Above, Sir Godfrey Knneller’s painting of Sophia Charlotte von Kielmansegg, Countess of Darlington & Countess of Leinster & Baroness Brentford (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophia_von_Kielmansegg,_Countess_of_Darlington).
In 1725 obituaries to Sophia, Countess of Darlington referred to her as “The Elephant”. Today, Lady Darlington would be described as a morbidly obese woman and were she to die in 2025 (having been born in 1975 of course) in Brentford at the Syon Clinic – a prestigious specialised private outpatient clinic – and a subsequent obituary that appeared in The Daily Record describing her as “The Elephant” there would be no doubt about Police Scotland receiving reports from some of the Record’s readership that an offence under the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021 had been committed!
But then, three centuries does make an awful lot of difference!
Were the spirit of Lady Darlington able to discern in someway the situation today nearly three hundred years since her passing, doubtless she would be horrified and aghast at some of the developments that have overtaken her adopted country!
In 1725, there were religious passions and political strife in the kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland but these were between Christian denominations. Today the situation is very, very different!
The excellent Jeff Taylor (above) is not the only political activist and commentator to raise awareness about the increasing numbers and influence of Muslims in western Europe and the UK.
A very prominent activist and campaigner is Eva Vlaardingerbroek a member of the Forum voor Democratie (Forum for Democracy) who attended the Centre for Fundamental Rights 2024 conference in Budapest recently (https://www.cpachungary.com/en/). Her speech appears below:
Ms Vlaardingerbroek (aka Mrs Will Witt) clearly has a much more secure future with her husband in the USA.
Of course, one of the things Mr Taylor and Ms Vlaardingerbroek share with “Tommy Robinson” aka Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon is that they are not afraid to draw attention to the present “elephant in the room” – namely the increase in the number of Muslims in the UK, the lack of assimilation by and the increasing assertiveness of that community.
The Muslim community in the UK is on course to become the largest cultural and religious community in the UK in the not too far distant future. This dramatic demographic change will come about as a result of three principal factors:
#1: The high (greater than replacement) birthrate in the Muslim community.
#2: The low (less than replacement) birthrate in the indigenous “White British” community.
#3: The continuing high level of immigration.
It is impossible to put a precise timescale upon when the Muslim religion will become the largest religious community in the UK due to something known as “White flight”. This because many “White Britons” who are young, highly skilled and therefore very employable will relocate to other areas of the world and “White Britons” who are very wealthy and therefore very flexible will relocate to other areas of the world.
One of the measures that some very wealthy “White Britons” are already undertaking is to have their children born in the USA. This involves forsaking the NHS maternity services and spending thousands of US $ in the private (and very expensive) US healthcare system. The USA has a most excellent healthcare system – probably the best in the world. The problem being that only the very wealthy can avail themselves of all it’s facilities!
These very wealthy “White Britons” incur this expenditure because of the US Citizenship laws. With the exception of babies born to diplomatic personnel, a baby born in the USA to non US parents automatically becomes a US Citizen!
For how long this situation will continue is uncertain because a certain Mr Donald J. Trump is a bit concerned about this and might decide to change this should be find himself in a position to do so.
This of course brings us back to the question: Wither those of us unable and/or unwilling to migrate overseas?
Well there are those who suggest that the most likely outcome is a full scale civil war with the Muslims victorious and instituting a hardline Islamic theocracy with Sharia Law ruthlessly applied to all.
I am minded to opine that a far more likely outcome will be an ordered transition from the present democratic limited monarchy with a House of Commons, a House of Lords containing the established Church of England to a democratic limited monarchy with a House of Commons, a House of Lords containing the established faith: Sunni Islam.
The monarch that replaces His Majesty King Charles III will be or will have converted to Sunni Islam and will continue to hold the title, “Defender of the Faith”. The House of Lords will be constituted similar to the present: Lords Spiritual and Lords Temporal. The Lords Spiritual will be specifically appointed imams probably with the title “Sheik” and the Lords Temporal will be appointed Life Peers. The total numbers of Lords Spiritual and Lords Temporal will likely equal the total numbers of elected MPs and the ratio (of Lords Spiritual to Lords Temporal) will likely reflect the size of the Muslim population in relation to the total population.
In the early history of the Parliament of England, the Lords Spiritual—including the abbots—outnumbered the Lords Temporal. Between 1536 and 1540, however, King Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries, thereby removing the seats of the abbots. For the first time, and from then on, the Lords Spiritual formed a minority in the House of Lords. In addition to the 21 older dioceses (including four in Wales), Henry VIII created six new ones, of which five survived; the Bishops of the Church of England were excluded in 1642 but regained their seats following the Stuart Restoration; from then until the early 19th century no new sees were created, and the number of Lords Spiritual remained at 26.
Readers may well regard this suggestion to be fantastical and far fetched but this country has a long established tradition of being run by established elites that continues to the present day. So embedded in the political culture is it that we see it in the form of the “powers-that-be” seeking the views of “community leaders” and plans for the establishment of “citizens assemblies”.
His Majesty King Charles III will reach eighty in November 2028 and ninety in November 2038.
Whoever will be his successor will likely – in order to maintain support for the monarchy from a fundamentally changed demographic – undergo a Muslim version of a Coronation at the Abbey Mills Mosque aka London Markaz aka Masjid-e-Ilyas that will by that time have been completed.
NB: À propos the actual identity of the possible identity of King Charles III’s successor in such circumstances is a topic on which I refuse to speculate!
Of course we cannot end this article without making mention of The Right Honourable Enoch Powell, MBE.
Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech delivered to a Conservative Association meeting in Birmingham on 20th April 1968 was one of the significant speeches made by a public figure in the UK in the 20th Century. Two sections are now iconic:
“As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see ‘the River Tiber foaming with much blood”.
“Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad. We must be mad, literally mad, as a nation to be permitting the annual inflow of some 50,000 dependents, who are for the most part the material of the future growth of the immigrant-descended population. It is like watching a nation busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre.”
Herewith a link to the whole speech: https://anth1001.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/enoch-powell_speech.pdf