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 Article by Paul Embery

In his 1941 essay ‘England, Your England’, George Orwell wrote:

England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality. In left-wing circles, it is always felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman, and that it is a duty to snigger at every English institution… [A]lmost any English intellectual would feel more ashamed of standing to attention during ‘God Save the King’ than of stealing from a poor box.

I suspect that even the great man himself, a socialist and patriot to the core, would be shocked by the degree to which the anti-English sentiment he identified over 80 years ago has become even more embedded in the psyche of the nation’s political and cultural elites – and not just those who consider themselves to be on the left.

We all know the script. England has no distinct political or cultural identity – not a meaningful one, at any rate. Most of the good and revered things that are said to be ‘English’ are not English at all; they all came from elsewhere. Other than ‘diversity’ and ‘tolerance’, naturally. Those anodyne concepts must be cited ad nauseum in response to any enquiry of what it is that makes us proud to be English. But that’s about it. (Oh, and didn’t you know that St George was really a Palestinian?)

The bad things, on the other hand – they are all definitely English. Slavery and imperialism, for example. The English must forever be reminded of their responsibility for these evils and be expected to engage in regular bouts of self-flagellation by way of atonement.

It’s hard to believe that any other nation’s intelligentsia would be so determined to denigrate or deny its history and identity in this way. Many who demonstrate such a mindset hold the belief that any expression of Englishness can stem only from a feeling of superiority or xenophobia or pride in things about which the English should be unproud. While Scottish, Welsh and Irish nationalism are seen as largely benign – even admirable by those who deem these nations to have suffered historical oppression at the hands of their larger neighbour – English nationalism, even of the most innocuous, civic kind, is to be avoided at all costs. (I wonder if these people have ever troubled to learn about Scotland’s role in the Empire.)

Others are motivated by the view that, in this age of ever-deepening globalisation, national borders and identities are essentially redundant, and we are instead all now citizens-of-nowhere – part of a great global cultural blancmange. Anyone standing in the way of this phenomenon is deemed an opponent of ‘progress’ and treated as some sort of political or cultural dinosaur. This, I am sure, explains why even some politicians on the right remain nervous about promoting the politics of English identity. They know that many in the SW1 bubble, including media types, consider it all a bit uncouth and working-class – even ‘far-right’ – and would perhaps question their motivation. And, frankly, the number of MPs willing to be seen as out-of-step with the general cosmopolitan liberal worldview that dominates within the upper echelons of public life and our national institutions these days is vanishingly small.

Take a recent much-commented-upon segment of an interview of Tory leadership candidate Robert Jenrick on Sky News. Jenrick had argued in a newspaper article that English identity had been placed at risk by immigration, ‘non-integrating multiculturalism’ and a metropolitan establishment which ‘actively disapprove[s]’ of the nation’s history and culture. Now, one may disagree with Jenrick’s analysis. But the interviewer barely even considered the analysis on its own merits, instead pressing Jenrick repeatedly on the question of ‘What is English identity?’ – the clear implication being that there was no such thing. For that is the premise from which much of the commentariat starts: that Englishness is an illusory concept and there is nothing distinct about the country at all.

It's almost impossible to imagine a news presenter in a studio in, say, Berlin or Paris or New York or even Glasgow, when interviewing a politician who had said, rightly or wrongly, that the relevant nation’s identity was under threat, defaulting immediately to the position that that couldn’t possibly be the case as that identity didn’t really exist.

Jenrick’s intervention sparked a wider debate on social media and beyond, with the usual suspects lining up to deride the entire notion of English identity and argue that there is no such thing. When it comes to England of all nations – the birthplace of common law, a near-universal language, an unsurpassed canon of literature and poetry, the Anglican church, the Westminster system of government, the industrial revolution, and numerous popular sports – such a theory is patently ridiculous. You may not like or be interested in any of the aforementioned things. But to deny that they have over a thousand years helped to shape England into the distinct political and cultural entity it is today is to demonstrate ignorance of the highest order.   

I am no jingoist. I have never displayed a national flag on my car or outside my home – I’m not sure I’ve ever even waved one – and I have no desire to see schoolchildren singing the national anthem every morning in assembly or that kind of thing. But I consider myself English (as well as British) and, like millions of my compatriots, I am irritated at attempts by the liberal-progressive elites to airbrush or traduce that identity and the history that goes with it.

These attempts have over the past couple of decades engendered a sense of national dispossession throughout many of England’s communities – especially in the provincial quarters of the country – and led to an increase in the number of voters identifying as more English than British. This development has, in turn, had a tangible impact on our politics. As former Labour cabinet minister and current director of the Centre for English Identity and Politics at the University of Southampton, John Denham, wrote earlier this year:

In the first two decades of the 21st century, the politics of England and the UK were transformed by voters who emphasised their English identity. The votes of the ‘more English than British’ took Ukip from obscurity to agenda setter, secured the fateful promise of an EU referendum, and delivered the Leave vote. In the 2019 ‘Get Brexit Done’ election, Boris Johnson’s Conservatives gained the support of 68% of the ‘More English than British’, 50% of the ‘equally English and British’, but lost narrowly to Labour amongst the ‘More British than English’.

Those bent on ridiculing the whole concept of English identity might perhaps be wise to start recognising the impact of their words and actions on the wider political landscape.