February 19, 2025 - 10:00am
What does it mean to be English? The question has turned into a blazing row again.
The latest outbreak began with a 20-second clip from a Triggernometry episode in which journalist Fraser Nelson (a Scot) talked about former prime minister Rishi Sunak’s Englishness: “He is absolutely English — he was born and bred here.” One of his interviewers, Konstantin Kisin, replied with a challenge: “He’s a brown Hindu, how is he English?” This provoked an online backlash, and not just from the terminally woke.
For instance, Dan Hodges of the Mail on Sunday insisted that “Rishi Sunak is English […] that’s where the debate begins and ends.” The pollster James Johnson argued that “the idea that Fraser’s point (read: fact) is being disputed openly in the clip and on social media is deeply worrying.” David Aaronovitch pointedly asked: “Am I English, Konstantin?” Gideon Rachman of the FT also had a question: “[Kisin] was born in Moscow, does he regard himself as English?”
Kisin and his critics are talking at cross purposes. To answer Rachman’s question, Kisin regards himself as British because, though born in the former Soviet Union, he has lived in the UK since childhood and is a British citizen. But that’s precisely where the misunderstandings arise. Because citizenship in this country is British — as opposed to English, Scottish, Welsh or Northern Irish — Kisin defines Englishness as an ethnicity.
He’s not entirely wrong to do so. If you believe that descent from a centuries-long line of ancestors who called England their home counts for something, then to be ethnically English is worthy of recognition. To deny this is to claim that the majority of the population in England has no ethnic identity at all, which ironically would be the ultimate exceptionalism.
However, ethnicity cannot be the only dimension of Englishness. Imagine a scenario in which the UK breaks-up. To give British citizens living in England a country to call their own — and thus retain the rights and duties that go with that belonging — we’d need a definition of English citizenship. This amounts to a concept of civic Englishness.
There is also a third dimension of Englishness: cultural Englishness. This is harder to define than the other two, but you know it when you see it. It often goes hand-in-hand with English ethnicity, but doesn’t depend upon it. As Aaron Bastani argues: “I was at school in the 90s with other boys of non white British heritage. Some with Iranian parents, Iraqi, Jamaican, Russian, Grenadian, Guyana… If you were born here, and had an English accent, there wasn’t any debate about whether you were English.”
The corollary is that English ethnicity is no guarantee of cultural Englishness. For instance, there’s no reason why a 21st century descendent of the Mayflower colonists could not become a British citizen, but it could take decades, or even a second generation, for the culture to fully sink in.
For dual nationals like myself these multiple dimensions make sense of our existence. Ethnically, I’m English and French in equal measure. I’m also a proud citizen of both countries (Britain substituting for England). However, having lived my life in England, I’m almost exclusively English in culture.
Some might diagnose my predilection for nuance and understanding as a classic case of lily-livered liberalism. I’d counter that my belief — that ancestry, citizenship and culture are as distinct as they are important — is authentically conservative, not to mention English.
Peter Franklin is Associate Editor of UnHerd. He was previously a policy advisor and speechwriter on environmental and social issues.
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SubscribeWho cares? Like an elephant, you can’t define it but you know it when you see it…
Tend to agree.
Rishi Sunak feels culturally English to me. But that’s just my subjective assessment. But opinions can vary. I’m going off cultural gut feel. Others will use other metrics. And Rishi Sunak may not even consider himself to be English, but British.
It’s all rather silly. When David Aaronovitch asks Konstantin Kisin “Am I English ?” you sense there is no right answer and it’s a “gotcha” question as the critics probably object to being labelled English anyway, so answering “yes” could be as “wrong” as “no”.
The short answer to Aaronovitch is, “you are, first and foremost, a cnut!”
Oh, he is descended from Cnut, King of England, Denmark and Norway?
Bastani and your’s definition of cultural Englishness was I think possible in the nineties when the UK was still 95% white. I don’t think it is anymore when these minorities have grown in number and become vastly more assertive about “their rights”.
Their is also the lefts constant attack on the Englishness and English history. This has led to many minorities taking a very hostile view towards English identity and the subsequent glee with which many members of these minorities take towards the English becoming a minority in their own homeland. Sathnam Sanghera is a great example of this.
Another example is the video of Ash Sarkar gleefully gloating “we’re winning” when announcing survey results that had the indigenous population becoming a minority in London.
My sons grandmother was bornin India. Neither she nor my son are or ever were Indian.
My ethnicity is Irish, citizenship British and my culture is English. In terms of identity, the latter is the only one that truely defines me. It is as simple (or complex) as that.
Culturally English is meaningless. There is absolutely no connection of any kind between a person living in a beautiful village in the SE of England and another living in Rochdale. I doubt if they would understand each other if they spoke – and they would not speak. For a couple of years I worked in a factory in Knowsley. My best friend at college got married in Knowsley. I was shocked at the difference between us.
For (educationally) cultured people who write well or who have travelled extensively, there would be a connection – a sort of shared erudition. So UnHerd is made possible by having shared beliefs. But UnHerd is not real.
If you live in these places and never move out the cultural divide is indeed stark but both are definitively part of the broader English culture. For those of us who have moved around the country, an English identity (as opposed to ethnicity) has many commonalities in attitudes, behaviour and affinities. Living overseas, as I have for much of my life, makes one even more starkly aware of these common threads.
Absolute twaddle.
I know Rochdale (i live in a similar environment not far away) and there are plenty of Rochdalians who’d enjoy a conversation in a SE of England village pub just like any other Englishman who likes a pint. I’ve done the same myself.
I follow football, and the new owner of Rochdale FC is a billionaire who was born and raised in Rochdale (and still calls himself a Rochdalian), Sir Peter Ogden.
Attitude is everything, stereotypes are cheap.
Removed – didn’t seem to integrate into the reply system so not really able to enter the discussion at all.
On the census form, or a medical survey, etc etc. Rishi Sunak will tick a box with Asian in it. I can’t because I’m 100% NW European according to 23andMe.
Rishi is British, I’m English, and I get peed off by the ‘progressives’ incessant attempts to erase or minimise my ethnicity.
Or as Wellington said; “being born in a stable does not make you a horse”, when he rejected the idea that he was Irish because he was born in Dublin.
My grandfather was born in Dublin so I am entitled to apply for an Irish passport but I would not claim to be Irish any more than I would claim to be French or German because more distant ancestors came from those countries. To be English you need to have been brought up here and have a decent percentage of Anglo-Saxon DNA. I don’t think either Rishi or Kemi would claim to be English as opposed to British. Kisin has it right.
Of course if someone wants to see themselves as English despite being predominantly of a different ethnic origin I will certainly not object as I despise the whole business of identity politics that makes ethnic divisions a matter of enormous significance.
Actually it was said about Wellington, by Daniel O’Connell
Yes a quick bit of research suggests you are right.
Small point, but I don’t think Anglo-Saxon dna is the crux of the matter. English ethnicity (like all others) rests on a unique combination, in our case of Brythonic (ancient British – the largest portion), Anglo-Saxon/Danish (they are genetically indistinguishable), Norse, Goidelic (Gaelic-Irish, quite a bit of this in the English pop.), trace French-Norman. Of course the proportions vary across the country (giving somewhat different physical features by region). I think across England (and industrial South Wales/much of southern Scotland) average Anglo/Saxon-Danish dna averages at about 15 percent.
And if the DNA shows primarily ancient Briton and v little Anglo-Saxon? (Much like alot of the celtic fringe). Not English? Perhaps British?
Or alot more Scandinavian/Viking and v little Anglo-Saxon? Etc
As I touched on above Brythonic is the largest dna proportion in every region of Britain, including south-east England. I think above 50 percent everywhere. And the ‘Celtic fringes’ often have as big a proportion of Anglo-Saxon/Danish as anywhere else (eg Anglian kingdom of Northumberland (covering much of southern Scotland ), South Wales, Ulster).
Rudyard Kipling was born and raised in India. How many Indians would accept him as an Indian rather than English?
Kipling himself always self-identified as an Indian man
Did/do Indians recognise him as Indian?
Yes, but of the Dalit caste
For Unherd – who retain their dinner party cordon sanitarie – it will always be difficult to accept something that is uncomfortable.
Kisin is likely correct.
Some things are simply true and unpalatable.
It is a contortion to say Rishi is as English as someone whose ancestors have been living in the sameEnglish county for millennia.
People need to be brave and just own reality, own the truth.
To be happy you need to be free.
To be free you need to be brave.
Thucydides/ Pericles
Fraser Nelson is really daft and ought to be ignored.
See how English/British they are if conscription is introduced. Anything but I suspect
Yeah, he’s English. As far as I’m concerned, if you’d end up as an English citizen if the UK split up then you’re English.
This goes back to an article by Poppy Sowerby from yesterday on UnHerd. What does it even mean to be ‘British’ now. Not much, I’d suggest. Any meaning it had has be thoroughly hollowed out. A propos Poppy, it’s not just the young who ‘hate Britain’. I have lived here for over 30 years, so longer than Gen Z. When I first arrived in the 1990s, Britain was a great place, a place that was confident and one that was not scared of its own past. Fast forward to 2025, and it could not be more different. I truly believe that ‘Britain’ – whatever that stands for now other than a political border – is broken. It is neither a good nor nice place to live. I am looking to leave as soon as I can. My son, who is a Gen Z’er (and centre right leaning) said that he’d struggle to accept the idea that he should go to war and potentially sacrifice his life for this country. Why? Because he says, quite rightly, what would I be fighting for? A grotesquely bloated, woke state machine that hates and derides at every oppotunity the nation’s proud history; one that tells him, if he dare questions it, that he has no ‘legitimate or respectable right’ to exist in ‘modern Britain’, especially if he does not capitulate, without question, to gender ideology and Critical Race Theory interpretations of who he is and his place in British society. Here is my challenge: who, reading this, would put their hand up and say ‘yeah, I’m willing to sacrifice my life for that’?! This is the problem, and why the likes of Russia and China will walk into Britain, eventually, without having to fire a shot – because no one, let alone the hard-Left goons who got Britain into this mess, will be willing to defend it, because they will know in their heart of hearts that there is nothing left worth defending. It’s very sad.
Well, as you are not British yourself, who cares what you think? This is not your home. With your attitude the sooner you go home to Alabama the better. Or maybe Russia – you might feel more at home there.
I will not embarrass myself by pretending to offer to fight – I am too old and only recently naturalised – but is this country worth fighting for? Absolutely. It is certainly a hell of a lot better to live in Britain than to be a subject of Trump, Putin, or Xi.
As you just admitted, you’re not prepared to sacrifice your life for it. Why should age be any barrier to your loyalty, when really needing to be put to the test? Easy words – why don’t you put your money where your mouth is if you love Britain so much? No, you’d rather let the likes of my son do it for you; and when he’s killed (for nothing) and we’re eventually taken over, you’ll just run, because you can. Yeah – real brave mate!
… and, by the way (Rasmus), you seem to have missed the point that my son is British, born and bred!
Yes there is a problem with the exact wording of this ‘proud to be British’ (ref Poppy Sowerby) question. I identify with and am loyal to traditional Britain and British people/would make sacrifices for that, but there is no longer an overarching culture and people, the British state denigrates or just doesn’t recognise us. I wouldn’t say I’m ‘proud to be British’ in the modern sense, a passport holder of this country who just happens to be on a piece of real estate which inspires no deep loyality, let alone pride. I’m patriotic but about something that now only exists in patches. My area is overwhelmingly still recognisably British thank God, I like living here, but I don’t have to travel far to be in something that resembles an airport lounge.
In the USA, military recruitment has been down for some years now. There’s a belief that this is due to the disparagement of men and the male fighting ethos. Recruiting advertisement encouraged trannies to sign up. And the military brass inhaled DEI and wokeness . This is not what inspires young males. People hope that Trump will turn this around.
Funny how the marxists encourage everyone to identify as whatever the hell they like.
Men can be women, girls can be cats, grooming gang apologists can be virtuous. But the English can’t identify as English.
Some of the online left think the israeli-palestinian conflict can be solved with DNA tests compared to the DNA Judea dwellers of 2000 years ago.
Don’t go down that path. You never know what you will find out.
There is only one inevitable’ outcome…..
The name England, and the English as an identity, will be abolished and replaced by a new ‘Sparkly’ ‘Inclusive’ identity for those who once identified as English, from the Southern portion of the British Isles. Scotland, Wales and Ireland, as identities, might very well follow suit.
erm…Sunnak says he’s not English but “Indian British”. So what’s the argument here – that Sunnak is lying? That foreigners don’t know themselves and need White Man Franklin to save them and put them straight?
What exactly is the basis for disputing what Sunnak says when he agrees with Kisin?
Sunak is a Wykehamist. That is English in my book.
This is a silly discussion. Whether Sunak counts as English depends on why you are asking. Like asking if someone is a mother (do adoptive mothers count?) there is not a single clear definition that covers every case.
As an illustrative example I’d offer Sir Michael Kerr. High court judge, wartime RAF bomber pilot, German born, Jewish refugee, came over as a teenager. Would you deny his right to count as English rather than German?
Might have been a British citizen but not English.
No Kisin is not right. Globalisation has completey mixed up the contours of ‘English’ identity now.
Other countries, like Japan, have not become multi-ethnic in the same way, so this doesn’t apply to them.
Of course everyone who plays for Enlgand’s national football team is English.
I think something like accent goes a long way to marking national cultural immersian and social identity now. If you listen to Sunak speak for 5 seconds, of course he is English.
accent is a real tell. Brooklyn folks can’t seem to overcome it. and how about Kansans? Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi? people still identify me as Pennsylvania though I’ve lived in Oregon 50 years. and how about native Oregonians? sheesh tell them a mile away
I feel Kissin’s approach is offensive. I don’t even want to talk about it like this. To be honest I do judge englishness by accent, comedy outlook and facial expressions. If you look at the black comedy Famalan that builds on classic British comedy with a black perspective. At same time I do find it sad that some people I thought were english or British turned out not to identify with it like the nice english girl Afua Hirsch who wrote the book Brit-ish feeling she wasn’t fully it. The problem with defining english with white is that it makes a last years polish immigrant more english than the descendent of a windrush father and white english mother. Of course having ancestors who lived here for centuries (as far as you can tell) counts for something though though culture changes a lot. It would be difficult for a modern english speaker to understand what King Alfred was saying.
Kisin was deliberately stirring, but that aside, this is a silly semantic debate.
Trying to raise his profile by creating outrage. Very common these days
Franco-irish. Ethnically I’m not English; born in England, hold a British passport and travel on my Irish one. I consider myself a mongrel. I have no problem if people say I’m not English. I’m not.
To my mind, Englishness is an ethnic/racial identity, but need not be binary. I am part-English, part-French, a little Danish; and my children can add to that part-Punjabi. If you care, a DNA test will hang percentages on that. On the other hand, nationality should be binary. I and my family are British, and hold passports to prove it. Crucially, we have only the one nationality and unless and until I apply to another country for its nationality I have no conflict and must stick by Britain. No such assumption can be made for those with dual or multiple passports, be they French, Russian, Israeli, Pakistani, Indian or any other of the world’s nations. Are they ‘anywheres’ or ‘somewheres’? Can one honestly say that other allegiances will not influence attitudes and decisions, potentially at the expense of Britain? Various other nations recognise this – Malaysia, for example, does not allow dual nationality. When/if it comes to the crunch will a dual-national stick it out through hard times or use their bolt-hole?
Why don’t you just say it’s a stupid argument and be done with it. I always thought an Englishman’s ethnicity was Anglo-Saxon.
So … John Bull and his English wife decide to emigrate to and settle in India and eventually become full, permanent Indian citizens. They produce two children there after they are naturalised as citizens. From the moment they obtain their citizenship they assert that they are Indians. And their children born there and therefore Indian citizens from birth who are Native born Indians. Or so the Woking Class would have us accept. No! They are Indian citizens of English ethnicity, not Indians as such.
Well many English, Scottish and Welsh people left their places to be in Australia, America and Canadian. So are they still the former and more so than Rishi Sunak? Lets face it there are different levels. It’s not just a DNA test definition.
Testing.
It is indeed!
This argument is so ridiculous that I hesitate to even comment. Sunak is English by nationality but obviously of Indian descent—just as most white people in the Americas are technically of European descent. They are Americans, but are they really? And coming from a guy with a Greek last name and appearance who claims to be Russian—well, the irony is off the charts.
Konstin is the kind of white guy so generic that he fantasizes about being Swedish. Is Obama American? While we’re at it, does that make George Orwell Indian just because he was born there? Konstin is more “woke” than the wokes—so obsessed with it that he embodies it. But at the core, he’s just saying these things to make money.
I mean, look at us—completely fired up and debating his absurd claim that Sunak is somehow less English than Konstin is Russian.
You can’t make this BS up.
While we’re at it, does that make George Orwell Indian just because he was born there? Not just him, but Joanna Lumley, the quintessential Englishwoman.
Ethnicity and nationality are two different things, so you can be black, white and all shades in between and still be English.
While the country may not be as homogeneous culturally now compared to 40 years ago that doesn’t change the fact I’ll happily cheer on the black lads in the England football team or Moeen Ali &co in the cricket team.
Even when the country was more homogeneous ethnically there were still vast differences between the different parts. I remember hating all the Londoners who moved to the village as a kid when the London house prices took off and they cashed in. We all thought of them as loud, cocky and stupid and fought with them constantly do it’s always gone on
As always, the far right are obsessed with race.
“He’s a brown Hindu, how is he English?”
I think Kisin speaks for you all, racists that you are.
“I was at school in the 90s with other boys of non white British heritage. Some with Iranian parents, Iraqi, Jamaican, Russian, Grenadian, Guyana… If you were born here, and had an English accent, there wasn’t any debate about whether you were English.”
Accent is actually reasonably good indicator of integration. It’s very noticeable that poorly integrated communities have hybrid accents which are more closely related to accents of their migrant parents than the native communities. My grandparents came from Ireland but all their children spoke with a local accent. The same for my friend’s parents who were the children of Polish immigrants. However, many other second generation immigrants speak with an accent that is alien to the local dialect.
Yes he is. He had no ‘skin in the game’ and as it showed, didn’t really care what happened to the place. Being PM was just good for his Cv before he moved to the US.
Ultimately, he’s a ‘brown Hindu’ not an Anglo Saxon.
Cultural Englishness may well be ephemeral and we are just too close to it to have perspective on how it has changes over time including our own. Nonetheless one senses it’s existence most when actually abroad I think.
For me it’s about values, values that have developed from our History, a history not always glorious but what makes us.
This though is difficult to define and great danger of misuse in exactly a way contrary to our History. It’s as much likes of Orwell, Larkin, Harriet Taylor even as it is a Churchill. And of course if one went back some Centuries the common man/woman’s role in defining Englishness was minimal. It was Kings and Queens and the Aristocracy. Thus Englishness evolves and I’m sure it will continue to do so. I just hope some of the best bits are always retained and I think they will be. They have been a beacon for others.
The Left has undermined what it is to be British. Here goes:-,integrity, honesty, sense of fair play, the courage to stand up to defend one’s freedom and weaker people from bullies; dislike of bullies and braggarts; belief in character more important than brains by that I mean courage, common sense, a sense of fair play- do not kick a man when he is down; modesty, self deprecating humour; dislike of the fussy, my word is my bond, preference for the concrete over the abstract, what works well looks good, dislike for exaggerated emotions, judge someone on their character not their class or money. Keir Hardies said s Smiles “ Self Help “ was manual for socialism.
The boxing ring was considered the nursery of manliness. The bareknuckle rules of Jack Broughton in the mid 18th century enabled people to be thrown but not kicked on the ground. A gentleman was expected to be able to box bare knuckle, hunt- always be willing to jump any hedge of fence in front of them, play cricket, yet converse with a lady and dance with her and know Latin, maths and if a scholar, Greek..
Historically the British virtues were shown in the robust yeoman archer someone who worked land they owned, was endowed with a robust common sense and sense of humour and was trained and armed to defend their liberties. The rise of the middle class under the Tudors. The tough yeoman, craftsmen and merchants who from the 1660s to 1850s gave us The City of London, Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions. The Duke of Bridgewater entrusting James Brindley to build the first canal. The sons of the gentry bare knuckle boxing with the blacksmiths son and playing cricket together. GM Trevelyan said “ if the French aristocracy had played cricket with their tenants there would have been no revolution A sense of responsibility to less fortunate than oneself as demonstrated by the Poor Laws combined with the shrewdness and strength of character not to allow abuse of the charity.
A J Brownowski said the Industrial Revolutions was Britain’s Enlightenment. The freedom the Sans Culottes fought for were already common in Britain. They rioted over a lack of bread; Wilkes said England was beef and liberty. A Navvy building canals took two years to be trained, breakfasted on beer and steak and could shift 20 T a day.
If one looks at those who volunteered for combat in WW2 be they aircrew, submariners, Commandos s, Paratroopers, SAS, SBS, SOE, LRDG and women in Armed Forces , they came from different classes but were of one character. – adventurous. As Sir Francis Walsingham said after the defeat of the Armada “ This island breedeth courage. “ Does it anymore?
Is the decline of Britain a result of the decline in integrity ?The willingness to undergo rigorous prolonged painful selection, testing which includes being tempered by adversity and then have one’s mettle tested in order to remove any defects which would prevent one being used effective in the most arduous conditions. The keel of ships were made from seasoned oak because of the strength and durability. The oak beams which supports the roof of the hall at Westminster grew on iron rich soil( making it stronger than normal), very slowly and then were seasoned for years whereby the wood dries out and the pores close. This increases strength and resistance to rot, making it more durable.
Are modern Britons more soft, quick grown pine wood than slow grown, seasoned oak ?
“English” refers to an ethnicity, meaning a shared ancestry and cultural background from England, while “British” refers to a nationality, meaning citizenship of the United Kingdom which includes England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.
Rishi is British. British-ness was invented as a national identity for the UK’s multiculturalism and now expresses our desire to have a British inland empire.
I’d pin it down on accent and culture. I reacted in the same way as Konstantin when I came to UK first time seeing all these non-white people assuming themselves to be English speaking in perfect accents.
Over time I came to associate this with the special history of England which to me seems like a country that technically never recovered from the Norman invasion. Yes some royal families came and went but the foundation (e.g. Magna Carta) has remained. The first thing that “liberated” the bulk of the English people is arguably the 1832 People Act, in a continuous progress in extension of suffrage down from the Norman aristocracy towards the rest of the population. This is followed by Liberal reforms in early 20cc creating a civic English identity that relies on Liberalism, (a nowadays fading) Protestant religion, and a loose cultural heritage of Democracy while having no strong ethnic association (perhaps a mild mixed-Nordic/Germanic/Celtic one).
This is in stark contrast to other northern (Protestant) European countries most of which are (mostly) homogeneous ethnic groups with an unbroken history (e.g. Denmark, Netherlands, Finland, German principalities…) that incidentally had a much easier time to align with the N**s during WW2.
I suggest you read up on Anglo Saxon and Medieval History. The opening up of England starts with the Charter of Libertie of 1100 which re-introduces the laws of Edward the Confessor and removes some of the more onerous Norman forestry laws. By 1166 the The Anarchy and intermarriage beween Anglo Saxon and Norman broke down the barriers. Magna Carta of 1215 starts eighty years of opening up of England resulting in Model Parliament of 1295.
Thanks for your response and interest, as well as the pointers. I was partly hoping for a response from commenters with a greater investment in English history than myself to be honest, and I’m glad I got one.
I’m aware that a stratum of Anglo-Saxon nobility survived the Norman invasion despite being manoeuvred out of positions of greater strength, and that they eventually thrived. That in fact is part of my reading of England as an ever-expanding circle of negotiated suffrage following a traumatic invasion.
Had precursory look at the pointers you gave, don’t see anything that negates my perception for now, but a fascinating topic anyhow.
This becomes more interesting when applied to Australia. We have a more limited ethnic history and there is a camp who say indigenous are the only ethnic Australians. But this is false because Australia as a nation did not exist under the indigenous. It was a British idea and invention. Waves of immigration means a person who looks Asian could have a longer family history in Australia than a British looking person. That’s why it was odd to hear Kisin make that argument, particularly about his own son. I’d say Australians are bound by values more than ethnicity. Anyone can be Australian if they buy into things like ‘a fair go’. Although Australia’s weakness has also been an unwillingness to define exactly what core Australian values are.
It took me two months into Sunak’s premiership before I twigged that he was the first non-European, aka brown, black, BME, whatever, Prime Minister. I just never noticed.
I remember saying and possibly wrote a comment when Sunak became PM that for him it was essentially a career move, another stepping stone on a pathway to bigger and better things, that his sense of British, let alone English, identity was not hugely significant, I see him as primarily a global citizen who could happily settle in many places and would probably be off to America soon after leaving office and pretty much disappear from British public life.