There are some very important misconceptions about how human genetics works here that I need to correct. Rees-Mogg presents the idea that Englishness can't be purely racial, because if it was then people whose families had come over as part of the Spanish Armada in 1588 still wouldn't be equal to the rest of the English - how far back do you have to trace ancestry to really count? But this is incorrect. Families do not stay genetically separated for 500 years. Assuming a roughly 20-25 year generation time, there are 4-5 generations per century or 20-25 over 500 years. Tracing ancestry backwards from today, an Englishman (or woman) has 2^20 - 2^25 ancestors. 2^25 = 33 million. The population of England in 1588 was just 3.8 million. So over that period, many ancestral lines must cross over. This is called pedigree collapse. If a handful of Spanish Armada sailors arrived in England in 1588 and had surviving children, then they are almost certainly genealogical ancestors of many millions of people, if not almost everyone. So, does this mean that all (or most) English people have a bit of Spanish Armada DNA in them? No. 1. Genetic ancestors are not the same as genealogical ancestors. You can have a great^22 grandfather, yet carry none of his DNA. This is because DNA transmission is random and over time the amount of DNA transmitted from a very distant ancestor can go to zero. 2. More deeply, there is no such thing as "Spanish DNA". There is just DNA - there are four chemicals (A, G, C, T) which are chemically and even quantum mechanically identical in a spaniard and an English person. What makes someone genetically Spanish is the way those letters are arranged. When two parents make a baby, the letters get mixed. If you do that 22 times in a row, and half the contribution comes from English people every time, by the 22nd mixing the result is not going to carry the Spanish pattern any more. Rees-Mogg doesn't understand any of this.