Immigration: this unhappy breed

By Richard North - February 7, 2026

On Thursday, we had the prime minister’s speech, where he disputed claims that “people like Rishi Sunak, Shabana Mahmood, and presumably Marcus Rashford, Shirley Bassey and Anas Sarwar”, can’t really be English or Welsh or Scottish because they are not white.

That was a big affront to British values, he spluttered, “and I tell you, as long as I have breath in my body, I will fight against that politics”, thereby cementing in the prevailing mantra of the progressives, that nationality is defined by adherence to a common set of values, rather than by ethnicity and ancestry.

We saw something of this earlier in a staggeringly arrogant intervention from Indian-heritage MP, Jeevun Gurpreet Singh Sandher, who posted on X of the Reform candidate for Gorton and Denton that: “Matt Goodwin isn’t very British. He doesn’t get our values, our culture, or our history. Britain has always been about different communities coming together to form one nation”.

Sandher was advertising his piece in the Labour house magazine, the New Statesman, the title making the same point about Goodwin, with his sub-head reading: “Britain’s finest hour was a fundamental rejection of petty ethnonationalism. Reform should remember that”.

For Matt Goodwin, he asserts, having great-grandparents born in the right place is what really makes you British. Goodwin believes that when people are “unable to trace their lineage on these islands back more than one generation or two; they will have no deep roots in our national culture, collective memory, shared history, identity, and way of life”.

Goodwin has thus repeatedly argued, says Sandher, that those born abroad and their children are not really British. Supporting his contention, Sandher cites a piece by Hope not Hate and another in the Telegraph.

In writing his piece, Sandher takes the civic nationalism argument to new heights of absurdity, where a man of Indian origin is actually saying that an Englishman is “not British”.

Britishness is about so much more than race, he says. “It is founded in our shared values, how our different communities can come together, and the intertwined culture that comes out of it. The UK has always housed different communities that come together to create one nation, and it has never looked or sounded the same”.

What this charlatan plainly hasn’t done, though, is read John of Gaunt’s death-bed speech from Shakespeare’s Richard II, where he talks of “this scepter’d isle” and of “this happy breed of men” who inhabit “this precious stone set in the silver sea, which serves it in the office of a wall, or as a moat defensive to a house, against the envy of less happier lands, this blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England”.

Shakespeare, of course, wrote his play around 1595, and Britain as a state did not even exist then, not coming into being until 1707, with the Act of Union which brought the Scots into the fold in an artificial construct designed to make the fractious northerners feel they were a part of something bigger than themselves.

But if we fast track to 1964 and go to Timothy Baker’s abridged version of Winston Churchill’s work “A History of the English-Speaking Peoples”, we find it called “This Island Race”, which – like Churchill himself – emphasises the British as a distinct people forged by their insular position: tough, independent, seafaring, and enduring against invaders and adversities, conveying a sense of exceptionalism tied to geography, history, and character.

Be we a happy breed of men, or an island race, the English are distinct people and the core of the British state; we are quintessentially British, and no half-arsed Indian progeny has the right to say any different.

But Sandher is referring to the British and there is an argument here that because Britain is not a nation but a state, the government is free to define its citizens, which it has been doing with increasing frequency, to the extent that the concept of Britishness has been rendered valueless.

Nevertheless, as I wrote on X, by any normal dictionary definition, Jeevun Sandher is a foreigner, as are those of his ilk. His breed (or race) and others did not originate on these islands. They are not native to these islands. At best, they are “paper Brits”.

Oddly enough, one of the characteristics of the British (and especially the English) is that when they travel abroad, they tend to retain their identity and regard everyone around them as foreigners. That is a mark of national self-confidence.

As for Sandher, as a foreigner masquerading as British, his is a mark of his own insecurity and lack of confidence in his true identity. That he feels the need to assume the identity of another race suggests that he should be pitied.

However, this is tempered by his arrogance as a foreigner who has the unmitigated gall to assert that he is able to define Britishness, when the sad little creature cannot even come to terms with his own identity.

When it comes to Englishness, though, this is something very different. The state has no business defining who we are, nor a prime minister who is now so shaky in his own domain that he is unlikely to last until May.

And bluntly, despite Starmer’s misplaced intervention, “people like Rishi Sunak, Shabana Mahmood, and presumably Marcus Rashford, Shirley Bassey and Anas Sarwar”, can’t really be English, Welsh or Scottish.

Why they can’t be is simple: they are neither English, Welsh nor Scottish – they are not indigenous peoples. That they are not white is neither here nor there. There are millions of white people who are nationals of other countries. They are not English, Welsh or Scottish either. They too are foreigners.

However, not only is Starmer playing fast and loose with our birthright, we have Rishi Sunak himself in the Guardian making the claim on his own behalf, telling us he is “British, English and British Asian”.

Some would object to all three categories but – reluctantly – I’ll allow him “British Asian”, and “British” as a legal status. But never, ever, will he be English and his claim to such status is deeply offensive.

This is the man, incidentally, who as prime minister, represented the UK at the 80th anniversary celebrations of the D-Day landings in France, but left early to record an interview with ITV, attracting criticism from, amongst others, Keir Starmer.

The point, though, is that no true-blooded Englishman, especially in such a position representing the nation, would have dreamed of leaving early from such an iconic event. But Sunak, the pretend Englishman, didn’t even realise the enormity of his error.

Now, this imposter is complaining of racism directed at him and his siblings telling us how it is “seared in his memory”, while warning that Britain is “slipping back” to a time when racism was more overt.

According to the Guardian, his false assumption of a nationality to which he has no rightful claim, came out in “evidence” to the Independent Commission on Community and Cohesion, co-chaired by Sajid Javid and Jon Cruddas, which aims to speak to millions of people to try to improve cohesion after the Southport tragedy and riots.

Yet, Sajid Javid is the very last person on God’s earth that has any right to consider such matters. Of Pakistani heritage, this is the man who, as home secretary, wrote a personal letter to the ringleader of the Rochdale grooming gang, assuring him he would not be deported. With other questionable actions, a very long period of silence from him would be an appropriate response.

The problem with these people – one of them at least – is that they are completely tone deaf. Turn the situation around, and would anyone retaining their sanity seriously suggest that an Englishman, born and bred, could mooch over to Pakistan and claim he was Pakistani? Why should the reverse apply?

As it is, neither Sunak not Javid should ever have held office in this country. Consider for instance, the fate of Afshan Shabir who is being charged in Indian-held Jammu and Kashmir for the offence of applying for a job in government service, and then continuing in post, while holding British citizenship.

While other nations look after their own, our governments and elites roll over and give away our birthright. Not only do we have to suffer a plague of third-worlders, but we are also supposed to allow them to steal our national identities – and get called “racist” if we don’t accept this insult.

This makes for an unhappy breed of men, and they really do not understand what happens when they mess with “This England”.