Reflections on British national identity

Abstract

Why does it matter whether the citizens of a state like Britain share a national identity? National identities are neither primordial—they are continually being redefined for policitical reasons—nor monolithic—people who share a national identity can also acknowledge differing identities of other kinds, especially differing ethnic identities. National identities matter, however, because they provide the means for people to make sense of their social world as it has evolved historically, and because they provide the bonds of mutual trust that make successful democratic politics possible. British national identity was originally Protestant and liberal in its substance, and neither imperialism nor high monarchism was ever as central to that identity as is commonly thought. Post‐war experience—of relative economic decline, of constitutional disarray, and of decolonisation—has, however, put the value of British identity in question. Rather than taking refuge in the private values of ‘cultural Englishness’, what is needed is a political redefinition of British identity, drawing on past traditions but embodied in a new constitutional settlement.

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