Nigel Farage says areas of UK 'unrecognisable as being English' - but not due to ethnicity

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has said he is "very concerned" whole areas of UK towns and cities are becoming "unrecognisable as being English" - but he says it's got nothing to do with Britain's ethnic make-up.

Mr Farage, whose party came third in vote share at July's General Election despite only winning five seats in the Commons, was speaking to GB News about his thoughts on the cultural make up of Britain.

The MP for Clacton told the channel's journalist Steven Edginton that he felt large parts of the nation were no longer "culturally English".

He 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."

According to UK Census data, from 2021 around 16 percent of people living in the UK were born abroad, totalling around 10.7 million. GB News states that figures show those identifying as white British has declined from 87.5 percent to 74.4 percent in 2021.

Tackling the question of changing population demographics, Mr Farage said the British were the "most open minded, most accepting people" in Europe and the Western World.

But the 60-year-old said there were "cultural" and "societal" impacts of mass migration. His comments come as some governments in the EU, such as the Netherlands and Germany, have recently spoken about limiting immigration in a step away from mandates set from Brussels.

Mr Farage added: "You look at our cities now, people often don't even know the names of their neighbours. It is the breakdown of communities, it's why kind of in the election campaign I said: 'Family, community, country'.

Mr Farage concluded that if the UK became a country made from mostly immigrants and their descendants, then it wouldn't be "the same country" because "you don't actually have anything in common".

Net migration to Britain in 2023 stood at 685,000, slightly reduced from the all time high number of 764,000 in 2022. Since 2018 more than 130,000 people have entered the UK illegally on small boats and under Sir Keir Starmer's Labour, a further 10,000 have since crossed the English channel.

The Reform UK leader said one of the problems to be tackled is a "lack of integration" between immigrant and other communities.

He claimed: "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."