Netherlands, but that is now an incredibly low bar. In presenting Britain’s diversity as an unalloyed good and trivializing its integration woes by making international comparisons, the political establishment has pushed a growing number of Britons into more extreme positions — especially over remigration, which is working its way into mainstream conservative thought. Reconciling demographic groups that view one another with unease is a political problem that could take years to solve.
