England: A uniquely British muddled mess

An interesting insight from former diplomat David Frost, writing in the Telegraph.

[The UK], we claimed, was uniquely capable of absorbing migrants from all round the world, for they could take the political, civic, identity of Britain/UK, but without having to buy into the full cultural identity, too, unlike those benighted unitary states on the Continent.

In short, it was possible to be politically British without having to be English. (It is one of the many ironies of this subject that fashionable opinion has now turned 180 degrees, and it is now near-taboo to suggest that recent migrants who acquire British citizenship are not as English as everyone else.)

The ‘we’ in this revelation is the Blair-era Foreign Office staff. In other words, English identity was the indigenous, ethnic identity while British identity was the civic, inclusive identity. This is exactly the way that much of the English far-right now frames things. It’s seen as beyond the pale by many on the Left but it seems to have been unspoken New Labour thinking on how immigrants were absorbed into British (but not English) identity. British citizens but not English.

Frost continues:

Out of this uniquely British muddled mess, it was inevitable that an English identity would re-emerge. After all, it already existed. It had just been largely associated with the wider British state and its achievements. But as people started to doubt those, and as the country increasingly thought of itself as the bureaucratic, technocratic “UK”, then the cultural and emotional component had to go somewhere – and it went to Englishness. That is the process we are living through.

Two interesting questions follow from this current reality. The first is whether a resurgent English identity can remain entirely cultural and historical, or must in the end be political, as well. If the Scots and Welsh have an assembly, why can’t the English?

Why indeed. We English might then be able to create a more civic, inclusive English identity. An English identity whose purpose isn’t to act as a firebreak between immigrants to Britain and the ‘cultural and historical’ English. Imagine if English identity had a legitimate democratic voice instead of loitering on the street corner hoisting flags up lampposts in opposition to new Brits.

Frost, like the good little Brit he is, then regains his senses and pours cold water on a perfectly good idea.

An English assembly governing England, leaving Westminster responsible for foreign affairs, defence, and the currency, would after all reveal the reality: that the “UK” national identity is thin and bureaucratic, not emotional, not historical, not cultural.

I wouldn’t particularly welcome such an assembly…

A familiar story. England must do without national democracy for the sake of Britain.