It has been hard to talk about Englishness except through the prism of Scottish independence or through extreme rightwing, racist groups such as the EDL. Englishness then becomes entirely negative and not worth owning. But it doesn’t go away. The result is that we wake up on the morning of the Brexit vote with half the population saying they don’t recognise the country they live in. I hear this said all the time. There is no question that the Brexit vote is an expression of an English nationalism that many have regarded as a kind of embarrassment, as an identity in decline. This identity is English, not British, because it cares not what happens to Scotland – indeed, there is open hostility to Scotland now. It also appears to have no knowledge or care of Wales or, especially, Northern Ireland. The news that there will be a border there to be policed is a trifle to many. This England may be small, but it sees itself as exceptional, as both neglected and swashbuckling.
These feelings have been swilling around for years and were mopped up by Ukip and others on the right. Most of the left sees them as entirely retrograde; nationalism brings up questions about ethnicity and is best avoided. Isn’t it better to have bigger identities? British, European, global? To talk of England in all its complexity has been to veer into the territory of racists. To not talk of it has meant we have ended up where we are now, in the grip of a delusion of English exceptionalism, a turbo-charged nationalism loose from any moorings.
There is almost no purchase on this from progressives beyond telling Brexiters that their feelings are the wrong feelings. Parts of the left have tried over the years to talk of a sense of Englishness, or of belonging, or of a civic identity, or of what a post-imperial country may be, or how Englishness has changed. The talk has been sneered at because patriotism is déclassé, and to enter this territory is “rightwing”. Thus the right has come to absolutely own it.
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