Britain’s doomed demographic destiny

Fertility rates have reached a record low of 1.41 and four in ten of births are to at least one foreign-born parent

PIMLICO JOURNAL

The demographics of the United Kingdom are on a bad trajectory. The fertility rate is the lowest since records began; four in ten births in England now have at least one foreign-born parent; and we have a population that is living longer and has more complex care needs, exacerbating an already challenging worker-to-retiree ratio.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) have now released information on births in England & Wales for 2024. There were 594,677 births, a slight increase from the 591,072 births in 2023, and the first increase since 2021. In this release, they also released refreshed population data. Despite births increasing in 2024, the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) for England & Wales dropped to the lowest level on record: 1.41. The TFR for 2023 was also revised down, from 1.44 to 1.42. These downward revisions were caused by upwards revisions in the total population, and in particular, net migration. The number of births in England & Wales has been recorded since 1838, meaning nearly two hundred years of historical data. If we map the number of births in England & Wales from 1838 to 2024, we can see this visualised:

We can also plot the total fertility rate (TFR) over time. A TFR of 2.1 is required for a population to remain stable from one generation to the next, not counting immigration and assuming mortality levels also remain stable. If TFR drops below 2.1, the population will shrink; if TFR remains steady at 2.1, the population will remain stable; and if TFR is above 2.1, the population will grow. The reason that 2.1 is the replacement rate — not 2.0 — is because not all children survive to adulthood and because slightly more boys are born than girls (even independent of sex-selective abortion). 2.1 is, it should be noted, an average correction. In countries with higher mortality and, in theory, where sex-selective abortion is widespread, the replacement rate might be higher than 2.1.

The TFR for England & Wales has been calculated since 1938. TFR has been below the replacement rate, 2.1, since 1972.

In Scotland, the situation is no different. In 2024, just 45,763 children were born — the lowest since records began.

If we plot Scotland’s TFR, it fares even worse than in England & Wales. The fertility rate in Scotland has been calculated since 1971. It also hit a record low, 1.25, in 2024.

Scotland has seen a big decrease in the number of births in recent decades. The labour shortages this has caused may be part of the reason why politicians in Scotland so often push for Scotland to be granted the right to issue their own visas.

Lastly, we can look at the number of births in Northern Ireland. Curiously, it is possible to see the number of births for Northern Ireland from 1887, well before either the Ulster Covenant or partition. As with both Scotland and England & Wales, these are also down, hitting a record low in 2023, with just 19,962 babies born. It should be noted that births statistics for Northern Ireland are published much later than the statistics for Scotland and England & Wales. It is expected that they will be released sometime between November and December 2025, hence why the figures are only up to 2023, not 2024.

The fertility rate has been calculated in Northern Ireland since 1985, also hitting a record low in 2023. While the fertility rate in Northern Ireland has certainly fared better than in England & Wales or Scotland, it also remains some way below replacement rate.

Births across the United Kingdom have been below replacement level for around fifty years. As a consequence, the main driver of population growth in Britain is immigration. Since 1970, cumulative net migration into the United Kingdom stands at over 21 million. Some of these people will no longer be living here: some will have arrived on temporary work or study visas, some will have died, migrated elsewhere, returned home, and so on.

When the 2021 Census was conducted, 16.8% of England & Wales was foreign-born — or over ten million people — and this figure won’t include those who arrived during the so-called ‘Boriswave’. There is a fantastic chart on Wikipedia that shows the percentage of the population of England & Wales that is foreign-born, from the 1851 to 2021 Census — note how stable this figure was from 1961 to 1991, with an increase of only 2.3% over a 30-year period, as well as the sharp increase after 1997.

We can already see the impact from decades of mass migration filter through into our demographics. As The Telegraph noted in a recent article, white British children are now a minority in one in four schools, and 72 schools in England do not have a single white British pupil. But school statistics are a delayed metric: most children will start school at four or five, and will remain in some form of education until they turn 18. If you want a more updated picture of the demographic future of a country, you need only look at the ethnicity of births. In the most recent 2024 release for England & Wales, only 53.65% of births were white British, down from 62.89% of births a decade prior in 2014. If this trend continues, where will white British births be in 2034 or 2044?

This level of demographic change is driven by an increasing share of births to foreign-born parents. In 2024, births to mothers and fathers born in the UK hit a record low of 57%, down from 62% in 2021 — or a 5% drop in just three years. For some perspective, in 2011, 64.2% of births were to two UK-born parents, falling to 62% in 2021 — a 2.2% drop over a 10-year period. The rate of demographic change has more than doubled since the Boriswave and will embed itself and continue if they are allowed to settle in the UK and obtain Indefinite Leave to Remain, something that Reform UK have pledged to prevent.

39.5% of births in England & Wales had at least one foreign-born parent. For England specifically, this figure was higher, at 40.4%, meaning 4 in 10 babies born in England last year had at least one foreign-born parent.

See also the increase since 2021; the speed and scale of the demographic change taking place since the Boriswave is without precedent, at least outside periods of war or conquest. This is why there have been calls to hold an emergency census, which is possible under the Census Act 1920. The 2021 Census won’t have counted the millions of legal immigrants that have arrived since it was conducted. For instance, in year-end June 2023, net migration stood at 906,000 — essentially four to five years’ worth of ‘normal’ immigration crammed into a single year.

The decadal censuses are also unlikely to count the illegal immigrant population. Back in 2020, Pew Research released a report that estimated at the end of 2017 there could have been as many as 1.2 million illegal immigrants in the UK. Pew have recently revised this figure down, now estimating between 700,000-900,000 illegal migrants living in the UK at the end of 2017. Regardless, the figure is certainly much higher now. Since 2018, over 180,000 illegal migrants have arrived via small boat alone, and that’s before we consider those who arrived via lorry, undetected boats, other routes, or overstay their visa.

Irrespective of illegal migration, which remains a major issue, the main driver of demographic change in the UK has always been legal migration. Between June 2024 and June 2025, the Home Office extended over 1 million existing visas, granted 436,000 new study visas, 286,000 new work visas, 71,000 new family reunification visas, granted settlement (Indefinite Leave to Remain) to 163,000 people and handed out citizenship to 257,000 people — all in just twelve months.

Successive Governments, Labour and Conservative, rather than try to address falling birth rates or take unpopular decisions — like increasing the retirement age, as countries like Denmark are doing — have instead opted for the quick and easy answers, at least in theory and in the short term: liberalise your immigration system and import people, regardless of the long-term demographic, social and cultural consequences. People like Fraser Nelson will argue that importing people as a fix to declining birth rates is no big deal and that immigration will provide a steady stream of workers, who will all assimilate and become British.

This is delusional, and does not represent a long-term solution in any case. Birth rates are declining globally: even if substituting a lack of births by importing workers didn’t have any negative consequences (which it does), this only buys you a few decades, if that.

Even the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) appear to be wising up to the fact that relying on immigrants is not a long-term solution to the structural problems this country faces, especially given that the OBR has made some laughable assumptions about migrants — like they arrive age 25 and don’t bring any dependants, something that is completely out of alignment with the reality of post-Brexit migration.

If we are to fix the myriad of problems this country has — from a declining host majority population, the highest tax burden since the Second World War, nearly 4% of GDP spent on debt interest, an NHS waiting list that is over 7 million, despite record funding, and, as a recent OBR report makes clear, unsustainable levels of debt, projected to hit 270% of GDP by 2070 — then demographics deserve to be taken more seriously in our politics.

This article was written by Charlie Cole, a Pimlico Journal contributor. Have a pitch? Send it to [email protected].

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This article (Britain’s doomed demographic destiny) was created and published by Pimlico Journal and is republished here under “Fair Use”

The next culture war

Muslims of Britain feel they have much more in common with their brothers in Gaza than their Jewish or Christian or Atheist neighbours that live down the road.

LAURA PERRINS

The term culture war has been around for a very long time and used to describe broadly, the fight on social issues between the left and the right. It was given to us by Pat Buchanan who I discussed on the podcast with the Telegraph’s Tim Stanley. He wrote a book on the man.

Indeed, the phrase Make America Great Again was first coined by Buchanan when he put the fight for the culture over economics firmly on the Republican agenda. His barnstorming speech at the1992 Republican Convention contained the line, “This, my friends, is radical feminism. The agenda that Clinton & Clinton would impose on America – abortion on demand, a litmus test for the Supreme Court, homosexual rights, discrimination against religious schools, women in combat units – that’s change, all right. But it is not the kind of change America needs. It is not the kind of change America wants. And it is not the kind of change we can abide in a nation that we still call God’s country.”

The culture wars exploded and what followed were debates over gay marriage, abortion and gender equality. Soon there was cancel culture instigated by the woke left. Transgenderism took centre ground. Before you know it, we were talking about toilets.

Those ‘wars’ over the culture occurred because liberal democracies allowed them and provided for either revolutionary change if you are a conservative or progress if you are a leftist. It is into this that the Irish Times thinks the dispute over Israeli fans attending a football match in Birmingham is also a culture war.

(Emma look out over Toys Hill, Kent. The Garden of England. June 2023)

Mark Paul in his London letter wrote about the fallout from Israeli fans being banned from Birmingham in a piece headlined, “Maccabi Tel Aviv match morphs into latest front in Britain’s culture wars. Israeli club does not want its fans to travel to Aston Villa match, but tensions have not gone away.”

He couldn’t be more wrong. This is not just the next stage of the traditional culture wars: this is The Culture War, the war that will end all others. This is the battle for whether Islamic culture will dominate Britain and arguably Ireland or whether Britain will remain a liberal democracy built on a Christian foundation.

First the basics. West Midlands police had banned fans of Israeli football club Maccabi Tel Aviv’s from attending a football match at Aston Villa in Birmingham next month. This caused outrage in the UK including the Prime Minister who said it was the wrong decision. Maccabi Tel Aviv have saved them for now by saying they will not take any tickets, even if the decision was overturned as the safety of the fans could not be guaranteed. On this they are right.

As Mr Paul sets out, Birmingham has the second-highest Muslim population in Britain as a proportion of population. According to the 2021 census, 29.9% of the midlands city was Muslim, behind Bradford (30.5%). London’s proportion was around 15 per cent.

“Anger at Israel over its brutal war in Gaza is at its highest in Britain’s Muslim communities, where sympathies lie squarely with their Palestinian brethren.”

Brethren is an interesting and accurate choice of word. Muslims of Britain feel they have much more in common with their brothers in Gaza than their Jewish or Christian or Atheist neighbours that live down the road and share a country with. This is only going to get worse.

“The district of Aston (home to Aston Villa), north of Birmingham’s centre, is the most Muslim part of the city, with a majority of Aston’s population followers of Islam, mostly Pakistanis and Bangladeshis.

All of this meant that an Israeli team playing in Aston at this time was always going to cause an issue. Local Independent MP Ayoub Khan, a Pakistan-born, Britain-raised former Liberal Democrat, ran an online petition calling for the match to be cancelled. Failing that, he wanted it played behind closed doors with no fans, or moved to another country.”

And that is pretty much that. After two years of pro-Palestine/anti-Israel marches in the UK anyone with a brain could have seen this coming. Britain’s Muslim communities whose sympathies lie squarely with their Palestinian brethren will start with the Jews. It rarely ends with the Jews.

Next it will be the women. Only a few weekends ago women were banned from fun run in London. ‘An event in Victoria Park, Tower Hamlets, was advertised on the Muslim Charity Run website as an “inclusive 5km race” for “runners and supporters of all ages and abilities” – open to “men, boys of all ages and girls under 12.” Nice.

We are yet to get to the heart of the Muslim grooming gang inquiry. Starmer was forced to order a public inquiry into Pakistani men raping white English girls with impunity for years. The inquiry is now losing support of the victims.

If you read Douglas Murray The Strange Death of Europe or Mark Steyn After America: Get Ready for Armageddon you will have seen this coming. The Israel – Gaza war has perhaps accelerated the real culture war and emboldened the Islamic radicals.

The trajectory is clear Muslims have babies, the English and Europeans do not. Yes, there is a Muslim middle – class but they are outnumbered by a much more hardline Muslim youth who identify far more with their Hamas supporting ‘brethren’ in Gaza than they do with English school mates. This is all aided and abetted by the left who have always hated western civilization and its ‘colonialist tradition.’ The mainstream media will take Pakistan born Mr Ayoub Khan MP who starts petitions wanting to ban Israeli football fans (who just happen to be Jewish, they’ll tell you, a shocking coincidence) and dare you to say he is not British.

The best Britain can hope for is that these areas, where Jews dare not venture and where social occasions are split along gender lines remain as enclaves and do not spread to the rest of the country. That’s best case scenario.

The other scenario, the most likely on current demographics, is the Britain that I know and love is on the way out. It is a beautiful country, with an exquisite countryside and proud history. A country with decent, honest and hardworking people, whose sense of fair play is recognised around the world.

Twice in the last century their sons, brothers and husbands were asked to make the ultimate sacrifice in the name of freedom, to defend liberal democracy across the continent. Twice they made that sacrifice. The feminists in particular would want to take stock. Their next opponents are going to make the Christian pro – lifers look like care bears.

Beckenham Place Park. July 2023.

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This article (The next culture war) was created and published by Laura Perrins and is republished here under “Fair Use”

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