My Speech at the Oxford Union
Is Britishness a Birthright or a Choice?
Last week I spoke at the Oxford Union.
I first appeared in 2005 as a wet-behind-the-ears academic (probably as a last-minute stand-in for David Goodhart!) supporting the motion that multiculturalism had failed. My teammates included Trevor Phillips and Ted Cantle. Tariq Modood, a leading academic multiculturalist – and very fair man – was on the other team, alongside Bernard Crick, who spoke about how great diversity was, rather than dealing with the question of multiculturalism!
Last year I was fortunate enough to bump into the Union president at that time, Richard Tydeman, whom I thank for the old photos!
In 2025, after a hiatus of 20 years, I endorsed a very similar proposition at the Union. I dusted off my trusty 1960s tux, a hand-me-down from my Dad, and headed off to the debating chamber.
The Oxford Union has had its share of bad press recently. In 2024, it was raked over the coals for a debate on Israel and genocide in which aggressive heckling of pro-Israel speakers went unchecked. A year later, its dreadlocked past president George Abaraonye, who debated with Charlie Kirk in May 2025, celebrated Kirk’s murder that September by typing ‘Charlie Kirk got shot loool [laugh out loud]’.
What follows is a somewhat longer version of the speech I gave at the Oxford Union debate on 30 April, 2026 in favour of the motion ‘This House Believes Being British is a Birthright, Not a Choice.’
Before the debate, however, there was more controversy. Carl Benjamin, who was meant to be on my side, was disinvited because he had apparently said something off-colour about Jess Phillips. Though he had apologised later, feminist and other student groups at Oxford complained. Apparently, from what I gleaned from others, the cancelers’ strategy is to compile a dossier on a speaker and then bombard Union officials 24 hours before, forcing them to make a decision under pressure.
While Katharine Birbalsingh, who was slated to appear on the other, appears to have been ghosted.
I think the shabby treatment of Birbalsingh is likely to be a case of disorganisation and bad form rather than cancellation.
On a side note, the ‘majority minority’ character of Oxford Union in 2025 also struck me as very different from 2005 (when the organizers were mainly White Brits). Most minorities in the picture in 2005 were speakers:
With all that drama out of the way, here is what I intended to say, though time meant I had to do some editing on the fly!:
Is British national identity a birthright, given by history and tradition, and transcending the lifespan of the individual; or a choice, in which a random group of individuals consent to be bound by a set of liberal, so-called ‘British’ values.
David Goodhart, in his book The Road to Somewhere, speaks of Somewheres and Anywheres. The former are rooted to family, community, place, ethnicity, nation. The latter have weaker ascriptive attachments, focusing instead on their achieved identities of income, education and consumer choices.
We might instead think of Somewheres and Anywheres as states of mind rooted in different psychological dispositions which have a substantial heritable component. Psychologist Karen Stenner speaks of one group of people as valuing order over difference, and the present being like the past. Others prefer the stimulation of difference and change.
The Somewhere version of nationhood is exemplified by French writer Ernest Renan, who described the nation as a daily plebiscite, an expression of daily choice and will, much as an individual must affirm their identity each day to be an individual. This worldview sees nations as bound by free rational contracts between citizens, mediated by a constitution.
On this view, British nationhood is purely a matter of choice.
I can be British on Monday and Wednesday, but not on Tuesday and Friday
Tea, Anglicanism and the monarchy may be important today, but tomorrow it will be yoga, tacos and Taoism.
Britain’s core symbolic content consists of nothing more than the liberal values embodied in ‘British Values’ or the documents that make up the unwritten constitution.
Those on the other side of the Proposition would have you believe that being British should be just a choice, unconstrained by inherited elements.
Unfortunately for them, those who support this motion, which is most people, don’t want to cut our ties to national tradition.
I’ve been studying national identity for 30 years. If we’ve learned anything, it’s that virtually nobody thinks of their nation in purely voluntarist, abstract terms.
As communitarians note, most of us cherish not only the things we choose but the ascribed groups we are born into: family, place, attachments, traditions.
Consider what the Anywhere view of nationhood entails:
First, I have had British citizenship for many years. While I must be treated as an equal British citizen, the other side’s position means that someone who speaks like me must be considered as prototypically British as someone born and raised here. That’s ridiculous.
Second, while I believe we must be inclusive of individuals, regardless of cultural characteristics, as equal members of the nation, the same is not true of collective symbols.
I can have multiple national identities. Britain cannot, it can only be British.
The need for inclusive membership criteria may mean that ‘all accents are British accents.’
But at the collective level, my accent is not a British accent. There are British accents and French accents. The more Britain starts talking like me, the less British it is.
The same holds for other traditional characteristics of Britain, including language, religion and ethnicity.
While Rishi Sunak is English and British, if Britain becomes more Hindu by ethnicity and religion, it becomes less British, less connected to its past, less distinct in the world.
Maximizing the particularity of Britain is not ideal for human flourishing but preserving a large measure of national particularity is an important value for many people
Most Britons of all races, and most foreign tourists, feel this way. In a survey of British Sikhs I was astonished to find that many felt that prototypical British features like red or blond hair were part of what they were attached to about Britain. Likewise, surveys show that Hispanic and Asian Trump voters are as protective of America’s European character as White Trump voters.
Likewise, the rapid ethnic transformation of Britain matters to Britons of all racial backgrounds.
My final point is that surveys tell us there are different ways to be British. Some define Britishness in a thin way, as a diverse fluid mix of people and traditions alongside a set of liberal values. Others want something thicker, identifying themselves with British traditions like ancestry, religion and folk customs.
Both are valid as long as no one tries to impose a single vision on the country.
Our side does not seek an ethnostate, but believes that in a free country, those who have a thicker conception of Britishness should be allowed to identify this way and express this version of national identity.
This is not excluding anybody. An Orthodox Jew wouldn’t consider me Jewish because my mother isn’t Jewish. That’s fine, I’m a big boy who can deal with the fact that different people draw group boundaries differently as long as I am treated as an equal individual.
The state-driven pursuit of a maximally inclusive nationhood leads inexorably to a thin, minimal Britishness based on a passport and a placeless set of universal values.
Worse than that, this multicultural form of nationhood has become intolerant and coercive. If you do not identify your Britishness with diversity and change, you are narrow-minded. If you do not reject the evidence of your eyes and ears that parts of Britain have become less British over time, you are a bigot.
This flattens the rich particularity of British identity into something one-dimensional and monochrome. Rolled out to other nations across the globe, it produces an illiberal, Orwellian, lifeless nightmare.
If, like most people, you reject this cultureless vision, please support the motion.