| 9 mins read
The immigration debate in Britain has long been poisonous, but it has now entered a new phase. Keir Starmer’s government has adopted an increasingly hardline stance on immigration as part of a policy agenda described as ‘Reform-lite’, whilst the populist right insist that we must variously ‘reclaim’ or ‘fly’ the flag as some kind of stand against decline and the fracturing of our communities, with blame heaped on migrants and minorities in particular. In that is the irony: many multiculturalists agree that we should fly the flag. They want us to embrace national symbols like the St George’s Cross or the Union Jack, to see them as shared signs of belonging. The problem for national and community cohesion comes when groups on the far right try to use these flags in campaigns like ‘Operation Raise the Colours’. That move risks turning what should be shared symbols of pride into weapons of exclusion, particularly when those accompanying campaigns are built on weaponising disinformation to turn public anger against migrants and non-white citizens.
The flag and cohesion
These campaigns are damaging to cohesion, not least because Britain’s story isn’t one of homogenous whiteness. It is one of contribution, sacrifice and reinvention by whites, British Indians, Pakistanis, Caribbeans and countless others who each have long and deep histories here. For instance, more than two million men from India and Pakistan alone served in the Second World War, and British-Caribbeans moved from the West Indies to Britain to do the hard work of rebuilding it after. Commonwealth-born citizens before 1981 were legally British and free to move here, often to what they already considered their home. The working-class, racialised as—and, predominantly, but far more exclusively—white also has a proud history of contribution, powering industry, building ships, manufacturing the goods that underlined Britain’s place on the world stage. The flag belongs to all of them, and they each have stories to tell about their place in the national narrative as citizens. In truth, nearly all Britons want the same thing: connection, cohesion and pride in belonging. That common ground exists, but it is too often drowned out by those weaponised narratives that divide us based on racialised notions of Englishness or Britishness.
The public, far more than the headlines suggest, already seem to understand this, too. Surveys show that over 90% of English people reject the idea that Englishness is tied to whiteness and prefer to define it in terms of contribution and citizenship. Belonging to Britain is widely felt across groups: 85% of Asian, 86% of black and 84% of white Britons say they feel they belong and, more than that, each group expresses pride in that heritage at similar levels. This shatters the myth that Britain is split between a ‘silent majority’ and a multicultural liberal cosmopolitan elite pushing some agenda in which people from non-white backgrounds are subverting Britain’s heritage; rather, they are rooted in it and most people think belonging is possible for all who contribute and participate. However, the national conversation rarely reflects this consensus, and many citizens do not know that others share these views, which can leave them feeling isolated and disconnected.
Weaponised disinformation
Such isolation is worsened by our national conversation of late, which keeps circling around fears and flashpoints that all too often harken to the talking points of demagogues like Nigel Farage. Take Starmer’s phrase that Britain risks becoming an ‘island of strangers.’ Yes, many people do feel disconnected—half of Britons say, despite feeling they belong, that they also feel detached from society and 44% sometimes feel like ‘strangers in their own country’, under-recognised by others. This isn’t just a white experience. In fact, Asian Britons are even more likely to report such feelings, even if whites voice them more sharply. The shared concern borne out by this data is overwhelmingly about dislocation and decline. Britain’s disconnection crisis has been building for decades, rooted in deeper structural changes. Between 2010 and 2020, austerity slashed local authority budgets by half. That gutted the institutions and meeting places—pubs, clubs, associations—that once gave people a sense of belonging and it is no surprise that around three quarters of those spaces have disappeared. Communities without shared spaces inevitably feel isolated, as this recent More in Common report suggests. Indeed, it finds no evidence that ethnicity correlates to the strength of disconnection, finding that those places which report the highest concerns around separation are those which have the least amount of civic infrastructure, poor job prospects, as well as strong feelings of decline. In other words, structural decline is the strongest driver of disconnection and is most likely to make strangers out of communities.
However, these concerns are often—and consistently—ignored in the political mainstream, while the scapegoating of migrants, asylum seekers and ethnic minority citizens continues. That this occurs is, unfortunately, not surprising given the poor quality of information on offer to the public. Indeed, 27% of the population think migration spending accounts for the majority of government spending and 47% of Britons think irregular immigration, predominantly by small boat, accounts for the vast majority of immigration into our country. In reality, it is about 4% and, although numbers are up this year, July 2025 saw the lowest number of small boat crossings since 2019. More widely, in terms of the other 96% of immigration, that of regular migration, work visas are down 36% on the year before and immigration is declining across most metrics. Yet, right-wing media outlets and commentators have focussed their attention on the purported luxury of ‘migrant hotels’ and claims of free iPads were peddled by Rylan Clark. Far from iPads, asylum seekers receive £49.18 a week on a card they cannot use online or £10 if the hotel provides meals. Only about half of these people will be allowed to settle in Britain—and of them not all permanently.
Disconnection and fairness
The prevailing rhetoric has been concerned with a perceived lack of fairness and questions have been raised about how the government treats its citizens. These are good questions, but misdirected. Asylum accounts for just 0.3% of government spending—£2.8 billion out of £1.3 trillion. For context, our spending on museums is four times higher, whilst the cost to the treasury from tax avoidance is more than double this figure at 0.7%. If asylum spending, which barely covers the basics, were eliminated entirely, the saving per person would be £6.75 a month. The idea that refugees are draining the system is not only false, but also distracting.
Questions must be asked of government. If it is a question of fair treatment, as the asylum ‘crisis’ is so often framed, then it must acknowledge that communities have endured real decline. Lost industries, economic stagnation, crumbling services and neglect from successive administrations in the form of decades of underinvestment in shared spaces has fractured our community and left people feeling vulnerable and sceptical of their erstwhile neighbours, and the toxic debate around migration bleeds into our social fabric. The focus of the recent ‘Operation Raise the Colours’ exploits widespread disaffection in a way that divides us only further. The flag should never be a weapon of exclusion, but it will be if the record is not set straight on immigration—and communities are left without space to overcome misunderstanding or reforge their bonds anew.
