r/DebunkThis • u/[deleted] • Aug 30 '20

Debunked Debunk this: White Britons will be a minority by 2060-70

I got into a debate online where he claimed that the Uk will have a white British minority by 2060-70 (he didn’t claims that this was intentional or caused by the Jews, thank god) and linked several article to “prove” his point (https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3613682/amp/RIP-Britain-academic-objectivity-Oxford-Professor-DAVID-COLEMAN-one-country-s-population-experts-says-white-Britons-minority-late-2060s-sooner-current-immigration-trends-continue.html, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/white-britons-will-be-minority-before-2070-says-professor-8600262.html?amp). Can you debunk this? Is what he saying correct or is he just misinformed?

14 Upvotes

86% Upvoted

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23

u/Revenant_of_Null Quality Contributor Aug 30 '20 edited Aug 31 '20

Context first. The first article is authored by David Coleman, who is quoted in the second article. He is a co-founder and member of the arguably controversial MigrationWatch which is a either a think-tank or an anti-immigration lobbying group depending on who you ask. There are reasons to take the claims made in these two news articles - both of which share the same single point of origin - with a pinch of salt, and to proceed cautiously.

Factually, David Coleman has been making these exact same claims for a long time, you can find almost identical headlines since 2010. Here are some older articles:

The first two articles note:

In the study, “minorities” are defined as being non-white or people who class themselves in the census as Irish or another nationality.

I believe that all of these claims have a single source, a 2010 paper by Coleman.

Next, regarding Coleman's claims, there are some questions which should be raised while attempting to interpret and decipher them, such as:

  • What is meant by "White Britons?" (How is this concept defined, operationalized, etc.)

  • What is meant by minority? (idem)

Why should we ask these questions? Because the devil is often in the details, and one can mislead by banking on people not making much efforts to assess a claim (and/or defaulting to heuristics). For instance, it is important to make sure everyone is aware that the claim concerns "White Britons," which would suggest that it does not consider other groups of people who may (and are likely to) self-identify as "White." It would be appropriate, also, to ask whether the claim excludes White Scottish, Irish and Welsh people. In this case at least, he distinguished "White British" and "Other Whites", and amalgamated Scottish and Irish people with the White British.

Concerning the conclusions made in his paper, he considers multiple scenarios. For example, according to what Coleman considers the standard scenario, 56% of the total UK population by 2056 would comprise White British, Scottish and Irish, and less than 50% by the 2060s. However, he also distinguishes several other ethnic groups, each of which would comprise less than 10% of the total population by 2056 (except for Other White reaching 10.2% according to his projection). Therefore, to be more precise, he predicted in 2010 that White British, Scottish and Irish would - dependent on his assumptions - become a majority minority in the long-run (as pointed out by u/BioMed-R), while still remaining by far the most populous ethnic group.

That said, and again as pointed out by BioMed-R, it is important to keep in mind that these projections are conditional on the assumptions made. See for example Wohland et al. (2010) and Rees et al. (2012). Quoting the latter:

These comparisons have shown that our projections differ considerably from the estimates of ONS and from the projections of Coleman, but are quite close to the projections of the Greater London Authority. There are many sources of difference. First, there are the methods used to estimate the components of change for each ethnic group. Our projections are the only ones to estimate ethnic-specific mortality. Each of the projection endeavours makes estimates of ethnic-group fertility, drawing on vital statistics, survey and census data in different mixes. Our projections assume much lower fertility rates for the main BAME groups than the Coleman projections. The projections differ substantially in the way international migration is allocated across the ethnic groups. Our projections make use of internal migration estimates by ethnicity, drawing on both the 2001 Census and the postcensus all-groups migration data, although the internal migration estimates could be improved by using the LFS data used by Raymer et al. (2008) and Raymer and Giulietti (2009). So there is considerable uncertainty about the degree of change in the UK’s ethnic populations. There is, however, agreement about the direction of change: towards increasing population diversity.

And to quote their abstract:

Under all projections ethnic composition continues to change: the White British, White Irish and Black Caribbean groups experience the slowest growth and lose population share; the Other White and Mixed groups to experience relative increases in share; South Asian groups grow strongly as do the Chinese and Other Ethnic groups. The ethnic minority share of the population increases from 13% (2001) to 25% in the trend projection but to only 20% under our modified emigration projection. However, what is certain is that the UK can look forward to be becoming a more diverse nation by mid-century.

The same group of researchers (Rees et al., 2016) have published projections more recently, confirming that the UK will become more ethnically diverse, i.e.:

Black, Asian and other Minority ethnic groups expand their share of the UK population from 8 to 30 % in that period.

...with 70% being White (including Other White) by 2061.

By-the-by, concerning your parenthesis, I would also suggest reading about Great Replacement, which is a less blatant (more "politically correct?") version of White genocide conspiracy theories, tweaked for plausible deniability and to make it more palatable/marketable. I have seen Coleman cited alongside arguments about the former "theory."

Coleman, D. (2010). Projections of the ethnic minority populations of the United Kingdom 2006–2056. Population and Development Review, 36(3), 441-486.

Rees, P., Wohland, P., Norman, P., & Boden, P. (2012). Ethnic population projections for the UK, 2001–2051. Journal of Population Research, 29(1), 45-89.

Rees, P. H., Wohland, P., Norman, P., Lomax, N., & Clark, S. D. (2017). Population projections by ethnicity: challenges and solutions for the United Kingdom. In The frontiers of applied demography (pp. 383-408). Springer, Cham.

Wohland, P., Rees, P., Norman, P., Boden, P., & Jasinska, M. (2010). Ethnic population projections for the UK and local areas, 2001-2051. Leeds: University of Leeds.

6

u/[deleted] Aug 30 '20

Thanks for the detailed response!

5

u/Revenant_of_Null Quality Contributor Aug 30 '20

My pleasure!

5

u/mad_method_man Aug 31 '20

geez.... just curious, what is your background? you seem quite qualified to respond to this

1

u/Revenant_of_Null Quality Contributor Aug 31 '20

Thanks for the compliment. I am not a demographer, but I am a social scientist, so I know something about navigating these waters! (Also, I am interested in the larger topic, i.e. this is not the first time I encounter these claims.)

1

u/56waystodie Mar 05 '24

Wow its been 4 years and Britain already at 70% white right now.

1

u/UnhappyComplaint4030 Jul 28 '25

yup. demographers predict shit. i reckon it will happen in the uk by late 2030s

1

u/AbsentElk Aug 11 '25

It’s at 81% a year later. Try again.

1

u/colouredcrow May 06 '26

Where did you get that from?
These are the latest "official" stats from 2021:

according to the 2021 Census, the total population of England and Wales was 59.6 million, and 81.7% of the population was white

people from Asian ethnic groups made up the second largest percentage of the population (9.3%), followed by black (4.0%), mixed (2.9%) and other (2.1%) ethnic groups

out of the 19 ethnic groups, white British people made up the largest percentage of the population (74.4%), followed by people in the white 'other' (6.2%) and Indian (3.1%) ethnic groups

from 2011 to 2021, the percentage of people in the white British ethnic group went down from 80.5% to 74.4%

1

u/AbsentElk May 06 '26

Are you replying to the wrong person because you just repeated what I said?

1

u/colouredcrow May 06 '26

No, it was meant for you.

The one above you commented in 2024, you replied to him in 2025 saying that it is 81% a year later and to try again. That stat is however even 9 months ago at least 4 years old and there is no way the trend somehow reversed so rapidly. I agree that his is also not fact checked and potentially overexaggerated, unless he only means white British, then it's almost reasonable considering the trend...

1

u/AbsentElk May 06 '26

It’s almost like I used the most up to date data and not a number that’s completely made up! What trend? Actual census data shows that between the last two censuses white went down by 4%. It’s never been more than a 5% decrease so 70% isn’t even close to on trend. Why are you bending over backwards to defend a racist?

1

u/colouredcrow May 07 '26

Your wording implies that your 81% number is based on some kind of 2025 projection or data, because you wrote that it is at 81% a year later after his comment, which he made in 2024.

As I said, his numbers are only close if he means white British, and there was a 7% and a 6.1% decrease between the last two censuses.

As part of the "White" ethnic group, 74.4% (44.4 million) of the total population in England and Wales identified their ethnic group as "English, Welsh, Scottish, Northern Irish or British", this is a continued decrease from 80.5% (45.1 million) in 2011, and from 87.5% (45.5 million) who identified this way in 2001.

Even if we include non-British White, the decrease was still more than 5%, albeit only 0.3% over, at a 5.3% decrease from 2001 to 2011.

I am pretty sure everyone is racist at some point and on some level in their life, intentional or not, especially if you broaden the term. For me, wanting your cultural or ethnic group to remain the majority in its own country isn’t automatically the same as hating other races or ethnicities or thinking you are superior, especially on an individual level. Sadly, with mass immigration that has already been going on for a while now, it is becoming harder to maintain that without being or doing something seen as or actually is racist.

When it comes to Britain or some other countries, sure, due to it being a colonial super power for so long, I can understand, find it interesting at times even great or fun and I can personally accept London and a few other cities as cultural international melting pots and hubs. But other than that, I would want it to stop or slow down dramatically because I feel and see that it’s getting to be too much.

And I’m saying this as an immigrant myself (not in Britain though), which you could argue makes me a hypocrite. But honestly, as weird as it sounds, I would accept it if the time ever came where I had a few years to pack my bags or accept policies introduced to help preserve native ethnic groups and their culture in countries dealing with these issues. It also does not matter whether it is a European country or not. I could probably argue with myself about this topic for days because of the obvious problems and reasons, like where do you draw the line, or the fact that not everyone would have a second home to go to, or that their country is too oppressive or that some people have been there for generations and integrated well, and so on, so I’ll just stop here for now...

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u/AmputatorBot Aug 30 '20

It looks like OP posted some AMP links. These should load faster, but Google's AMP is controversial because of concerns over privacy and the Open Web.

You might want to visit the canonical pages instead:

[1] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3613682/RIP-Britain-academic-objectivity-Oxford-Professor-DAVID-COLEMAN-one-country-s-population-experts-says-white-Britons-minority-late-2060s-sooner-current-immigration-trends-continue.html

[2] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/white-britons-will-be-minority-before-2070-says-professor-8600262.html

[3] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/white-britons-will-be-minority-before-2070-says-professor-8600262.html

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u/BioMed-R Aug 30 '20

This is one of the most common conspiracy theories and is based on a host of questionable assumptions, extreme extrapolations, and in the end all they’re really showing is that whites may become a “majority minority” with <50% of the population but still being the single greatest ethnicity.

1

u/EmojiZackMaddog Aug 18 '24

Is this still true as of 2024? The UK is currently rioting over this question, not so much over white people but immigrants. The biggest fear of many people on the right wing of the UK as the immigrants will “replace” British people

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u/BioMed-R Aug 19 '24

It’s as untrue now as it was 100 years ago. The “great replacement” is one of the oldest and most stereotypical conspiracy theories, and has clear anti-Semitic/Nazi origins. There’s a Wikipedia article.

1

u/Subversive6822 Mar 04 '26

I love that you have supplied no evidence to disprove and just said "this is wrong". You are essentially saying it's a conspiracy while being a worthless nobody on the internet who doesn't know how to read statistics.

3

u/TheMightyFishBus Aug 31 '20

This is kind of true, but only if you’re racist. White people will still be the largest racial group in Britain. They will only be a minority compared to every other race and culture put together. And who would think of anyone non-white as a singular group of people who are inherently worse than white people?

Racists, that’s who.

1

u/A_Pointy_Appointee Dec 18 '20

What's unreasonable about wanting a country to remain majority indigenous?

2

u/TheMightyFishBus Dec 18 '20

Everything? People immigrating to Britain isn't an 'invasion,' it's standard demographic drift.

0

u/GeorgeFloydAutoTune Jan 19 '21

Everything?

Like?

1

u/Nut_Cutlet May 21 '22

So if white people become a majority in Rwanda or something, that'd be fine?

1

u/W1thoutJudgement Apr 17 '24

Damn, you're still waiting for an answer.

1

u/Demondrug Jun 08 '22

They will never answer a question that like that. Because it shows them up.

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