Who actually gets to decide what being English means? Ex-Home Secretary Suella Braverman’s latest take on English identity throws that question right back into the spotlight. Her argument? To be truly English, you need more than just a British birth certificate—you need deep ancestral roots in England’s soil. Let’s be real, though. Let’s be clear, this, at its core, is racialised nationalism and it is nothing new.
Now, of course, identity isn’t something you can box in like that. It’s fluid, evolving, shaped by history, culture, and power. As the cultural theorist Stuart Hall put it, identity is constantly being negotiated and reshaped. England itself has never been a closed-off, homogenous island—it’s been influenced by Romans, Vikings, Normans, and, more recently, descendants of its former empire. So, claiming Englishness is a fixed, ethnic identity is simply to ignore this history and the way national identity evolves over time.
Fundamentally, the article raises a key question: who gets to define ‘Englishness’ and decide who is English? Braverman argues that she herself isn’t English because her family doesn’t have deep generational ties to England. By promoting this narrow and exclusionary idea of English identity, she aligns with a particular ethnonationalist narrative — one rooted in the idea that different races exist (because race is assumed to be a biological reality), one in which whiteness is centred. Thinkers like Frantz Fanon have explored how these ideas shape people’s views—regardless of their own ethnicity—and why the bigger question is: who benefits from this definition? Who gets to enforce it? This isn’t just about culture or heritage—it’s about power. The power to decide who belongs and who doesn’t.
Interestingly, most people in England don’t actually subscribe to this outdated, racialised view of identity. Recent research shows that nine in ten people now agree that being English isn’t about skin colour, and the number who believe ethnicity is a defining factor has halved since 2012. In other words, Braverman’s view isn’t just extreme—it’s increasingly irrelevant. Polling suggests there are a range of factors we, as a society, consider when thinking about what constitutes Englishness: where someone was born, where they pay tax, if they contribute to society, and so on. But from the range of markers, there are some common themes: birthplace, self-identification as English, and an openness to others. Where your parents are from tends not to make the list.
Of course, this doesn’t mean there isn’t a multi-tiered understanding of Englishness, or that some people aren’t treated as more English than others. A Black person born and raised in England may still find their Englishness questioned in ways a white person with the same background never would. We’ve often heard from Black staff in organisations we have worked with that when an equality issue arises in a meeting, all eyes turn to them—a reminder that they are part of community different to the one their colleagues are. It signals that, no matter how long they or their families have been in the country, their Englishness is still not taken as a given. Instead, they are subtly positioned as an outsider, expected to speak for ‘diversity’ rather than simply being recognised as an individual, as their white colleagues are.
And while these deep-rooted assumptions about who is ‘truly’ English persist Englishness, then, isn’t just something to be claimed—it’s something that must be continually redefined, not by gatekeepers clinging to exclusionary ideas, but by the diverse people who make up England today. Identity is both personal and collective. So no single person—politician or otherwise—gets to dictate what it means to be English for everyone else.
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