There's no doubt that the English – however you define them – ought to remain a majority in England, says Prof James Alexander. But the real question is why they seem to have a death-wish and not want it themselves.
The Daily Sceptic is doing sterling work in examining what makes the English English, or, if you prefer, the British British. (See Devine, Pinder and White.)
This is a tricky question, and all the trickier, I would argue, because all of the arguments are flawed. We may rest on race, biology, ethnicity, but that has awkward consequences. We may rest on self-identification, and ditto. We may rest on a legal argument constructed out of bits of census record and UN declaration, but ditto. Exactitude is not to be had. Yet we all know more or less that there is something called the English, or British, and that, even more emphatically, there was.
D.H. Lawrence wrote a book a century ago called Studies in Classic American Literature. In it he argued that the White Man had lost his mind in North America; and, specifically, lost his mind, his sense of historical certainty, in the face of the Red Man and the Black Man, in other words, the natives of America and the slaves. Empire and mastery were too much for the mind of the White Man, which exploded, and exploded into literature. Hence Moby Dick and Bartleby.
The British held out longer. We lost our minds later on. Why? Because there was only White Man at home. Red Man, Black Man, Brown Man and Yellow Man were abroad. And so the ruling class could venture out like Kipling or Waugh or even guilty anticipating-the-future Orwell, as depicted beautifully in Paul Fussell's old book Abroad, which, if you have never read it, I recommend. They went abroad, saw Brown, Red, Yellow etc., and came back to White. Without being particularly conscious of it. Plus, in addition – you know the English – amused. Frivolous, in a Defoe, Fielding, Johnson, Dickens manner. Santayana's comment should be better known:
Never since the heroic days of Greece has the world had such a sweet, just, boyish master [as the Englishman]. It will be a black day for the human race when the scientific blackguards, conspirators, churls and fanatics manage to supplant him.
Well, Santayana, it is happening. And most of the scientific blackguards, conspirators, churls and fanatics are inside the country.
This raises the question, why do the English have a death wish? But first I want to explain why I think there is a problem with Terrence White's suggestion made last week in the Daily Sceptic, admire it though I do. So a little excursus.
Terrence White states that 'The English Have the Right to Remain a Majority.' This is a strong statement. I certainly think that the English should assert that they are a majority and that they will use all their might to remain a majority. But look at the difference between my language and that of White. He uses the language of law. I use the language of power.
The problem with the argument that "The English Have the Right to Remain a Majority" is that it is weak. It depends on law. It uses the language of rights. Law is an attractive thing. I have argued in these pages that it offers a frame where power only offers flux. It uses language, it stands for logos, it asks for limit: it appears to restrain the unlimited (Anaximander's apeiron). But, but, but. The attraction of law is seductive but dangerous. For law is fickle, is sometimes drawn up by our enemies, and offers a fake and overdetermined fixity.
White falls back on legal arguments, e.g. that in Australia indigenous people, by law, are defined by three things: descent, self-identification and community acceptance. Now, White is exquisite and brilliant where he mocks the Foreign Office ("the implication of the Foreign Office's position is that peoples anywhere in the world do not exist at all, or are not indigenous to their land, until and unless somebody has colonised them"). Yes. I agree. The problem in the United Kingdom is that there is a reluctance to say that the English are a people. There is a dismay about the St George's flag. This used to make sense. We used to be a confident people. I remember feeling contempt when I came to Turkey and saw flags everywhere: as if this was necessary! I have rather changed my mind. Forced by our opponents – which means the old class of polite, 'fair play', noblesse oblige people who don't want to discuss religion or politics (as Unenglish) but who have death-wished our country into a parlous state.
My argument against White is this. No amount of legal argument is going to matter a toss if the English are unwilling to defend England. Empires rise. They fall. And England, even Little England, depends on will. It depends on power, opportunity, grasp.
The English should remain a majority. But this does not mean they will. That they have the will.
Even White seems to agree with my position rather than his own, in the end. He says we need (my italics) "a date, a register and the willingness of the English to assert, with unapologetic pride, that they too are a people".
Why might they not? Because of the death wish. What are the components of this death wish?
Guilt. The 1960s generation suffered great nausea over Empire. This nausea casts a great shadow over everything in English culture since. Our higher education system is dominated by imports who teach nausea and guilt, and by indigenous scholars who have learned the language of nausea and guilt. The language of nausea and guilt is considered objective. This is a reverse colonisation by foreign empires of thought. And another great problem: this colonisation exists in English. It is turning the English language into a Permanent Second Language of Brown, Yellow, Red and Black Men doing down the White Man.
Exuberance. The nausea was tied to and also concealed by the exuberance of the unguilty young, who were unguilty because they forgot about the past and instead embraced the future – where the future was, alarmingly, America. Hence the Beatles and the Colour Television culture that followed. A culture of cultural carelessness and eternal youth, manifest now in rainbow, two-tiered follies of all sorts.
Entitlement. We won the Second World War, didn't we? (No.) But yes. Hence the NHS. Hence pensions. Hence benefits.
The consequence of these three factors led to our vast state which cannot defend itself but only remortgage itself. We see this in sexual demoralisation, dependence on drugs, confusion about crime and a political language corrupted by endless references to empty but expensive and careless things such as 'care', 'hope' and 'values'. The church has become irrelevant. The state has dumbed down and become vast. The entire culture has swerved to the middle of the bell curve, with genuflections to the weaker edge. The elites are all corrupted by a need to preserve their privileges through weakness and craven capitulation. The education system has been corralled.
You know all the problems.
Perhaps there is nothing much to be done but to note them.
What is to be done?
Well. Superficially, listen to Dominic Cummings and break the civil service grift and graft. But at a deeper level the circle of higher education and the governing class has to be broken. Political correctness has to be broken. How? It might be necessary for a brave government to insist that unless all universities return to proper academic standards, that half of British universities henceforth will be avowedly on the Right, leaving the other half to be on the Left. You'd go to Oxford if you were a Leftie, and Cambridge if you were a Rightie. For instance. Then we'd watch the Left-wing universities collapse into folly, and that would be the end of that.
There are probably three major aspects. Attention has to be paid to the state. Attention has to be paid to the church, believe it or not. Otherwise we'll believe anything. (Aren't abortion and euthanasia part of the death wish?) And attention has to be paid to the vast subversive conspiracy that is the universities.
James Alexander is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at Bilkent University in Turkey.
https://dailysceptic.org/2026/11/06/why-do-the-english-suffer-from-a-death-wish/