Transcription
The point you're making is entirely correct, which is Britain is very good at absorbing people from other places and better than most other European countries. That's a point I've made in my entire public career. I've said this is the best place to be an immigrant in the world. Okay. And that's not to say we don't have really serious issues; what we do.
And what I would say to you is the reason we're having the conversation about immigration is not that people feel that me or Francis's mother coming here has been a disaster for this country. People feel that way, right? The reason people feel strongly about immigration is they see the numbers that we have had over the last two decades. They naturally—people will, I think quite reasonably—project that into the future, for the reason that Frances gave, which is it doesn't matter what politicians say; they're not dealing with this issue. That means, are we going to have millions and millions and millions and millions more people coming? And then they go, what is the impact of that scale? It's not about immigrants and our willingness to welcome them; it's about the scale. What is the impact on our infrastructure? What is the impact on societal cohesion? What is the—look, this is something that no one wants to talk about, especially in these kind of places, but I, as an immigrant, can say, at what percentage of the native population does England cease to be England? Is it 50%? Is it 40%? Is it 10%? When there are no English people left, is it still England? Right? That is a thing that no one wants to talk about, but I know millions of people subtly feel, and not just English or British people. My relatives from Russia or Ukraine or Armenia or whatever, they come to Heath and they go, "Is this still England?" Right now you could say that shows the success of our society.
There's a hell of a lot of people who don't agree with you. That's right. I mean, do we regard Rishi Sunak as English, for example? Uh, I've always said this is a very unpopular thing that I—I'm not English. I will never be English. I don't think Rishi Sunak is English. We're both British, but we're not English. No, you're from—you weren't born here; you were an immigrant. Well, my son was born here. I don't think my son is English, right? He's born to a Russian definition, right? I would say that Rishi Sunak is as English as Tyrer and W. He is absolutely English. He was born and bred here, and um, I wouldn't say that the color of his skin makes him any less—he's a brown Hindu. How is he English? Because he's born and bred here. So, by being born here you become English in your opinion? Yeah, English, because there's a difference, right? I don't think English is—look, to take—I'm a Scot, right? Yeah. And now are—are my kids English? I would say they are. You? How? Because they were born here. They're Scottish, nope, by blood. No, they've hardly ever been to Scotland, unfortunately. So what, by blood? So give me this—I mean, my son is born to a Russian and a Ukrainian, right? How on Earth is he English? Because he was born here. I mean, you think that being born in a country makes you—that makes you of that country? So if your children had been born in Japan, would they be Japanese if they were born there? Look, you get—you get white Caribbean people, for example. Hold on, just the Japanese example—would they be Japanese if they were born there and lived their life there? Then yeah, look, this comes down to the—look, I think the Imperial identity—I get—and I've said this, right?—you people should be able to come to this country and they buy into the Imperial, overarching identities—all British—that's fine with me. But pretending that my son is English—I—what, come on. It depends if you think English has got an ethnic undertone. No, of course it does. Well, I disagree. And by the way, you might say it's not my country. What about Japanese people? I would say Hamza Yu, for example, is Scottish, right? So you might disagree with me; people have different definitions of this, but in my opinion, if you're born in a country, you are of that country. And I can look at my—do my sons of half Scottish, half Slavic blood, right? If you were to do one of these ancestry.com tests, they might say that. But in what meaningful sense are they half Czech, really? I mean, they don't know the first thing about the Czech Republic. I mean, it's—they knew everything about England because they were born here. This is—they—they—they cheer for England's football teams. Now, it took them a while, but they do. Um, and um, so that's the way I see nationality. Now I know that not everybody does that. Now again, most people don't—the overwhelming majority of people don't—in every country in the world. But I'm giving you—I'm giving you my answer, and I think that—take for example my wife now. She was born to refugee parents; they fled the Soviets, um, and she brought up in Sweden, but she never felt Swedish because she felt that the word Swedish, the way that people used it, did have an ethnic undertone. If he looks a little bit dusky, right, if you look a little bit foreign, then you would not be seen to be Swedish, right? Now it's very strange because I don't look at her and see somebody looks a bit foreign, but um, only if you see it for the Swedes' eyes, you might look at you for—you might struggle to pass off as a Swede. I don't know. It's not something—I don't think we really spend much time in this country looking at somebody looking—look at Constantin, right? Is—is he, you know—I don't know. You might guess, but it wouldn't be that—that much of importance, um, here. She does not feel like an alien now, perhaps she is because she's an immigrant, but weirdly she felt more of an alien in Sweden. That makes sense to me. She does, because we have an—as I said—an overarching identity. It's the same in America. It's actually, to a lesser extent, but very similar in Russia, where you know, Armenians can be Russian if they're—but but Russian in an overarching sense. No one would think they're ethnically Russian, right? The point I'm trying to make to you is a country is what a country is, and when that country changes over time in a way that's both visually and culturally different, that is—is a discombobulating thing for the vast majority of the people who live in that place. Maybe not for you, maybe not for lots of people in the media, maybe not—not for lots of people in the building across the road and in Parliament, but for the vast majority of people in this country, their sense is that when the country ceases to be visually the same as it was at some point, there is a level when it ceases to be that country.
Well, the country's always changing. You had the Gaels, the Picts, the Saxons, the Danes. I mean, you have got patterns of—by the way, I don't want for a second to seem to be disparaging or diminish people who feel that way. If these are hugely important, and I think we make a grave mistake if we don't—if we say, "Oh, they're all racist; let's not talk about it." Um, and when—when you boil down the concerns, they usually are very practical ones, like, um, how—how's my kid going to get to school, or they're going to be up against the world's workforce; this is going to make their—their life tougher, or um, where are they all going to live? It's all overcrowded now. That would be true if there were a whole bunch of—what?