Is English nationalism here to stay?
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Why are we surprised that our political culture is dysfunctional and British society is divided, perhaps dangerously so? Political leaders have bombarded the public with a stream of stark binary choices: a yes or no EU referendum; the people versus the elite; a vigorous can-do executive versus a zombie Parliament; rich versus poor; a suffering north versus a complacent south; and young Remainers versus old Leavers.
A more nuanced analysis is that globalisation, combined with Conservative policies, has increased inequality of opportunity between, and within, regions, and that a decade of austerity has depressed the incomes of the less well-off. This has created a genuine conflict of interests between overbearing, cosmopolitan “nowheres”, who are upwardly and geographically mobile, and the “somewheres”, people who are stuck locally with low incomes and few prospects.
I was struck by John Le Carré’s recent observation that “Nationalism needs an enemy. Patriotism needs a commitment”. The identification of an enemy is the step that leads to hate speech, fuelled by the conviction that “they” are evil. At this point, violence is close at hand.
The highly destructive “them and us” narrative is the great mainstay of political extremism. (I can vouch for that, after eight years of working to prevent religious extremism.) The death of Jo Cox was tragic evidence that irresponsible language in a dysfunctional society has become lethal. We see a worrying increase in the number of neo-Nazis in the mentoring programme of the government’s Prevent strategy.
There are also ideological reasons for our present predicament. Brexit is a bi-product of the rise of English nationalism. It takes an Irishman like Fintan O’Toole to name the genie in the Brexit bottle. Now that the Farage/Johnson nationalist genie has been released, it threatens not only political violence, but the breakup of the country.
It’s perhaps not surprising that a stronger form of English nationalism has come along to replace the saccharine myth of Englishness as described by John Major. In his vision, Anglican ladies rode their bicycles to church, past the cricket match on the village green, past the cosy pubs, where men drank warm beer. No satanic mills here. Nor rust-belts and boarded-up shops.
But fantasy pasts are inherently weak as narratives of nationalism. Society changes, leaving them behind. For many people, Britain is a bleaker place than this portrait would suggest.
And so along comes the new Conservative Party, wrapped in the flag of English nationalism. But there is no cricket or warm beer on show. The new-Toryism has its roots in what Will Hutton describes as transnational finance capital: a “regulation-light land fit for hedge funds and private equity capitalism,” made for “billionaires of whatever nationality”.
Unpalatable though this might be, it doesn’t automatically make Corbyn more attractive. He is acutely vulnerable on political judgement, foreign policy, and security, just as Johnson is equally weak on his past performance as foreign secretary, his personal values, mendacity, and chameleon politics.
What Johnson wants is a big election victory for an English nationalist party led by Tory extremists. Many expelled, now former, MPs are patriotic in the Le Carré sense, committed enough to the values of one nation Toryism to end their careers. They were unfortunate. Johnson is fickle enough to lead a straightforward one nation campaign were it in his interests.
And yet, the new Conservative Party knows it must reflect some of the values of the majority of the British people, most of whom share the values of the NHS and are committed to it, regarding it as a precious national institution that expresses our national identity more eloquently than any other institution in British public life.
And somewhere in our lie-saturated and divisive political culture, the political leaders of the two main parties sense this. Cohesion is now more important than ever, and if it takes the health service to provide it, then so be it. For that reason, even during this desultory time of binary identity politics, there is still a glimmer of hope.
