>"A nation is a people" does not say anything

Yes it does. A nation is not a government, nor a territory. It is a group of people who share common ancestry and culture.

>It's a totally empty phrase given that the notion of what makes up "a people" is totally fluid, and changes dramatically over time,

That does not make it "empty". What constitutes fruit has changed, that doesn't mean fruit is meaningless.

>You won't find anyone in England who consider themselves Germans, for example

You will just find millions who consider themselves Saxons.

>And despite "British" as an identity is even more of a fabrication you'll find plenty of people who see no distinction between English and Scottish people, for example

Just because The English invaders didn't see a difference between the ethnic groups in the area that became India doesn't mean those differences didn't exist. Ignorance doesn't actually erase the facts one is ignorant of.

>And it changes rapidly: Even surveys of what nationality people in the UK consider themselves to have shows massive shifts over even the last 30-40 years

Almost as if millions of foreigners have invaded their country or something.

>The irony of what one finds in such surveys is that contrary to your earlier attempt to paint this as something lasting, families of recent immigrants to the UK tend to show much stronger feelings of national belonging than "ethnic British" people

Because ethnic British people are raised to hate themselves, their people, their nation, their culture and their identity. They are called vile racists if they are proud of who they are. They are taught that identifying with your people is evil if you are white.

>Not when there is plenty of evidence.

Not if you presented a factual case based on evidence, no. But proclaiming you know why people feel what they feel and that there is "plenty of evidence" which you need not provide or support is.

>I wouldn't tell anyone they're racist for being afraid of people who are actually invading and taking their country.

And yet you do.

>That you even try to equate this with immigration says enough.

That you even try to pretend there's a distinction says enough. So non-Swedes come to Sweden, against the wishes of the Swedish people, who are imprisoned if they speak out against this, and then they complain that there are too many Swedish people in Swedish media, government, corporations, etc and that non-Swedes need to be replacing Swedes in those positions. And this is totally cool simply because you call it immigration instead of invasion?

>People are free to be xenophobes and bigots if they wish. That does not make them any less so, and I'm equally free to call them out on it.

Yes, Gandhi was an evil xenophobic bigot alright. Does hating people because you arrogantly proclaim them to be hating other people not trigger even the slightest twinge of self-awareness?

>It's about the fact that anti-immigration sentiments linked to opposition to the EU was strongest in the areas where people have the least personal experience with it

Except that is not true at all. That's deliberate distortion by saying "look, all these invading foreigners don't have a problem with invading foreigners!". If you only look at the British people in the high invasion areas, they are the ones most opposed to further invasion. Asking the invaders how they feel about more invaders and then acting like that is British opinion is just silly.

>Living in London, as an immigrant, the vast majority of British people I meet are equally exasperated over the xenophobia in "Middle England"

Well I guess that wraps it up. The English people can simply cease to exist now because you anecdotally believe the majority of people you remember repeat the corporate media's propaganda while in public. We all know how completely accurate that is, after all Brexit failed miserably and Trump never came close to being president. Nobody living in a police state would ever toe the party line in public but actually oppose it in private!