Is it too late to prevent anarchy in the 'Yookay'?

The social media-driven ‘Yookay’ is the UK imagined as a changing multicultural mess, a kind of South Africa-on-Thames. The images that accompany it include South Asian Deliveroo drivers, signage written in African languages and stills from TikTok promoting immigration loopholes.

It is not coincidental that the Yookay has spread fast in the year since the worst anti-migrant riots in decades following the tragedy of the Southport stabbings last July. Tensions over the nature of immigration (both legal and irregular) have not abated. The question over who is and what is allowed to be British grows louder daily. The Yookay is here to stay.

The Yookay is best associated with an X account opened in January 2025 (the term itself a phonetic spelling of “UK” in multicultural London English). The account, Yookay Aesthetics, lists its work as “chronicling the new Britain”, adding the helpful disclaimer that “posts are not implicit value judgements”.

Get the latest news and insight into how the Big Issue magazine is made by signing up for the Inside Big Issue newsletter 

The “new Britain” it chronicles is a mix of the unpleasant (a still of an Asian man alleged to have assaulted a policewoman at Manchester Airport), the unaesthetic (barber shops jammed incongruously in below mock-Tudor beams), the bizarre (a bhangra performance featuring a humanoid robot) and the banal (Sadiq Khan receiving a knighthood).

Though it began online, the Yookay has increasingly crept into the public sphere. In a recent article for The Telegraph, former chief negotiator for Brexit David Frost described the Yookay as the transmutation of the UK into something new, a country with “different national character, and with lower national ambition”, laying the blame in large part on immigration.

Though Yookay Aesthetics fastidiously avoids passing moral judgement on its posts, it is difficult not to sense a certain motivation. Juxtaposing the seemingly innocuous (a Sikh gurdwara in Kent or Muslim women visiting Bolton priory) with the toxic (including footage of a Black woman being strangled by an Asian man in a shop in Peckham) seems to hold the message that migration as a whole is undoing Britain.

Just over a year ago, rioters attempted to burn down hotels housing asylum seekers and set up checkpoints to look at drivers’ ethnicity. Discussions of migration have only grown more salient since then, and concepts such as the Yookay are a weathervane. The lively debate over whether former prime minister Rishi Sunak could be English questions whether we should put the greatest emphasis on ethnicity, identity or upbringing. 

Read more:

• Closure of pubs and parks created a ‘tinderbox’ for far-right riots, research says: ‘Hate can fill the void’
• Ely riots, two years on: A Cardiff community pulling itself back together holds lessons for Britain
• Elon Musk fanned the UK riots. Now he’s trying to reshape British politics

Not so long ago, discussions seemed to divide non-white migrants between model minorities who integrated and threatening ones who did not (usually targeting Muslims). The riots and the continued discussions of migration show that the category of the “other” has expanded to encompass non-white migrants as a whole.

And this language exists alongside much more explicit calls for deportations or violence. Our research found an almost 250% increase in anti-migrant hate on Telegram in the 10 days after the Southport stabbing. On X, anti-Muslim slurs more than doubled in the same period.

And anti-migrant violence continues in the UK: protests in Northern Ireland have been supported by Republicans from across the border, bridging longstanding sectarian divides. Rallies for remigration (the mass expulsion of non-white asylum seekers, migrants and citizens alike) continue to occur, with Epping recently the scene of more violent protest.  

I won’t pretend that I don’t have a horse in the race. I arrived in Britain with my parents almost exactly three decades ago and have lived here since then. English is my mother tongue; to my family’s chagrin, I can speak slightly more Old English or Old Irish than I do Tamil or Malayalam.

It is wearying to think that the idea of saying I feel British – or worse, that I am British – feels somehow controversial, or that I exist as some threat to the body politic. Unfortunately, these narratives are in ascendance, supported and amplified by similar voices in the US and Europe. 

There are two responses to Yookay politics. The one envisioned by anti-migrant voices ends rather bleakly for people like myself. The other is to make a stronger case for migration beyond infantilising posts about tasty food or colourful traditions. That won’t change the minds of those who see non-white migrants as cunning, clannish and criminal, but it is the only way to respond to those on the fence.

Siddharth Venkataramakrishnan is an editorial manager and analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue.

Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this? Get in touch and tell us more.