Question Time Reaction II

Here is a very mature contribution to the debate by Will J, left in the comments of this Spectator post:

So we all agree (or most of us do anyway) that Britishness is not defined by ethnicity. And that is surely true, since no nation has ever been racially pure, least of all ours. What I'm interested in, though, is what role people think ethnicity should play in national identity. The very idea of a nation is of course birth related (root: natal), and even immigrants seem to think that those who have been here for longer and were born here have more rights over the country's resources than those who just managed to stow themselves away on a lorry.

So while we're generally agreed that British citizenship should not have any narrowly ethnic meaning, does this mean we no longer believe that the resident and historic population (of whatever racial mixture) does not in some sense own its country? If so, doesn't that cause big problems for the whole idea of statehood, since by what right then do those of us here keep out those who are not? And why do we generally recognise the historic rights of indigenous peoples in former colonies? While the BNP's political philosophy of ethnicity is clearly wrong, our own seems very confused at present. Would we not be in a better position to oppose them if we had a clear (and popular) alternative?