Nigel Farage has warned that large sections of British towns and cities no longer feel distinctly English, in an exclusive interview with GB News.
The Reform Party leader said: “I'm very concerned that we have whole areas of our towns and cities that are unrecognisable as being English, but they're not unrecognisable as being English because of skin colour.”
“They're unrecognisable because of culture.”
He described the British people as the “most open minded, most accepting people” in the Western world though warned about the “cultural” and “societal” impact of mass migration.
“You look at our cities now, people often don't even know the names of their neighbours,” he said.
“It is the breakdown of communities, it's why kind of in the election campaign I said: ‘Family, community, country’.”
Nigel Farage made the comments in an interview with Steven Edginton
“You look at our cities now, people often don't even know the names of their neighbours,” he said.
“It is the breakdown of communities, it's why kind of in the election campaign I said: ‘Family, community, country’.”
The Reform MP said he would “stand for” the breakdown in community relations due to immigration;
His comments come after Britain has experienced record numbers of illegal and legal migration.
The NCA says tackling small boat crossings is a 'top priority'NCANet migration to Britain in 2023 stood at 685,000, slightly reduced from the all time high number of 764,000 in 2022.
When asked whether Britain is the same country if it is made up of a majority of immigrants and their descendants, Mr Farage said: “Well, it's not the same country because you don't actually have anything in common.”
“That's the problem, isn't it?”
“That part of who we are is shaped by our history, is shaped by our family experiences.”
“It is shaped by the triumphs and tragedies that the country has been through in the last hundred, 150 years.”
“It's part of who we are and if you finish up with large numbers of people with whom you have nothing in common, well, clearly it's going to be a very different place, and one that's going to struggle to have a proper collective sense of what matters.”
According to UK census data from 2021, 16% of people in the country had been born abroad, totalling 10.7 million migrants.
The percentage of people identifying as white British has declined from 87.5% to just 74.4% in 2021.
However, Mr Farage said he was not concerned about this decline in the white British population.
Instead, Mr Farage said: “What is a concern of mine is, in many cases, the lack of integration.”
“We see that writ large by the new kind of politics that's emerging; sectarian voting along religious lines.”
“I never really thought I'd see that in England in my lifetime.”
“I mean, I grew up seeing what it did in Northern Ireland, and it's not very welcome.”
“No, I think the real problem is this, that the population explosion and [we should] remind ourselves that it's 10 million increase since Blair came to power, 6 million increase since the Conservatives came to power in 2010, is having a negative effect on the lifestyles of pretty much everybody in the country.”
The Reform leader continued: “Whether it is access to public services, whether it is the complete unaffordability or impossibility of young people to get on the housing ladder.”
“I mean, just think about it. We need to build a new home every two minutes just to cope with the last two years' levels of legal, let alone illegal, net migration.”
“The impact on oh, I mean, everything, traffic, you name it, I mean, our lives have been devalued.”
Since 2018 more than 130,000 people have entered the UK illegally on small boats.
Under Keir Starmer’s government more than 10,000 people have crossed the English channel.