The U.K. Is in Peril

By Abigail Anthony

Thursday, December 18, 2025

 

When I was walking through Oxford around midnight after an evening event that offered unsatisfying hors d’oeuvres, I stopped at a kebab food truck because it was the only place open en route to my apartment (and at that hour, there was no line). But I was not served: The man working there told me to come back and order once I was wearing a hijab. The remark was so unexpected that I couldn’t think of anything to say other than “okay,” and I walked home hungry and stunned. The encounter could have been grounds for a sex- or religious-discrimination case, but it was a he-said-she-said scenario, so it became only another painful anecdote about Britain’s degeneration.

 

During my two years in England for my master’s degree, I grew increasingly alarmed by signs of possible civilizational crisis. Suboptimal living conditions — low salaries, high taxes, insufficient housing, bad health care — are sources of frustration among the English, especially young adults. Yet these are symptoms of a struggling nation, not necessarily one that is terminally ill. The real reason to wonder whether the United Kingdom will exist as we know it in 50 years is that parts of it are already unrecognizable.

 

Since England is a relatively small country geographically, the consequences of immigration are observed almost immediately. The 2001 census found that ethnic minorities totaled just 7.6 percent of the United Kingdom’s population, but two decades later, about 20 percent of England and Wales is non-white. According to the Office for National Statistics, upward of 1 million foreign nationals have been added to the United Kingdom’s population annually since 2021. In 2024 alone, about 1 million long-term immigrants from non–European Union countries arrived in the U.K., with India being the most common country of origin. For the year ending in September 2025, the government says that more than 240,000 people were granted citizenship, while roughly 110,000 people arrived to claim asylum, including 46,000 individuals who sailed in on small boats; there have been fewer than 10,000 forced returns.

 

Now, there are cities where white people are the minority. Consider Birmingham, where the white population fell from 52 percent in 2011 to 43 percent in 2021. Similarly, the white British population of London amounted to about 85 percent in 1975, but today, it doesn’t even crack 40 percent. (Hence the portmanteau “Londonistan.”) Sean Thomas noted in the Daily Telegraph that “what’s happened to London is almost unprecedented in peacetime,” and added, “no one voted for the change we’ve seen, no one consciously willed it, yet it has happened.” (Indeed, voters didn’t always get a say, since some of the rapid demographic change was done by design and in secrecy: Thousands of Afghans were resettled in the U.K. in a classified multimillion-dollar scheme that was withheld from the public, until a judge ruled in 2025 to remove a High Court super-injunction that had kept the program under wraps and silenced the press.) When driving through Britain’s capital, you see entire streets lined with storefront signs in Arabic or Urdu script, punctuated by “HALAL” in glowing lights. (The U.K. halal market is currently valued at roughly £1.7 billion and is predicted to reach £2.5 billion by 2030.) There are somewhere between 30 and 85 sharia councils — essentially extrajudicial courts that interpret interpersonal disputes in the context of Islamic law — in England, while the Ayaan Institute estimates that there are nearly 2,000 mosques. Somewhat relatedly, “Muhammad” is now the most popular name for newborn boys in England and Wales.

 

But it would be unfair to suggest that the British unreasonably dislike the resulting optics of immigration owing to some latent white-supremacist impulses. Rather, the growing resentment arises from the observation that non-European immigrants often fail to comply with basic norms, let alone thoroughly assimilate. An alarming example is that more than half — 55 percent — of British Pakistanis have married a first cousin (which has long been legal in the U.K., but formerly rare). The resulting harms can hardly be overstated: The Wellcome Trust found in 2003 that infant mortality and childhood morbidity rates were higher in British Pakistanis than in other ethnic groups, and a 2005 BBC investigation concluded that Pakistanis represent 30 percent of all British children with recessive disorders. Despite the harms that result from inbreeding, an arm of the National Health Service England suggested in 2025 that first-cousin marriage has “benefits,” and further warned against criticizing such arrangements because doing so “stigmatises certain communities, undermines trust in medical services and causes couples to disengage from clinical support.” So instead of encouraging immigrants to adopt healthy Western customs, the NHS England attempted to dodge accusations of racism or “Islamophobia” by sacrificing a commitment to public health and suggesting that the English have the burden of accepting dangerous practices.

 

Yet demanding that the English approve of imported lifestyles is a challenging imposition when acceptance is not reciprocated, as seen by the Islamist attacks in 2017 on an Ariana Grande concert and at the London Bridge. In fact, just asking the British to tolerate “multiculturalism” is difficult when England’s pursuit of “diversity” has endangered lives. Per the London Assembly, black individuals amount to 13 percent of the city’s population but constitute 53 percent of knife-crime perpetrators and 61 percent of murder-by-knife perpetrators; according to the 2011 census, about half of London’s black population was foreign-born. In March 2020, almost 80 percent of people in British custody on terrorism‑related charges were classified as “Islamist extremist,” while the home secretary said in 2023 that 75 percent of MI5’s caseload is Islamist terrorism. In 2022, the English police recorded 2,594 cases of “honour-based abuse,” a category that includes female genital mutilation, rape, forced marriage, assault, and death threats. (The Home Office stated in 2025 that “female genital mutilation is not a distant issue” and “could be happening to your neighbor.”) Sexual-offense convictions of foreign nationals have increased by 62 percent in the past four years, and the Office of National Statistics reported more than 71,000 rape offenses in 2024 — a 5 percent increase from the previous year. Through freedom-of-information requests and subsequent analysis, the Centre for Migration Control showed that foreign nationals are arrested at twice the rate of British natives, and foreign nationals are 3.5 times more likely to be arrested for sexual offenses.

 

To add insult to injury, the United Kingdom has difficulty booting people out — even those with criminal records unrelated to violating immigration protocols. A Kosovan cocaine dealer was not deported after the court ruled it would be “unduly harsh” on his one-year-old daughter because she is too young to participate in video calls, while a Pakistani man who was sentenced to 18 months in jail for preying on “barely pubescent girls” was allowed to remain because the judge concluded that it would be “unduly harsh for [his] children to be without their father.” (“Unduly harsh” is the legal loophole language that allows for an exception to laws triggering deportation, thereby rewarding terrible choices.)

 

It is worth examining, too, the people described as qualified immigrants who are welcomed through legal, purportedly meritocratic routes to contribute to critical industries and services. In 2014, a report by the University College London Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration found that immigrants from the ten countries that joined the EU in 2004 have contributed nearly £5 billion to the United Kingdom’s economy, whereas non-EU immigrants cost £118 billion over a 17-year period. A Centre for Policy Studies paper showed that a majority of the nearly 650,000 people who arrived on the Health and Care Worker visa (which the government says is for “medical professionals”) between January 2021 and June 2024 were dependents; the same paper revealed that 87 percent of the 360,473 people granted the skilled-worker visa during that time period were non-EU nationals, and 156,407 of those visas were given to dependents. Moreover, supposedly “cheap” labor is very costly because low-earning individuals still take from public services. Even the Office for Budget Responsibility has acknowledged that the average British-born worker contributes a net cumulative £280,000 to public finances by age 66, whereas each low-paid migrant (classified as earning half the average wage) costs taxpayers £151,000 by the same age.

 

Despite the repeated promises from elites who insisted that mass migration is both necessary and good, the statistics tell a story of decline. The mainstream media can churn out endless glowing profiles of immigrants to cultivate sympathetic attitudes, but polls suggest that people have stopped accepting the preferred narrative. In fact, the English are approaching dangerous levels of aggravation. Hope Not Hate, an organization that works to fight “far-right extremism,” commissioned a poll with YouGov in 2018 that found alarming rates of dissatisfaction: 41 percent of respondents said that Britain’s multicultural society isn’t working, 43 percent said relationships between different communities within the U.K. will worsen, 39 percent thought multiculturalism had a negative effect on British culture, and 37 percent saw Islam as a threat to the British way of life. Revealingly, the words “uneasy,” “unhappy,” and “disappointed” were the most common responses to a question about “how it makes you feel” to hear the claim that “white British people could be a minority in the U.K. by the 2060s due to current immigration patterns.” In 2023, a slight majority of respondents in a poll commissioned by the immigration-skeptical Migration Watch UK endorsed a five-year halt on all further immigration, and 42 percent said immigration negatively affected the quality of life in the U.K., compared with just 10 percent who said it is a positive influence. Ultimately, a huge cohort has decided that “multicultural” Britain is not only different but worse, leading the native English to conclude that they preferred life before.

 

Yet the British hesitate to say so because the Thought Police patrol ruthlessly. About 30 people are arrested each day — roughly 12,000 a year — for what successive governments deem offensive speech too scandalous for the internet. In 2024, Derek Heggie was sentenced to nearly a year in jail for “grossly offensive” comments on YouTube, such as “Young white girls are being raped by these grooming gangs that worship the Prophet Mohammed.” Lee Crisp was sentenced to three years and four months for “high octane” shouting at police outside a hotel that housed asylum seekers, including statements such as “You’re protecting the bastards who are raping our kids.” Michael Whitehead was dealt a prison sentence of two years and eight months because he was “shouting racist abuse” during an anti-immigration riot outside a building where asylum-seekers were lodged; he yelled things like “pedophiles” and further shouted “You’re not fit to wear the badge” at a police officer. Notably, these men’s blunt statements are consistent with official reports, albeit phrased more indelicately. The 2025 Casey Report, the government’s rapid audit, confirmed that South Asian men are significantly overrepresented in the “grooming gangs” that sexually abused young girls, and that the authorities often looked away to avoid appearing racist.

 

So where does England go from here? David Betz, a professor of war at King’s College London, thinks civil war is increasingly likely. He might be on to something, since recent incidents of intergroup violence and civil disobedience could be interpreted as precursors to a large-scale revolt. For example, protests and riots erupted across the country in 2024 after Axel Rudakubana (born in Wales to Rwandan immigrants) went on a stabbing spree at a Taylor Swift–themed dance class and killed three little girls; targets for subsequent (sometimes violent) protests included police, hotels housing migrants, and mosques. Although anger is in high supply, the relevant question is whether riots could continue to escalate to a level that would satisfy the legal definition of “war,” or perhaps produce an organized terrorist group akin to the IRA. But practical barriers to anything resembling civil war include heavy restrictions on gun ownership, a median age of roughly 40, a well-trained national military, and the lack of a neat ideological divide along geographic lines to organize the conflict. Still, at the very least, the public displays of rage in conjunction with the polls showing widespread discontent indicate an appetite for significant change.

 

There is, however, a peaceful and viable path to quickly implement sweeping policies: a sovereign parliament. Measures to reverse the severe cultural damage include deporting rape-gang members along with their female family members who acted as accessories by failing to report the crimes, removing illegal aliens, shutting down “migrant hotels,” and awarding benefits like social housing on a “British first” basis (that is, prioritizing British citizens) — all of which are endorsed by Restore Britain, a “movement” launched in 2025 by Member of Parliament Rupert Lowe. Unlike the United States, England isn’t strictly limited by a constitution, so the British can legitimately adopt laws that are infeasible here, such as those that infringe the free exercise of religion or discriminate on the basis of ethnic origin, without satisfying any sort of strict scrutiny test. For example, Restore Britain expressly supports banning halal and kosher slaughter (on animal-welfare grounds), which would ignite a lengthy First Amendment battle if attempted in the United States. In theory, Parliament could swiftly redefine citizenship however it wants. The potential for comprehensive reform via policy cannot be overstated.

 

The obstacle to enacting these measures is not a restriction on government power but simply obtaining enough seats, and support for the right in the United Kingdom appears to be surging. A recent YouGov poll showed 27 percent of voters support Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party, with both the Labour and Conservative Parties trailing behind at 17 percent each. Reform won 41 percent of all seats up for grabs in the 2025 local elections, the most of any party. Support for Labour has plummeted to 14 percent, while some ethnic minorities are turning toward Reform. The Guardian reports that the party had 17 candidates of non-white ethnic backgrounds in the 2024 general election, and the number of British Indians supporting Farage’s party has more than tripled in the past year. The next general election can be held no later than 2029, although it can be called earlier (which might happen, given the abysmal support for the current government). Panic is probably appropriate for progressive strategists.

 

Claims like “the United Kingdom is gone” or “England is done” populate social media. The cause for optimism, though, is that the British are increasingly aware of their own peril.