Calum Jacobs argues in a Guardian opinion column that it is absurd the census offers no "Black English" option, noting Wales and Scotland stopped conflating national identity with race, that David Lammy's 2021 LBC exchange over his Englishness prompted a failed appeal to the ONS, and that Josh Babarinde has introduced a bill to extend Englishness to all ethnic backgrounds, backed by Lammy and James Cleverly. He says people should be free to claim a Black English identity, citing a 2025 YouGov study finding only 13% of English adults think someone must be white to be English.