Britain’s population explosion in 10 stats

New data on how a country is being radically transformed

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This week saw the release of a LOT of new data on how Britain’s population is being transformed. So, here’s a briefing for our Founding and Paid Subscribers on 10 key points you NEED to know to help you cut through the noise and make sense of what’s going on.

1. According to the very latest data from the Office for National Statistics, released this week, in the year ending June 2023 the population of the United Kingdom grew by 662,400 people to 68.2 million people —a growth rate of 1 per cent.

2. This 1 per cent might not sound like a lot but it is the sharpest increase in our population since 1971 and reflects the ongoing population explosion that I’ve written about previously.

3. And this will now only accelerate in the years ahead, unless we change course. By the year 2036, only twelve years away, the government’s own forecast suggests another 6.6 million people will arrive in the country, equivalent to about five cities the size of Birmingham, taking the population to 74 million people. By the late 2040s, on current numbers, the population will expand by around 20 million people, equivalent to 18 cities the size of Birmingham.

4. What’s driving this? Well, what we also learned this week is that more people are now dying than being born among the British population —which is the first time this has happened for half a century. In fact, the native population declined by 16,300 people in the year ending June 2023, reflecting the ongoing fertility crisis that will now become a constant in our national life unless, again, we rapidly change course. The ‘replacement rate’ for a country whereby it is reproducing itself over time is 2.1 but in Britain this rate has slumped from 3.0 in the 1960s, to 1.5 in 2022, is forecast to crash to 1.38 by the year 2050 and then 1.3 by 2100, making it impossible to keep the population stable. In other words, what demographers call “natural negative change” among the native population, alongside the other key changes below, will now only accelerate in the years ahead.