A large academic study of attitudes among those living in the United Kingdom found the vast majority believe the country is “divided”, with many saying the culture is changing too fast and that they want “my country to be the way it used to be”.
A massive majority of 86 per cent of people living in the United Kingdom believe there is either a “great deal” or a “fair amount” of tension between “immigrants and people born in the UK”, research by the Policy Institute at King’s College London claims to have found. This sentiment has increased perceptibly since the last time the question was asked in 2023, when it stood at a very robust 74 per cent.
Remarkably, majorities seeing tension in British society between immigrants and Britons are dominant and evident across the political spectrum. While Nigel Farage’s Reform UK and Conservative voters are most convinced — with up to three-quarters of Reform voters saying there is a “great deal” of tension — even the left-wing parties exhibit the same views.
The Liberal Democrats and Greens, for instance, see agreement for the proposition hovering in the early-80s, while just 15 per cent disagree.
Drawing on an uncommonly large sample size for British surveys, the University’s Institute states there are increasing notions of division in the country. Supporters of every political party and ethnic group agree that the country feels divided, and the proportion of those who support this idea has steadily risen throughout the 2020s.
Contributing to the idea that the United Kingdom is one that is ill at ease with itself, half of voters say the nation’s culture is “changing too fast”, with just a fifth disagreeing. This notion is gaining momentum as the two camps diverge: just five years ago, the for-and-against camps enjoyed a third of support each; now those opposing change dominate by two-to-one.
Concomitant with concern of change running away, a strong plurality also agrees they “would like my country to be the way it used to be” at 48 per cent. This too is rapidly accelerating: just five years ago, Britons were more likely to say they were happy with the way the country is than not.
The King’s College London study particularly noted that this change is being overwhelmingly driven by changes of opinion among white people. In 2020, both white and “ethnic minority” people living in the United Kingdom were very much in parity, agreeing that the country wasn’t changing too quickly and didn’t need to be returned to a previous state.
While there was slight movement in “Ethnic minority” agreement in the results — going from 32 to 35 per cent on the UK changing too fast in five years, for instance — white Britons soared ahead in that time. White respondents, for instance, shot up from that third of people in agreement in 2020 to a majority saying so now, and being twice as likely to agree with the need to stop change than being happy with it.
Reform and Conservative voters are, again, most likely to agree with these ideas. But despite an interpretation that could cast this as a high feeling of dissatisfaction with the United Kingdom, voters for those parties are also most likely to express patriotic ideas like “I am proud of my country”.
The research also drew in a wide range of other areas of interest. Feeling that there is a Brexit divide in the country is fading with time, with Leave and Remain voters more likely to see eye-to-eye. There has been a surge in people saying they believe transgender rights have gone too far, and Britons now perceive the word “woke” to be an insult, which they didn’t five years ago. Some 67 per cent agree there is a “culture war” going on.
Curiously, practically the only metric in the whole study that has shown remarkable resilience to change are sentiments towards the history of the British Empire. While the predominant position is not having an opinion on it at all, of those who feel conviction, feeling the British Empire is “something to be proud of” beats out “something to be ashamed of” by about ten points, something which hasn’t changed in the past five years.
This study follows only by days another such piece of research which, again presented the British public as surprisingly conservative on matters of immigration compared to the perception of the UK as presented by its politics and political class, which remain in the whole overwhelmingly pro-open-borders. That study, by the National Centre for Social Research found that British voters are to the right of even their American cousins, with British Reform UK or Conservative voters to the right of U.S. Donald Trump voters, and British Labour supporters to the left of Kamala Harris voters.
Asked to state whether they agree with the statement “We risk losing our national identity if we are too open to people from all over the world”, 81 per cent of right-wing British voters said they agreed, ahead of just 65 per cent of Trump voters. Again with the statement “It is bad for society if white people decline as a share of the population”, 70 per cent of the British camp agrees, compared to 43 per cent of Trump voters.
