Who are the British? That’s the question that Demos asked in our recent research report A Place for Pride and, today, it’s a question confronted by new think tank British Future as well. Like us, British Future has sought to understand British identity through a large new poll and, like us, they have emerged from the experience largely optimistic about our body politic.

First of all, Brits are not the nonchalant nihilists we’re so often painted as. Demos’s own work found that the vast majority of British residents are ‘proud of Britain’ and British Future finds around 70 per cent of people strongly agreeing that they ‘belong to Britain’. So much for the post-nation naysaying of so many on the liberal Left. Patriotism is a sentiment that’s hard to exorcise: it’s remained robust within the British soul despite our diminishing international status and our declining prosperity. What’s more, despite our deep-seated fears about immigration – a clear majority worry that mass migration will harm our chances of economic recovery, for instance – we are both nuanced and relaxed about the more simplistic demonstrations of loyalty that some have demanded of immigrants in the past.

Some 60 per cent of people reject the ‘Tebbit test’ and believe that migrants to this country should feel free to support their country of origin in sporting competitions. We may be worried about the impact of immigration on crime, public services and jobs but we are not so purist as to demand immediate, flag-waving, show-off demonstrations of commitment. In fact, as recent Demos research demonstrated, people worry far more about deeper kinds of integration – do migrants volunteer, do they learn about British manners, do they respect British social norms? 

If there is one criticism to be made of British Future’s otherwise fascinating poll it is that this stuff – the softer fabric of life – appears to have been left out of their polling work. British people weren’t asked, for instance, whether immigration had a negative or positive effect on community cohesion and neighbourliness (I suspect from our own work that the balance would have tipped in favour of ‘negative’ overall).

British people do not despise migrants as individuals. We have an overwhelming – if somewhat clichéd as far as commentary goes – sense of ‘fair play’ and innate tolerance that means the majority embrace pluralism instinctively. But we are a people with deeply held specific fears and concerns about the impact of migration, specifically the effect that sheer numbers have had both on our economy overall and on particular communities.

It is incumbent on any political party that wants to retain the good-natured fairness of the British character to respond to those concerns effectively in order to avoid them developing and distorting into something different and more ugly. The cap on migration fits with public sentiment – it must be made to work. And those arguing for greater tolerance, even for fewer restrictions, should think carefully about the impact that more laissez faire borders would have on Britain’s desire to welcome and to integrate migrants.

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