UK Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has warned that escalating political conflict over identity politics could lead to civil war in the long term, according to an interview recorded for a BBC Radio 4 documentary, “England’s Identity Crisis,” scheduled for broadcast June 7.
Speaking to the BBC before the sentencing of Vickrum Digwa, the killer of murdered teenager Henry Nowak, Badenoch said rising hostility was being directed at people of every ethnicity.
“This is not a racist country. But now we are seeing more and more hostility to people of every ethnicity, whether they’re English or not English, because people are bringing political conflict into an area where we didn’t have political conflict,” Badenoch said. “And it’s the political conflict, I think, that is creating this tension.”
Badenoch criticised political parties that use identity-related conflict to target voters from specific communities, saying such tactics may produce short-term electoral gains but risk long-term societal breakdown.
“Parties which do that, politicians who do that, they may get to benefit in the short term, but in the long term, that’s how you end up with civil war,” she said. When asked about avoiding societal “fracturing,” Badenoch said: “We definitely need to avoid that fracturing, but we also need to focus on assimilation.”
Badenoch did not name any specific party in the interview, but in the wake of the Gorton and Denton by-election in February she described campaigning in Urdu by the Green Party as “appalling.” The Green Party’s Hannah Spencer won the seat with a majority of 4,402. The Green Party was approached for comment.
The Conservative leader stressed she was describing a long-term threat, not an imminent one. Asked whether the UK was potentially in civil war territory, she said: “Not any time soon. No, I don’t think we’re potentially in a civil war scenario now. But if we don’t sort it now, then we’re leaving a much worse country to our children. We’re leaving them to sort out some very complicated things.”
The interview was conducted before the release of bodycam footage showing the handcuffing of murdered teenager Henry Nowak as he lay dying, an incident that triggered protests in Southampton and calls from both Badenoch and Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer for politicians not to stoke division. MSI previously reported that Starmer accused Elon Musk of whipping up division over the Nowak murder. Read that report.
Badenoch said nationalists in Scotland and Wales, whose parties now lead both devolved governments for the first time, had contributed to the worsening atmosphere. She criticised elements on both the left and right, saying attacks on English identity from the left — criticising the empire and using phrases like “white privilege” — had provoked a “backlash” that produced ethno-nationalism, the idea that national identity can only derive from ancestry.
The debate over English national identity has sharpened in the past year. In February 2025, Russian-born podcaster Konstantin Kisin suggested that former Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak should be considered British but not English because he is a “brown Hindu.” GB News presenter and Reform UK supporter Matt Goodwin told the Radio 4 documentary that he agreed with the idea that Englishness is related to ancestry. “I view Britishness as a nationality and Englishness as an ethnicity,” he said. Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has said he does not want to draw “ethnic lines” on what being English is.
Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy, who is of mixed Indian and British heritage, described the ancestry-based view as “a bit offensive to be honest,” adding that she did not think it appealed to working-class communities.
Badenoch herself said English identity has an ancestral component but also a civic dimension — an emotional commitment to the nation’s culture and values. She described her own relationship with Englishness as civic only: “It’s where I live. It’s where I love, it’s the football team that I support. But it’s not in my blood. But it is in my children’s blood and this is why I say it’s a spectrum. It’s very complicated.”
A More in Common poll conducted last year found that 74% of English people believe someone can be English regardless of their skin colour or ethnic background.
Badenoch urged politicians to focus on unifying measures. “We should stop trying to look for different ways to divide people and look for ways to bring people together,” she said.