Never mind that waves of migration have been a constant in British history and that great many millions of ‘white’ Britons are themselves descendants of Jewish, Eastern European and Irish migrants of the nineteenth century,3 nor that even in the post-war ‘mass migration’ years, Ireland and Europe were the largest source of immigrants.4 And, of course, let’s say nothing about the millions of British emigrants, settlers and colonists abroad – conveniently labelled ‘expats’.
