England’s Identity Crisis

England’s men's football team is once again preparing to shoulder the hopes of millions across the nation. A World Cup is traditionally a time to come together, but this tournament takes place in a tense political moment, when the question of who is – and isn’t - English is being contested.

Should Englishness be linked to ancestry and ethnicity, to living in the country for generations, as some senior political figures claim? Is Englishness conditional? If so, on what? Should anyone living in England be able to claim national identity? Why is Englishness so hard to define?

Newsnight's Political Editor Nick Watt reports from the frontlines of the battle for Englishness, speaking to senior figures in politics and cultural commentators. He visits Castle Point in Essex, the area where the most people chose English as their national identity in the 2021 census.

He hears from the Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, Labour's Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy and the writer and GB News presenter Matt Goodwin.

The interviews took place before Vickrum Digwa was jailed for the murder of Henry Nowak.

Credit: The TRIGGERnometry podcast and YouTube show, produced and presented by Konstantin Kisin and Francis Foster

Producer: Leela Padmanabhan