Talking about what it is to be English seems to have set the cat amongst the pigeons and upset some snowflakes who object to what I have said, particularly the snowflake of snowflakes, Zia Yusuf, who is quite touchy.

I also found myself in disagreement with Suella Braverman, who says she can’t be English: ‘I’m proud to be British,’ she wrote on X. ‘My family and ancestors have a link to Britain which spans centuries. But in no way are we English’.

Even our greatest aristocrats are, in fact, descended from Norman conquerors. They are not pure-bred Englishmen. There is no such thing. There never actually has been

Well, there is one thing on which Yusuf and Braverman are clearly and self-evidently wrong, and that is the idea that there is a difference between the term ‘British’ and the term ‘English’ in the mind of a true Englishman.

The English, for better or worse, out of self-confidence – some may say arrogance – have used the terms interchangeably until very recently. For years, all senior politicians would have said ‘English’ or ‘British’ quite happily, without specifying that Britain meant a larger area and was including the Scots and the Welsh. Indeed, they used English to include the Scots and the Welsh.

Palmerston did it the whole time. Churchill did it. This may have upset the Scots and the Welsh and the Irish, but the English weren’t too fussed about that. Quite frankly, they were the top dog. The English make up 85 per cent of the population, a bit more of the economy. They are – we are – the most important part of the United Kingdom. That’s not to say we don’t want the other parts to be there, and we don’t value them, but we’ve never seen them as being particularly important in order to make the geographical differentiation. So those people coming out saying that they’re British but not English simply don’t know how the English have used the terms. They are perhaps showing themselves not to be either English or British, by failing to have joined in with the society to which they purport to belong.

England and Britain are synonyms; English and Britons are synonymous.

I am not a woolly-minded liberal. I am a conservative, and I believe that, when people come to this country, it is their duty to become English. I’m not really interested in multiculturalism. I’m not interested in people who come here preserving bits of their culture. I think our culture is unashamedly better than others. It is more civilised, grander, and more successful. I want people who come to live here to become English, because I believe in the melting pot theory. I think that when people come here, they should be proud to be English, to glory in the name of Englishman or Englishwoman. This is what we want in our society. It is how we create and build a stable society.

I resent this idea that a passport is merely like a key, a door card for a hotel, that you use it to check in and check out of the Hotel UK as and when you please, without having to give something in return to make it your home.

If England, or Britain, is your home, you need to be English. You’re not Chinese English or Indian English or Pakistani English. You are either English or, frankly, you’re not. And if you’re not willing to be English, then why are you here? That is the choice you have made: you have chosen to be part of this great nation; a part of our great Island story, to join in with it and to flourish with it, to enjoy the benefits and the freedoms that England has long given, not just to the English, but to the world.

That, I think, is fundamental. It is a privilege for people to become English. But, in return, the English recognise the validity of somebody who has joined the club. They have become English by virtue of getting that passport, rather than remaining foreign sojourners in this land. And I’m very surprised at Zia Yusuf, who I would have thought would want to be English. If he doesn’t want to be English, why does he want to govern this country if he still thinks of himself as not English? Why is he involved in a party that wishes to run the country?

The same goes for Suella Braverman. She is English by virtue of being a member of the English Parliament, or its successor body, the United Kingdom Parliament. It is the oldest parliament in the world, other than the Manx one; the longest surviving democracy in the world. To be part of that is surely to be English rather than to be some foreign visitor who is popping in wearing a British hat and with a British passport under her arm. Braverman’s approach to political life seems bizarre. You should want to be part of the community that you represent. MPs in England are English people. They are not foreign satraps sent to rule us.

I also think that this amounts to a misunderstanding of our history. Here, let me turn to the words of Daniel Defoe. Defoe had to deal with this question of identity when William of Orange became King in 1689, and there was a lot of hostility to the Dutch. So, he looked at our history and looked at who had come in, and who had ruled us. And what did he say?

The Romans first with Julius Caesar came/ Including all the nations of that name/ Gauls, Greeks, and Lombards, and, by computation, Auxiliaries or slaves of every nation.

With Hengist, Saxons; Danes with Sueno came/ In search of plunder, not in search of fame/ Scots, Picts, and Irish from the Hibernian shore/ And conquering William brought the Normans o’er/ All these their barbarous offspring left behind/ The dregs of armies, they of all mankind.

Blended with Britons, who before were here/ Of whom the Welsh ha’ blessed the character/ From this amphibious ill-born mob began/ That vain ill-natured thing, an Englishman.

The English are a mongrel people, not an Aryan master race. pic.twitter.com/xQ1YWBVJqS

— Jacob Rees-Mogg (@Jacob_Rees_Mogg) September 22, 2026

That’s the point. There may be some true Britons left, some people who were here and didn’t intermarry with Romans or Saxons or Angles or Normans or Danes. But they’re probably living in North Wales, where they retreated, to get away from all these invading people. They are not in the bulk of England.

England hasn’t been a constant centre of multiculturalism. It has one culture, one unified English culture, which has developed with all sorts of people coming in; sometimes, as with the Anglo-Saxons, in large numbers. The Vikings came too, and were very important in the Danelaw area in northern and eastern England, making up perhaps as much as 10 per cent of the population there. The Normans were surprisingly unimportant, making up only about half a per cent of the population. So, yes, we’re not constantly having mass migration, but our history as English people is of others coming in and building our culture.

Alfred the Great was an Anglo-Saxon. He wasn’t an ancient Briton. King Arthur was an ancient Briton. William the Conqueror was a Norseman. He was essentially a Dane. Even our greatest aristocrats are, in fact, descended from Norman conquerors. They are not pure-bred Englishmen. There is no such thing. There never has been.

The history of our nation is one of a freedom loving people, a people who value everybody under the law – a Christian people, but a society that has taken people in, and has adopted them, has made them part of the culture, not a society that has said: ‘You keep your different way of living. You are an outsider. You are effectively a leper from our society, and must be kept out of the mainstream’. We have adopted everybody and have brought them in.

So, to those of you who say it’s DNA that makes you English, I would say this: You don’t know what you’re talking about. Our DNA is already mixed up. Have a look at your own DNA. Dare I say it, you want to take the beam out of your own eye before you take the mote out of the eye of others. We English are not, and nor should we be seen as, some eugenically pure island race. We are a people who have values and culture and strengths and liberties.

People who join that should be incorporated in it and encouraged in it, rather than made to feel foreign. But I would say to those who come here and wish to maintain their culture, that they are making a grave mistake. They have come here because of the strength of Englishness. They should join in with it and not hold themselves out as something separate. The condition for coming is to become English, to be part of this great enterprise, not to remain a foreigner in these lands.

This is an edited transcript of a video recorded by Jacob Rees-Mogg that was published on X<//>