The United Kingdom, the progenitor in many ways of the United States, is headed for dark times. The post-World War 2 loss of an empire on which the sun literally never set cost the island nation a lot. Then, later, came nigh-unchecked waves of Third World immigration, enabled in part by loony woke immigration notions, and in part to have some labor force left to replace Britain's aging population.
Unsurprisingly, none of that worked out the way the Labour party nobs and the British left thought it would. Nigel Farage and his Reform Party are pushing to reverse this trend, but it remains to be seen if they'll succeed - or if it's too late.
In 2024, Elon Musk stated his fears that Britain may be headed for civil war. Also unsurprisingly, there are many who disagree with him.
Downing Street has criticised comments by Elon Musk who posted on X that “civil war is inevitable” under a video of violent riots in Liverpool.
Keir Starmer’s spokesperson said the violence came from a small minority of people who “do not speak for Britain” and said the prime minister did not share the sentiments of the billionaire, who has previously been criticised for allowing far-right figures back on to his social media platform.
“There’s no justification for comments like that,” the spokesperson said. “What we’ve seen in this country is organised, violent thuggery that has no place, either on our streets or online.
Two-Tier Keir is a fine one to talk; it was his Labour Party, which hovers slightly to the left of American Democrats, whose policies are largely to blame for the violent thuggery. It is now his government that is cracking down, not on the imported thugs, but on the British people who criticize them.
So, is Elon right? Is the United Kingdom doomed to be disunited by civil war? Yes and no. The Daily Sceptic's Noah Carl says no to the idea of civil war, but his arguments bear looking at.
The retired Colonel Richard Kemp has stated in an interview that he believes “not just civil unrest but civil war is coming to the UK in the coming years”. The academics David Betz and Michael Rainsborough have been sounding the alarm for several years, including in a recent essay for the Daily Sceptic.
Betz and Rainsborough list several factors that portend the outbreak of civil war, such as cratering trust in government, public anger over uncontrolled immigration, and support for political violence in surveys. They also point to real-world examples of violence, such as the anti-immigration riots that erupted in the summer of 2024, which they say reveal a shift in mood toward open defiance of the state.
While they make a number of valid points in their essay, I do not believe civil war in Britain is likely.
Civil war, perhaps not, but there is likely to be increasing violence and anarchy, which may be even harder for the once-Great Britain to survive. But let's look a little closer at Mr. Carl's criteria. First, he defines "civil war" a little more narrowly than one normally sees.
To begin with, we must define the term. Although there is some disagreement among scholars, most definitions mention protracted armed conflict between two or more organised groups — meaning that sporadic acts of terrorism or gang violence do not qualify. Some scholars even specify a minimum number of deaths. According to the Correlates of War project, “war must involve sustained combat, involving organized armed forces, resulting in a minimum of 1,000 battle-related combatant fatalities within a twelve month period”.
Two or more organized groups, we might point out, don't necessarily mean "two uniformed armies." That was the case in the American Civil War (really a war of secession) and the Spanish Civil War, although both of those also involved non-uniformed irregulars. My definition of a civil war is rather more inclusive; a war fought by two factions for control of one country. Mr. Carl is correct in pointing out that sporadic acts don't qualify, but I would add that they can certainly act as instigators.
He continues:
Betz and Rainsborough are correct about certain conditions that raise the risk of civil war being present in the UK: ethnic diversity, economic stagnation, widespread perceptions of elite failure. But it’s also true that the underlying risk in Western countries is low to begin with. (Civil wars are overwhelmingly concentrated outside the West.) And doubling or even tripling a low risk is still a low risk.
What is more, certain conditions that reduce the risk of civil war are also present. The country is heavily surveilled. It has an ageing population. It has a low rate of gun ownership. It has a powerful and centralised military that could presumably quash any attempted insurrection. It has few forests or mountainous areas for insurgents to hide out. And it is an island, which makes it hard to smuggle in weapons from the outside.
That's as may be. But I think there are a couple of factors overlooked.
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First, smuggling arms into an island nation almost certainly isn't nearly as difficult as Mr. Carl implies. Britain has thousands of miles of coastline, hundreds of isolated coves and small harbors; landing significant supplies of arms and munitions could certainly be done if a state sponsor (Iran) could be found to make the effort. Second, the aging population is a valid point, but the population of people likely to lead any insurrection, to kick off such a conflict, is much younger. Just look at the hordes of "refugees" Britain has taken in, and you'll see a surfeit of young, military-aged men.
But are they organized? No. As Mr. Carl points out, they are largely broken into quasi-tribal factions themselves.
That being the case, I also think Britain is nevertheless headed for a very dark time. They have imported the Third World and are receiving the Third World, having imported millions who now are demanding that Britain adapt to their preferences, not the other way around, and to paraphrase a great Briton, William Shakespeare, if requiring fail, they shall compel. What we're liable to see isn't so much a civil war - just a mass uprising, with atrocity escalating to atrocity, with the hordes fighting not only the British but each other - in a word, chaos. Violent, destructive chaos, which the nation of Great Britain is unlikely to survive in any recognizable form.
And, if American Democrats get their way, most notably in immigration policy, we'll have the same thing happening here - if you doubt that, look at Minneapolis, Minnesota, or Dearborn, Michigan.
