1/ We should take back the UK and English flags from the hard and far-right. They show no care for our country and its people, so they have no right to own our national symbols. But to do that we need a positive narrative about what the UK & England stand for.
2/ Many people will, understandably say - a pox on national identity. But there are two big problems with that stance. One is that if we don't forge a national identity others will. But there's a larger issue here, namely the interweaving of national identity and democracy.
3/ We are very familiar with anti-democratic aspect of nationalism. But there's another side of nationality that recent events have eclipsed. Democracy requires a sense of our belonging to a shared community, giving us a sense of solidarity with other members of the community.
4/ In countries like Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yugoslavia just before break-up, the sense of belonging to a national community is eclipsed by stronger local sectarian or ethnic identities. Politics is at best an uneasy truce between factions who have no solidarity with each other.
5/ Where national identity is strong and consensual then the tensions between different factions are kept in check by the sentiment that everyone belongs to a single democratic community and is owed the respect that shared identity warrants.
6/ So national identity is double-edged with respect to democracy. It can provide the solidarity essential to a democratic community, and it can tear that community apart through hate and intolerance.
7/ So I don't think it is wise to dismiss the question of national identity. In our society it is far too interwoven with the basic fabric of democracy. Our task must therefore to be to find a positive national identity which is not built on hostility towards the other.
8/ It is all to easy for us liberals and leftists to attack English nationalism and tear into the crimes of empire. Such criticism can be valuable, but it must not leave a wasteland. We need to present a compelling replacement narrative of British and English identity.
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