Islamist threats, Enoch Powell & the end of England | Historian Robert Tombs interview

Amidst the recurring threats posed by Islamist extremists against MPs, rapidly changing demographics, and the overshadowing influence of foreign wars in Gaza and the middle east on English elections, can England survive as a nation? To answer, Steven Edginton is joined by the historian and author of The English and Their History, Robert Tombs. “It’s not the case since the 17th century that quite small religious minorities have been able to exert a pretty startling political impact. You might think of Guy Fawkes, and the Gunpowder Plotters or you might think of the Puritans and the origins of the Civil War against Charles I. But, we did think, I suppose, that religion, or at least religious extremism had left our politics really, in the 17th century.” “This was rather like the violence that led up to the Great Reform Bill, in the early 1830s, when you did have major public unrest, rioting, the burning down of the Palace of the Bishop of Bristol. A general sense of the country was on the verg