Who Counts as English?

Back in February, Konstantin Kisin and Fraser Nelson sparked a national debate over the meaning of Englishness. During a podcast discussion, Kisin — who has Russian, Ukrainian and Jewish ancestry — proclaimed: “I am not English, and I will never be English, and I don’t think Rishi Sunak is English”. Nelson disagreed, opining that “Rishi Sunak is as English as Tizer and Y-fronts”. Kisin responded, “He’s a brown Hindu. How’s he English?” To which Nelson replied, “Because he was born and bred here.”

Kisin and Nelson’s positions reflect two distinct views of what it means to be English. On one view, someone can only be English if they have English ancestry. On the other, they needn’t have English ancestry so long as they were born in England, have a British passport and are well-versed in English culture.

Naturally, Kisin’s remarks caused a certain amount of controversy, provoking the usual charges of ‘racism’. This is despite him having clearly stated that he does not consider himself English. Kisin addressed his critics in a follow-up video, pointing out that Sunak had explicitly stated that he ticks ‘British Indian’ on the census. And in the original debate with Nelson, he’d already admitted that “we’re all British, that’s fine with me”.

Indeed, the distinction between British and English is one that both Kisin and his defenders have relied upon. For example, former Home Secretary Suella Braverman wrote in the Telegraph that “I am British Asian” but “I cannot be English”.

To my mind, however, the debate can’t be so easily resolved because this distinction depends on the historically contingent fact that England is a nation within Britain. How would Braverman identify if the UK broke up and England became a separate country? How should French citizens who are not ethnically French identify? Should they say, “I cannot be French”? What about German citizens who are not ethnically German? And so on.

Furthermore, it turned out that Kisin had spoken too soon when he quoted Sunak in his follow-up video. The former Prime Minister subsequently came out and said, “Of course I’m English”, dismissing the notion that he wasn’t as “slightly ridiculous” since it would imply that even players in the England cricket team do not count.

It’s true that the native English are a distinct people, who can be demarcated not only from Indians but also from other European peoples, like Poles, Swedes, Italians and Russians. In a genetic study that sampled participants according to the rule that all four grandparents were born in the same country, Britons formed their own cluster. This cluster overlapped to a large extent with the cluster formed by Irish participants, and to a lesser extent with the clusters formed by participants from other nearby countries.

Hence if ‘indigenous’ means anything — and I do think it means something — then people with significant ancestry from the British cluster are indigenous to Britain.

Interestingly, this would imply that some individuals often thought of as quintessentially English are not wholly indigenous. For example, the late Prince Philip likely had only modest ancestry from the British cluster, with most of his genome comprising German, Danish and Russian elements. Likewise, many British Jews, including the Victorian Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, would fall into a separate Jewish cluster.

So, can only indigenous Britons be considered English? Perhaps, though not necessarily. Can an adopted child be considered a member of the family that adopts him or her? Of course. There is no scientific law that says that identity has to correspond with biology. Nor is there any rule that says everyone must agree about the meaning of Englishness. Even Enoch Powell conceded “it’s not impossible” for black people to be part of the British nation, despite affirming that nations are based on “racial similarities”.

On the one hand, it would be absurd to suggest that someone who had no British ancestry, spoke with an accent and knew little of the country was an ‘Englishman’ just because he had acquired citizenship. On the other hand, reasonable people can disagree about whether a person lacking British ancestry who was born in England and is well-versed in its culture qualifies as English.

In surveys, most people say the latter person would qualify. In 2021, just 14% of white respondents said that “only people who are white count as truly English”, whereas 77% said that “being English is open to people of different ethnic backgrounds”. This is not to suggest the debate can be settled by consulting opinion polls. But it does show that viewing identity as a simple function of biology is far from universal. Even if the percentage who believe “only people who are white count as truly English” has been underestimated due to social desirability bias, the true percentage is unlikely to be more than, say, double.

There are some questions we can answer definitively. Does everyone with a British passport have British nationality? Yes. Is there a group of people that can be reasonably described as indigenous to the British Isles? Yes. However, the question of what Englishness means does not lend itself to any simple answer.

Noah Carl is the Editor of Aporia Magazine.

This piece was first published in The Daily Sceptic, and is reproduced by kind permission.

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