The Kings College professor predicting UK civil war

If somebody said Britain was about to become “something like Belfast during the Troubles, or Baghdad circa 2008 and 2010”, with 23,000 a year dying in a civil war, would you expect it to be (a) a late-night GB News pundit, (b) an X user with the handle @albionforever1966nosurrender or (c) a professor at Kings College London?

Hats off if you opted for (c), as the apocalyptic augury came from David Betz, a professor of war in the modern world at the prestigious university, hitherto little-known but an increasingly prominent figure on the sort of podcasts favoured by angry men drinking too much Huel.

Betz, incredibly a former government adviser on counter-insurgency, has predicted a messy asymmetrical conflict breaking down on ethnic lines, with three sides emerging: a Muslim population barricaded into urban enclaves, a white British one which regards government as illegitimate and “captured” by elites, and what remains of the state. The 23,000 figure, which he appears to have plucked out of the air, came in an event hosted by right wing website Unherd last year.

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The London-based Canadian describes himself as a “civic nationalist” who believes in shared identities based on values, but he says that’s “not going to be durable once people get to the situation where they are kidnapping each others’ children and drilling their kneecaps out”.

He has written a piece for the peer-reviewed journal Military Strategy, along with M.L.R. Smith of Canberra’s Centre for Future Defence and National Security, which appears to smack its lips at the thought of Britain descending into ethnically-divided anarchy.

“The idea of civil war in the West, once dismissed as alarmist or confined to dystopian fiction, has gained prominence over the past year,” it says. “What was once whispered on the margins is now increasingly discussed.”

Yes – although increasingly discussed mainly by the likes of Betz on an assortment of crackpot podcasts and at events run by grifter websites, it might have added, but didn’t.