The disunited kingdom

Slowly, and by no means surely, the British political establishment is being forced to acknowledge the divided nature of the country over which it now presides.

This process has not been without significant resistance and self-delusion. Having ignored the doubters when they embarked on a policy of mass migration during the 20th century, the ever-more frequent case studies which proved the folly of this project were, one-by-one, ignored.

The vote-rigging scandal amongst Birmingham’s Muslim community in 2004 was largely written-off as a unique case. George Galloway’s by-election victory in Bradford West, 2011, was written off as well — this time, as an isolated case of public frustration with Western foreign policy in the Middle East. 

The Lutfur Rahman case in 2015 was likewise treated as an isolated incident. The fact that a local mayor was able to win elections by exploiting family networks amongst the Bangladeshi community, should have been the canary in the coal mine — but it wasn’t.

On, and on, and on — but slowly, the reality of the situation has begun to dawn on those who created it.

It will surprise nobody to hear that self-delusion did not actually make the inevitable problems of mass migration go away. Nor did legal prohibition of open discussion about these problems, or the social censure of those who raised them. In fact, this approach allowed those problems to fester, and grow. 

The Israeli war in Gaza did not cause political sectarianism in Britain, but it did amplify the phenomenon, and make it easier to identify. The Labour Party’s cautious approach to the war drove a wedge between party leadership, and the Muslim voters upon whom Labour have been able to rely for decades. Independent Muslim candidates began to recognise that they were sufficiently numerous, in large parts of the country, to win on the basis of Muslim votes alone. Where Muslims make up a large, but not decisive, proportion of the population, the Green Party recognised that they could prise Muslim voters away from Labour, by ostentatiously representing their interests and appealing to their views, on issues where Muslim opinion diverges most ostentatiously from the British mainstream.

Political sectarianism, which had largely been localised or implicit, was thrown out into the open, for all to see. In 2024, George Galloway returned, this time through a by-election in Rochdale. At local elections in 2024 and 2025, sectarian independents were able to capitalise on the trend. At the 2024 General Election, sectarian independents won four seats — while other religious and ethnic communities put pressure on candidates to reflect their interests, in a zero-sum competition for resources and attention. Earlier this year, the Gorton & Denton by-election highlighted the problem once again.

Britain is a country in which political sectarianism is a live issue

This is the normal rhythm of politics in most of the world, but has rarely been the case in Britain — and particularly, in England. Indeed, our institutions, both social and political, are designed on the assumption that people will not behave on the basis of group-based or clan-based interest, but on the basis of individual interest and belief. Sectarianism has been rare and localised, mostly arising from Irish Catholic migration to the British mainland.

But the new sectarianism is not an emerging trend, or a burgeoning problem, or a terrifying hypothetical. It is the reality. It is a fact. Britain is a country in which political sectarianism is a live issue.

Where, then, can we go from here? There are three basic outcomes.

The first outcome is the preference of most in the British political establishment. Often, in sectarian societies, the elite class acknowledges sectarianism as a fact, but does not actively try to counter it. Instead, it attempts to manage it. Each group in society — including, in this case, the English — is given equal regard as a stakeholder to be managed. Institutions are designed to minimise direct conflict and friction, largely through compromise. National identity is shaped to be as inclusive as possible, even to the detriment of the groups which built and shaped society in the first place. Different groups are represented by different political parties or factions, and compromise between those groups becomes the basis for political decision-making. 

If nothing changes, this will be the approach taken by the British political establishment. We can already see this taking shape, including through parallel judicial, legal, and educational institutions. Keir Starmer’s most recent St. George’s Day address was revealing in this regard — his remarks focused on chiding the English, as one subject people amongst many, for their apparent lack of commitment to the project of coexistence.

In most cases, this approach results in economic and social stagnation, as zero-sum compromises prevent the kind of positive-sum political experiments that enable countries to progress and thrive. In all cases, it involves the removal of freedoms and liberties from all groups. After all, political freedom enables conflict to be resolved openly, and open conflict is impermissible in a system designed to force different groups to coexist.

The second outcome is really the failure-state of the first. If groups cannot be managed by a high-handed, compromise-minded elite, then they will descend into the kind of sporadic violence which has characterised life in Northern Ireland, in Bosnia, and in Lebanon in decades gone by. Politics ceases to be relevant, other than as a process by which conflict might be paused. This outcome is that of the failed state, and it is an outcome that we may live to see.

The third outcome is the victory of one group over the others — either because that group overwhelms all others in numerical terms, or because it becomes sufficiently powerful to enforce norms and behaviours onto other groups. In the British context, this would mean the re-empowerment of the British people — as the group from which the British state’s legitimacy is derived, and as the group that the British state is designed to serve. Other groups might be prevented from growing by the ending of mass migration, they might assimilate into the cultural and behavioural norms of the British people, including through intermarriage — and, for some people, they might simply leave. 

We know that these are the available outcomes, because the normal state of politics — across the world and throughout history — is sectarian. We have countless examples to draw from, and they all, ultimately, fall into one of these three brackets.

We must remain sceptical of politicians, or commentators, who insist that one outcome or another is inevitable. History is contingent. We are still in a position to choose between any of these outcomes — though some will be harder to reach than others, and the road toward them will be painful. It would have been better to never have created this problem in the first place, but now that we have, we must decide how we wish to resolve it.