Pauline Hanson has toured the streets of Luton with British activist Tommy Robinson, and walked away with a blunt message for voters back home.
Robinson posted the footage on 11 July, filming the One Nation leader through the English town where he grew up.
"I definitely don't want Australia to become like this. This is not great Britain to me, and that's why I'm going to protect Australia," Hanson said to camera.
Her warning sits on a set of numbers that are hard to argue with.
Luton is now nearly a third Muslim, five times the national average
At the 2021 Census, 32.9% of Luton residents identified as Muslim, up from 24.6% a decade earlier. The town's Muslim population grew from about 50,000 to 74,191 in ten years, a 48% rise. Across England and Wales the Muslim share is 6.5%, so Luton runs at roughly five times the national rate.
England and Wales added more than a million Muslims in a decade
The national trend points the same way. The 2021 Census recorded 3.9 million Muslims in England and Wales, or 6.5% of the population, up from 2.7 million in 2011. That's a rise of more than a million people in ten years, and it accounted for roughly a third of the country's entire population growth over the period.
The US based Pew Research Center projects the Muslim share of the UK could reach between 9.7% and 17.2% by 2050, depending on migration. On the high migration path, that's roughly 13.5 million people.
Muhammad is now the most popular boys' name in the country
The shift shows up in the maternity wards. Muhammad was the most popular name for baby boys in England and Wales for a third year running, on Office for National Statistics figures reported on 9 July. That count is for one spelling alone. Mohammed and Mohammad both sit separately inside the top 100, so the real total runs higher still.
Video: Tommy Robinson, via X. Pauline Hanson tours Luton with Tommy Robinson.
Robinson's walkabout drew a hostile reception
The tour wasn't quiet. The footage shows Robinson confronted repeatedly in the street, with several people calling him a racist as he filmed. He stopped outside Discover Islam Luton, an Islamic outreach centre in the town centre that says about 5,000 people pass through its doors each month. Staff declined to answer his questions. Britain now has an estimated 1,880 mosques, holding some £1.5 billion in assets.
Hanson, who leads One Nation, has built her career on tighter borders and lower migration. Standing in Luton, she argued Britain is a preview of where unmanaged migration leads.
It's not the first time she's made the comparison. Hanson recently told former British prime minister Liz Truss that Britain is worse off than Australia, and warned we aren't far behind.
Whether Luton is a fair snapshot of Britain or an outlier, the census numbers behind Hanson's warning aren't in dispute.
