White Brits Will Be a Minority in UK Within 40 Years, Report Predicts

Author Matt Goodwin says ’scale and pace‘ of demographic change is ’unsettling' not only for white British people, but for many within minority groups as well.

Matt Goodwin, a commentator and former university academic, during the Reform UK North West conference at Crowne Plaza Chester, Lancashire, on Jan. 11, 2025. Ian Cooper/PA

White Brits will become a minority in the UK by the year 2063, according to a new report which predicts that at least one in five people living in the country will be Muslim by the turn of the century.

Authored by Professor Matt Goodwin, an academic and political commentator, the report uses data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and the census to analyse the rapidly shifting demographics in the UK amid growing concern about immigration and the falling birth rate in the British-born white population.

In conjunction with the University of Buckinghamshire, Goodwin’s analysis of migration, birth, and death rates up until the end of the 21st century predicts that the proportion of white British people will decline from 73 percent to 57 percent by 2050, before becoming the minority by 2063.

Majority Feel ‘Unsettled’

Goodwin, a presenter for GB News, told The Epoch Times that the findings of his report point to “the dramatic scale and pace of change that is now going to unfold in the UK. Some people will not see this as an issue, but a much larger majority of people will feel very unsettled by the fact that white Brits are set to become a minority.”

He added that it is not only white British people who will be disconcerted by the rapidly shifting demographics and the accompanying cultural shifts.

“Minority Britons will also feel concerned about the change because we know that they too identify with the dominant group, and they like the idea of Britain being defined by a set of institutions and a way of life, and a particular set of values, so this isn’t really a trend that’s only going to concern white Britons, and more fundamentally, what we see in the data is the way in which the country is going to be transformed culturally,” he said.

“Much of the inward migration will come from outside of Europe from countries that I would argue are culturally different, if not incompatible, and over the next 30 to 50 years, we’re going to see changes that are so profound that it’s going to dwarf anything we’ve seen until this point.”

Goodwin acknowledges that population data can be difficult to predict, but explained his methodology on his blog: “By drawing on the most reliable census data and using something called the ‘cohort-component’ approach, a standard technique in the study of populations, we can project how the UK population will evolve between today and the year 2100.

“And what we find is that unless there is a radical change of policy, unless the country changes its current direction of travel, then the share of the population that is White British —defined as people who tick ‘White: English, Welsh, Scottish, Northern Irish, or British’ in the most recent census— will collapse over the next seventy-five years, from over 70 per cent today to below 34 per cent by the year 2100.”

In the UK census of 1991, when Margaret Thatcher was prime minister, some 94.6 percent of people described themselves as “white British.”

Pedestrians walk past Union Jack flags at Oxford Circus in London on May 25, 2023. Daniel Leal/ AFP/Getty Images

‘Tipping Point’

The report forecasts that white Brits will be an overall minority within 38 years but Goodwin predicts the “tipping point” for under-40s will come within just 25 years, meaning that a white British child born today will be in the minority in their peer group by the middle of the century.

The report suggests that by the beginning of the next century, the white British could make up only around one third of the population, with more than six in 10 people either not having been born in the UK or having at least one immigrant parent.

The Muslim population, currently at around 7 percent, is predicted to increase to more than one in 10 (11.2 percent) within the next 25 years and to account for almost one in five (19.2 percent) of all people in the UK by the turn of the century.

Goodwin also modelled for a potential higher level of Muslim immigration, because of the volatile situation in the Middle East and parts of Africa, and said that under this scenario, one in four people living in the UK could be of the Islamic faith by the year 2200. Under this scenario, one in three young people could be Muslims by the end of this century.

The report finds that the changing demographics are not based only on race or religion, but on country of origin, with fewer and fewer British-born people in the population following soaring levels of immigration under successive Labour and Conservative-led governments.

Since the UK voted out of the European Union in 2016, the percentage coming to the country from outside of Europe has climbed, and now accounts for 81 percent of immigration.

Goodwin wrote: “The underlying ties to our nation —to its sense of history, culture, ways of life, identity, collective memory, and inheritance, in other words— will become much weaker in the years and decades ahead.

“While Britain’s identity will increasingly be reshaped, by its ruling class, around the celebration of ‘diversity’, a rapidly dwindling number of people will actually be rooted in the distinctive identity, history, culture, and collective memory that is ultimately what make these islands distinctive to begin with.”

‘Island of Strangers’

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said last month that the UK risked becoming an “island of strangers” as Labour outlined a fresh strategy in a 69-page white paper aimed at driving down net migration.

Following criticism from pro-immigration lobby groups and MPs, Starmer denied that his new, seemingly tougher approach, had come in response to Reform UK’s recent strong showing at the polls, with Nigel Farage’s party having consistently taken a clear stance against mass, uncontrolled immigration.

While he paid tribute to the positive contribution made by many immigrants to the UK, Starmer took aim at the previous Conservative government for its immigration policies, saying, “It was a choice, a choice made even as they told you, told the country, they were doing the opposite.”

“A One Nation experiment in open borders conducted on a country that voted for control. Well, no more. Today, this Labour government is shutting down the lab. The experiment is over,” he added.

British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer announcing new immigration policy in the briefing room at 10 Downing Street in London on May 12, 2025. PA Media

The four nations of the UK will be impacted at different rates, Goodwin predicted, with foreign-born people and their offspring set to become a majority in England in 2079, in Wales by 2081, in Scotland by 2093, and in Northern Ireland at some point after 2122.

The pace of change is happening far more quickly in major cities, with the 2021 census revealing that London and Birmingham had already become minority white cities.

Falling Fertility Rate

Goodwin made his predictions by applying age and sex-specific fertility, mortality, and migration rates to a base population derived from the latest census data and calibrating these figures to the 2022-based ONS population projections.

Since the fertility rate is lower among white Brits, predictions assume a higher rate of reproduction among Muslim and foreign-born people. The UK-born fertility rate was taken to be 1.39, and pegged at 1.97 for foreign-born people. For Muslims, it was 2.35, and for non-Muslims 1.54.

Philip Kiszely, an academic from Leeds University who is opposed to critical race theory, commented on the study, saying on social media platform X: “Minority white people will be the target of widespread brutality and terror. That’s just the way it works.

“Identity discourse builds a pathological grudge culture which legitimises racial violence.”

Referring to the phrase used historically by “black power” movements, Kiszely added: “‘Any means necessary?’ We ain’t seen nothing yet.”

‘Great Replacement’ a ‘Fact’

Editor of the Daily Sceptic and founder of the Free Speech Union, Lord Toby Young, also commented on X, “Turns out the Great Replacement isn’t a conspiracy theory, just a demographic fact.”

Goodwin said that he published the report not to be “alarmist,” but rather so that people to pay attention to the profound effects of government policies over the past 30 years, and what this means for the future of the UK.

He said in terms of trying to manage the change, the government must “dramatically slash” both legal and illegal immigration, and “invest much more seriously in social integration and cohesion.”

Alongside this, he said that in order to try and unify the country, rather than championing diversity, the government must, “Try and assert the the identity, history and cultural values of what is still the dominant, majority group.”