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September 20, 2024 - 1:20pm
Tory leadership frontrunner Robert Jenrick has made an important intervention in the national conversation on English identity today. Writing in the Daily Mail, he argues that his party cannot return to power without the votes of England’s disenfranchised traditionalists, warning that mass immigration and “woke” culture have put English identity under threat. Central to this development, in his view, are the cultural attitudes and social policies of the “metropolitan establishment”.
Jenrick makes some reasonable if hardly novel points. England has become a more racially, ethnically, and religiously diverse country; compared to Scotland and Wales, it receives a disproportionately high number of migrants and has experienced greater forms of population change. The existing literature suggests that such diversification has the potential to undermine social solidarity — especially in more deprived neighbourhoods where perceptions of group-based competition for public resources can grow. There is no doubt that there has been radical progressive erasure of Anglo-Saxon history and identity in “decolonising” institutions, as well as a cultural discomfort over expressions of “Englishness” partly down to the hard-Right’s co-opting of the St. George’s Cross flag.
But Jenrick’s analysis of why English identity is under threat crucially exposes a blind spot on the British political Right, if not an intellectual deficit at the heart of modern Tory thinking. If there is a crisis of English national identity based on “culture, customs, and cohesion” in Jenrick’s words, that can’t be explained purely by admittedly unprecedented levels of immigration.
The “titular nation” — the single dominant ethnic group in a particular state — is in crisis in England. The traditional civic blocks which help to provide a sense of belonging and consolidate national unity have disintegrated in the modern era of rapid secularisation and materialistic individualism. People didn’t abandon the Church of England because it started associating itself with radical cultural liberalism and US-style identitarianism; really, the Church took that direction in a desperate attempt to remain relevant amid an era of declining Christian devotion.
England is an international hotspot of family breakdown, which is more prevalent within the indigenous mainstream than among minorities who originate from parts of the world such as the Indian subcontinent. That intergenerational transfer of spiritual “Englishness” — an unapologetic pride in England’s history, heritage, traditions, and culture — is limited due to high rates of age-based segregation. Loneliness among both the elderly and young in England is uncomfortably high — and that is not primarily the fault of socially conservative migrants or the foreign-born tenants in London-based social housing that Jenrick referred to in his intervention. Edmund Burke’s “little platoons” — church, family, and local community — are essential to a healthy and proud English nation, but received no mention.
There is the all-important question of what the reinvigoration of English identity would look like, beyond the immigration controls that Jenrick would like to introduce if he one day has the keys to 10 Downing Street. Conservatives who genuinely care about the preservation of English history, identity and culture must move beyond their comfort zone of speaking about the recent scale of inward migration and the “woke capture” of institutions. Then, they can look more closely at the spiritual and civic decline of the titular nation.
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SubscribeWho are these mythical British political right?
The Tories are, at best, centre left; the Lib Dems are left; and Labour are far left. It’s hard to categorise Reform, as many of their economic policies could easily be defined as left of centre. Labelling anyone far right for questioning immigration policy is just a dog whistle.
The truth is, if you are a small-c conservative in Britain, you are disenfranchised.
“the hard-Right’s co-opting of the St. George’s Cross flag”
Utter BS, the national flags and the union flags are symbols of patriotism. It is people like Rakib who cast patriots as far right who will end up driving some patriots to the far right and the surrender of our national symbols to the far right. We must avoid both of these happening.
If there is a crisis of English national identity based on “ div > p > a”>culture, customs, and cohesion” in Jenrick’s words, that can’t be explained purely by admittedly unprecedented levels of immigration.
Maybe not “purely” but let’s not act as if the mass importation of people with little regard for English identity if not outright hostility towards it is not a factor. And, pray tell, immigration should be discounted, what is the factor in t this?
Do better than lower church attendance. Fewer people going does not require foreign influence; it only takes the internal drumbeat of attacks on religion that are ongoing in the West. Meantime, “history, identity, and culture” are being torn down, literally in the toppling of statues, and rhetorically in attacks on Britain as some bastion of racism, as if that sentiment is unique to the Isles. It isn’t.
If i might continue the “internal drumbeat of attacks on religion”, your comment completely ignores the extent to which the Enlightenment was brought about by British thinkers and scientists. This, above all, has contributed to the downfall of religious zealotry and now even the milder forms exemplified by the CofE.
Do you regard the Enlightenment as a good or a bad thing, in terms of its achievements in advancing the health and general welfare of what arose: a democratically free West? You can’t have it both ways.
There’s an undercurrent in the article which suggests similar: that a lack of religious faith is behind the current malaise. No, no, and thrice NO!!
What is behind it is the aftermath of realising that humanity has been removed from the religious ‘centre of the universe’ with a god at the helm. Of course there will be a spiritual crisis after countless centuries of being indoctrinated in something which is now found to be false. What’s required to overcome this is a greater understanding of why early civilisations went down that path, and how it was adopted by authoritarians to seek power over their populations. There are more recently adopted means, of course. That’s what we now have to overcome.
Jenrick is speaking to a very narrow strata of the public – Tory members. This ‘puff’ essential if he wants their support. Come 2029 he’ll have to have a much more sophisticated proposition.
Author makes an interesting contribution to the definition and believed crisis of confidence in national identity.
Anyone who travels much will get a sense of England/Britain/Home when they come back. Sometimes to see what others see and value you have to go elsewhere for a period.
My main instinct is we lack confidence in the essence of being British. It’s not about colour of skin or religion. It’s much more than that and it’s strong and vibrant.
As ever, Ehsan is right. But the wokerati targeted by Jenrick are a problem in this regard all the same. Their views mean that they discourage expressions of Englishness so there are no positive signals that “we are English” for the nation to share. And who, other than the wokerati, who dominate all our cultural institutions, have the cultural reach to create such a nationwide expression? No one, almost by definition of “cultural institutions”.
I applaud ehsan’s focus on the issues he raises. But having an English nation means using the instititions of the state to encourage a sense of Englishness as being a good thing. That is important to English people, or some of us anyway, but also for the purpose of assimilating migrants who, otherwise, have no means of learning what Englishness is.
Hear O Albion.
“Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.”