Mieka Smiles

Local Matters

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CAN still remember my first day at primary school in England. As I swung around my neon pink Puma bag (from Argos, no less a total revelation to an Aussie) my new classmates demanded I say things in my Australian accent, and asked, of course, if I knew Kylie and Jason.

Despite my mum being Middlesbrough born and bred, I was born in Australia and lived the first eight years of my life there, before my parents decided to move back to Britain in 1990. What a culture shock. But within just a few short months, the antipodean lilt disappeared and I've never once hankered after the place I was born. I adore my country and I'm proud to call it home. I'm British and that's that.

So I was astonished to find the results of a poll reported in The Guardian that a growing number of people said that, because I wasn’t born here, I’m not a true Brit. The number who believe “Britishness” is something you are born with has almost doubled in two years. Around a third of people (36%) think a person must be born British to be truly British, according to a new YouGov poll, up from one in five (19%) in 2023.