Perceived tensions between immigrants and British-born people at new high – poll

Perceived tensions in the UK between immigrants and British-born people have risen to a new high, according to a survey said to show a “frightening increase in the sense of national division”.

The wide-ranging polling on attitudes also suggested the proportion of the public feeling transgender rights have gone “too far” has more than doubled in five years.

Researchers from King’s College London (KCL) said post-Brexit division appeared to have “morphed into” party political and other splits around immigration and so-called culture wars.

The findings, from the college’s policy institute and pollster Ipsos, are part of a research programme which began in 2020, and suggest 86% of people now feel there is tension between immigrants and people born in the UK – up from 74% in 2023.

When it comes to a feeling of division in the UK generally, 84% of people said they feel this way, up from 74% in 2020.

Half (50%) of people said they believe the culture in the UK is changing too fast, up from just over a third (35%) five years ago, while a similar amount (48%) say they would like their country to be “the way it used to be”.

This is up from around a quarter (28%) in 2020 and the findings showed a rise across all age groups.

Fewer than half of respondents said they feel proud of their country, falling from 56% to 46% in the past five years, researchers said.

Professor Bobby Duffy, director of the policy institute at KCL, said: “This latest study shows a frightening increase in the sense of national division and decline in the UK in just a few years. We’ve seen steep rises in the beliefs that the UK is divided, that ‘culture wars’ are real and that things were better in the past.”

The findings show public opinion on transgender rights has “shifted significantly”, researchers said, with those saying these rights have “gone too far” more than doubling since 2020 – now at 39% up from 17%.

The view has become more prominent among all age groups, and while fewer than a fifth (19%) of 16 to 24-year-olds feel this way, this is up from 9% in 2020.

Overall, 19% of all those asked said they felt transgender rights have not gone far enough in the UK, down from 31% in 2020.

The polling of 4,027 people aged 16 and older in August, came four months after the Supreme Court ruling, which said the words “woman” and “sex” in the Equality Act 2010 refer to a biological woman and biological sex.

Elsewhere, almost half (48%) of the public said they consider being described as “woke” as being an insult, rather than a compliment – up from under a quarter (24%) in 2020.

Woke is defined by the Cambridge dictionary as being “aware, especially of social problems such as racism and inequality”.

Mr Duffy said the UK had lived through “an incredibly divisive period around the EU referendum and its aftermath” and that division appears to have “morphed into party political and other splits, with attitudes to immigration and the speed of culture change more generally at the heart of them”.

Gideon Skinner, senior director of UK politics at Ipsos, said: “Perceptions of political and cultural disharmony are growing, reflecting a society grappling with nostalgia, the pace of change, and growing tensions over immigration, and with polarised views over what terms like ‘woke’ signify.”

But he cautioned that: “On many issues there is no clear consensus, with a need to understand the differences under the topline figures; it should not be forgotten that many people are not on the extremes in their views”.