Incendiary claims in regards to the UK census don’t replicate actuality

This week, the newest tranche of information from the UK’s 2021 census was printed, together with figures on race and ethnicity. It was promptly met with a volley of incendiary responses, making a gift of the eagerness with which some had evidently been ready to weaponise the outcomes.

Nigel Farage, former chief of the UK Independence occasion, recorded a hasty video from a union-jack-draped automobile seat, during which he mentioned that “London, Birmingham and Manchester are all now minority-white cities”, and “solely 46 per cent [of Britons] now determine as Christian . . . an enormous change within the id of this nation that’s going down via immigration”.

Conservative commentator Douglas Murray, who has beforehand described London as having “turn into a overseas nation”, echoed Farage in blaming the declining numbers of British Christians on immigration. Others talked of rising segregation and “no-go areas” on social media.

However virtually all of those claims are unfaithful, as even a cursory have a look at the info reveals.

First, there’s the truth that London (54 per cent white) and Manchester (57 per cent) will not be minority white in any respect, and Birmingham (49 per cent) solely makes it below the wire by a hair’s breadth. Farage and co will need to have been wanting solely at those that determine as each British and white.

But when figuring out as British is the important thing, why rely solely white Britons? (I feel we all know the reply.) We now have information on the share of individuals in every area which have a British id. In London, it’s 78 per cent — and black and mixed-race Londoners usually tend to determine as British than the white inhabitants.

The faith declare is much more risible. The argument is that “mass immigration” has hastened Christianity’s decline in Britain. But that decline has been pushed overwhelmingly by white Britons, lower than half of whom now say they’re Christian, down from 69 per cent in 2011, a lack of about 7mn.

If preserving the Christian religion is essential to “saving” Britain, then we must always look to the nation’s black inhabitants. Seventy-two per cent of this demographic are Christian, half one million greater than in 2011. The non-British white group can also be price analyzing — 60 per cent are Christian, with one million added because the final census.

One may also ask why this appears to matter a lot. Way back to 1995, lower than a 3rd of Britons thought being Christian was an vital a part of being British. By 2020, that had fallen to twenty per cent. The final time I set foot in a church, aside from Christmas, Easter, weddings and funerals, was after I went to Doncaster’s “iconic” nightclub Camelots, a former Presbyterian chapel behind whose stained-glass home windows many sins have been dedicated. In fashionable Britain, I believe a drunken evening out gives a stronger supply of shared nationwide expertise than attending church on a Sunday.

Lastly, we come to the warnings over “segregation” and “no-go areas”, which once more show unfounded. Whereas Christianity ranks low on the listing of issues Britons say one requires to be really British, talking the language ranks highest. However drill right down to even essentially the most monoethnic of Britain’s non-white neighbourhoods, and a transparent majority converse fluent English in each single one.

Segregation is one in every of many phrases UK tradition warriors have imported from the US and now apply liberally however incorrectly on this facet of the Atlantic. Racial segregation was legally mandated within the US south for one of the best a part of a century below Jim Crow, and the coverage of “redlining” — or denying monetary providers on racial grounds — quietly prolonged related practices. This has left an extended shadow, with one in 40 US neighbourhoods nonetheless extremely segregated, in comparison with fewer than one in 1,000 in Britain.

There may be, although, one level on which I’ll concede: these commentators are proper in implying that they’re a part of a minority group going through terminal decline. In 2006, solely 10 per cent of Britons thought that to be really British you needed to be white. By 2020, that determine had fallen to three per cent.

john.burn-murdoch@ft.com, @jburnmurdoch