In the last few weeks, several high-profile commentators have expressed apocalyptic concerns about the fall in the percentage of “White British” people in the UK. In the Daily Telegraph, Professor Matt Goodwin claimed “the white British will become a minority group in the UK by the year 2063”. Conservative MP Neil O’Brien wrote (also in the Telegraph) that “Britain is heading for utter oblivion”, in part because of high migration and consequent rapid demographic change.
They are fond of citing startling statistics from London to back up their dystopian claims. O’Brien, for example, notes that in Greater London, only a third of private renters are White British. In the Standard, David Goodhart stated that “just over one in five school children are white British”.
What is curious about this is that if you are going to argue that a lack of “White British” people is destroying Britain, pointing to London, the region of the UK which is both the richest and the most tolerant part of the country, is a pretty odd choice.
Take productivity. London remains the most economically productive region in the UK. In 2023, output per hour in the capital was 28.5 per cent higher than the UK average and significantly above every other part of the country. Were ethnic diversity a drag on economic output, this situation would be difficult to explain.
In fact, many of the city’s key sectors – from finance, to tech, to hospitality – are powered by migrant labour. A 2017 PwC report estimated that each migrant worker contributes an additional £46,000 in Gross Value Added to London’s economy per year. With about 1.8 million non-UK-born workers, this translates into around £83 billion annually – around 22 per cent of the city’s economic output.
Education tells a similar story. Inner London schools, notorious for low achievement and disorder in the 1980s, are now among the best-performing in the country. This turnaround occurred as the city’s schools became increasingly ethnically diverse. Today, school students in London, many of them from low-income or immigrant backgrounds, routinely outperform their peers elsewhere.
Researchers point to targeted investment (such as the London Challenge) and high-quality leadership, but also the ambitions of immigrant families, which place a strong emphasis on education. Rather than pulling down standards, demographic change appears to have helped raise them.
Although the city has large ethnic minority populations that could form concentrated enclaves, London is less racially segregated than any major US city and not especially segregated by UK standards either, according to analysis by John Burn-Murdoch for the Financial Times. Surveys show that Londoners – crucially including white Londoners – are more positive about immigration and multiculturalism than residents of less diverse areas. This aligns with social science research showing that proximity to diversity leads to familiarity and tolerance. A 2014 Demos study found that White British people who live in diverse areas are less opposed to immigration and less supportive of far-right parties.
Of course, none of this is to say that London is without problems. High levels of migration have contributed to London’s rising population and therefore become a factor in its housing supply problems and pressures on public services, with many poorer migrant families having high levels of need. However, perceptions that migrants are routinely prioritised over longer-established residents for social housing are mistaken, with borough allocations based on need within a legal framework that encourages a requirement for recipients having been residents for at least two years.
London has not been immune from racially divisive politics: in 2006, the British National Party won 12 council seats in Barking & Dagenham and although they were ousted four years later, some parts of Outer London could be fertile ground for Reform UK in next year’s borough elections. The politics of Tower Hamlets provide another cautionary tale. Lutfur Rahman was re-elected as the borough’s Mayor in 2022 due largely to the continuing support of fellow local Bangladeshi Londoners, despite having served a five-year ban on seeking office after an election court found him to have previously benefited from “corrupt and illegal practices”.
Still, the idea that the rest of the country is about to follow London’s demographic trajectory – and plunge into dramatic social decline as a result – does not hold up. London is a clear outlier: in 2023 around 41 per cent of its residents were born outside the UK, compared to just 13 per cent across England. Goodwin’s claim that the “White British” are on the verge of becoming a minority relies on a particularly narrow and contentious definition – one that excludes anyone with one foreign-born parent. By that logic, both King Charles and Winston Churchill would not count as “White British.”
The more sober reality is that the UK is a patchwork of cities with large migrant populations and varied ethnic backgrounds, which will continue to exist alongside less diverse areas. Meanwhile, the insistence that London is a kind of multicultural hellscape is becoming increasingly unmoored from reality. In his Standard piece, Goodhart claimed: “I heard nobody saying ‘rapid demographic change is nothing to worry about, just look at London’.” But maybe more people should be looking at London. The capital has shown that diversity and change does not have to mean decline. Instead, it can mean adaptation, ambition and success.
Christabel Cooper is Director of Research at Labour Together. Follow her on Bluesky.
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