Restore Britain's Philosophy of National Belonging

This is a statement by Rupert Lowe, not a costed bill. It asks who “the British people” are. The legal answer he gives is citizenship: a citizen is entitled to the protection of the state and to equality before the law. He argues a passport has been given too easily, and that living here for a short time should not make citizenship automatic.

He says he rejects two positions: that Britishness is exclusively racial, and that paperwork alone creates belonging. The statement then separates legal citizenship from ethnicity. It says English, Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish ethnic identities exist, and that someone can share a national identity without descending from the historic population. It uses “Britons” specifically for what it calls the historic White British majority, and says citizens whose ancestry lies elsewhere can be “British” and part of the wider people without being, in this usage, ethnically English, Welsh, Scottish, Northern Irish, or “Britons”.

On policy, citizenship would be granted only in “the most minuscule numbers” and only through marriage, with fraud checks, until what the statement calls a demographic crisis is under control. Immigration from what it calls the Third World would end. A forthcoming “red list” would discriminate using “rolling evidence”. Removals would cover illegal residents, people it says were wrongly granted refugee status, legal migrants who “refuse” British culture, and those who fail to contribute, commit crime, will not work or learn English, or live on benefits and social housing. Contributing foreign nationals could stay, plus a very small number of ultra-high-skilled visas. Spousal visas would be made easier, cheaper and faster. Over one parliament the statement says departures would be “north of five million”, possibly more.