By JAMES SLACK

Last updated at 16:11 29 November 2007

The pop singer Morrissey claims he can no longer live in a Britain he believes lost to an "immigration explosion".

The former frontman of the Smiths, who is now based in Rome, claimed England was just 'a memory now'.

The 48-year-old added: "Other countries have held on to their basic identity yet it seems to me that England was thrown away.

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"The change in England is so rapid compared to the change in any other country.

"If you walk through Knightsbridge on any bland day of the week you won't hear an English accent.

"You'll hear every accent under the sun apart from the British accent.

"The British identity is very attractive, I grew up into it and I find it quaint and very amusing."

Morrissey, who has sung of his love for English culture and can count Tory leader David Cameron as a fan, is the son of an Irish immigrant family which settled in Manchester.

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In 1986, when The Smiths released their critically-acclaimed album The Queen is Dead, the UK had a population of 56million.

It now stands at 60million and some predict that could almost double by

2081.

Morrissey's comments were made in interviews with the music magazine NME.

In the mid-1990s he was accused of racism after wearing a Union Jack on stage and releasing the songs Bengali in Platforms and the ironically-named National Front Disco.

The singer's supporters insisted he had been seeking only to reclaim the flag from extremists.

Tim Jonze, the reporter who conducted the interview, said: "Morrissey has had a stormy relationship with this magazine and its readers over the last three decades.

"He might once have been the voice of a generation but given his comments in these two interviews, he's certainly not speaking for us now."