In an interview on Good Morning Britain, a 100-year-old World War II veteran said that the sacrifices he and his fellow soldiers made during the war were not worth what his home country has become today.
"My message is, I can see in my mind's eye those rows and rows of white stones and all the hundreds of my friends who gave their lives, for what? The country of today? No, I'm sorry - but the sacrifice wasn't worth the result of what it is now."
When he was asked to clarify what he meant, he said, "What we fought for was our freedom, but now it's a darn sight worse than when I fought for it."
'What we fought for was our freedom, even now [the country] is worse than it was when I fought for it,' says 100-year-old World War II Veteran Alec Penstone. pic.twitter.com/M9HSsS5sIW
— Good Morning Britain (@GMB) November 7, 2025
One of the hosts attempted to console him, saying, "Alec, I'm sorry you feel like that and I want you to know that all the generations that have come since, including me and my children, are so grateful for your bravery and all the other service personnel. It's our job now to make it the country that you fought for, and we will do."
Baron Gove, the former British Secretary of State for Education, argued that his comments were related to issues revolving around mass migration.
"I think you can't separate the question of mass migration from the question of a common culture,' he said on BBC Radio 4's Today Program. "The rate at which a society changes demographically can be accepted, managed, tolerated, and indeed welcomed by the host population if there is a feeling that the culture they cherish is not being challenged or changed."
He continued, "One of the problems with the current pace of migration is not just the numbers, which obviously put a pressure on public services, but it is also the sense that new arrivals are not being invited to share in a common culture."
Mass migration has long been a contentious issue in Europe, with immigrants from third-world countries continuing to cause problems for both British people and their government. The migrants do not seem to share British values, whether that be morally or politically, and that has continued to show. Matters are made worse with the British government cracking down on free speech, and people being arrested for voicing their displeasure with immigration policy.
Foreign nationals in Britain are convicted at significantly higher rates than the British population: 71 percent higher for sexual offenses, 69 percent higher for drug-related crimes, 25 percent higher for theft, and 39 percent higher overall. Migrants accounted for 12.5 to 16.4 percent of all convictions, despite representing only 9.3 percent of the population.