Would it be great to be truly passionate about your country? That probably sounds a really odd question if you come from a country where every day of your childhood you pledged alligence to the flag and has songs like "I'm proud to be an American, where at least I know I'm free", but for a Brit it's a genuine question.
Our Prime Minister - Gordon Brown - is interested in the issue and has tried to raise it repeatedly since 2005. And he and journalist Matthew d'Ancona have a book coming out on Britishness. But, as was pointed out on Radio 4 this morning, the problem with a politician raising the issue is that it politicises the issue: it says Britishness is important and what I say is inherently what Britishness is about (the NHS, low taxes, innovation... put your own political preference here).
But part of the problem is that Britishness is pretty much undefinable at the moment. When asked people mumble things about fair play, stiff upper lips... well, they do if they're English. And that's the thing - it's quite easy to come up with the stereotypes for England, Scotland, Wales etc. but much harder to stereotype what British is.
There's not much in the way of symbols of Britishness. Ok we have the monarchy (and the answer to the Scots nationalists who say the Queen is English is that actually she's of German origin and her husband is Philip of Greece! But her kids were educated in Scotland and the prized palace is at Balmoral...), and citizenship ceremonies (for new British people who have passed the new citizenship tests) include swearing alliegance to the Queen. I guess that's not so different to swearing alligence to a flag or to deifying concepts like liberty, fraternity and equality.
But sport is where it's clear that we don't really feel British. Unless you're a fan of British American football, there's not really much in the way of Britishness in sport. We tend to support our own constituent national teams in football, have widespread coverage of England-only sports like cricket, and even when there is a British team or player (like the Olympics, or tennis) if the sportsperson is not English, then you might as well forget Britishness - Andy Murray's "I'll support anyone but England" comments were a bit of a give away that his personal identity is not British.
The Olympics are an interesting situation for Britishness - our most popular sport is football, but unless our football leagues and politicians get their acts together, we won't actually have a British football team competing at the London 2012 Olypmics. And that's despite David Beckham appearing in the red bus London 2012 montage thing at the closing ceremony of the Beijing Olympics.
That montage was itself supposed to sum up Britishness. It featured a collapsible London bus, multiethnic dancing commuters in bowler hats, the afore-mentioned Beckham, a 1960s rock guitarist and a talent show winner singing. Celebrity, faux-60s nostalgia, football and wrecked public transport - a fair summation of Britain?
Actually I rather liked it (I liked the Millenium Dome too - another attempt to show what Britain in the 21st century was about). It felt fun and quirky, but rather like the first class lounge at Eurostar where Philippe Starck's decor is similar.
But fun and quirky is not unique to Britain - bar the bus and the fact that the celebrities in the Beijing montage were British, it could equally have been Belgium. Maybe some of the commuters would've been eating moules-frites.
So if modern Britain is difficult to define in the abstract, why don't we refer to the past? Well that's one of the problems for modern, diverse, tolerant Britain - we don't like to offend. And while we could probably use the symbol of Stonehenge, most of the rest of our history can be defined as being about subjugation of others. We were pretty good at it. But that's a bit embarrassing now.
An awful lot of wars of independence in the 20th century were about getting independence from us. And a lot of the territorial disputes in the world at the moment are the result of settlements negotiated by Britain in the past (Yugoslavia, Israel and more).
But even if we're not quite clear what Britishness is, as a country we're pretty confident in it. This might be a hangover from the days of empire, it might be something else.
Let me show you what I mean: Pop Idol, the British programme that kicked off the whole "Idol" music franchise worldwide was translated internationally as "American Idol", "Australian Idol" etc. It originated in Britain, and so did not have to be called "British Idol".
"Teach First" - the rather excellent graduate scheme encouraging the brightest graduates to commit to be teachers for two years before either staying in teaching or heading off to their stellar careers elsewhere has gone to Australia as "Teach for Australia". I can't think that "Teach for Britain" would have been nearly so successful.
And "America's Got Talent" was brought over to the UK as "Briatin's Got Talent" - and that title grates every time I hear it.
The point is, we don't have to say "British" to know that that's what we mean. We assume it's here and about us unless we hear otherwise. I guess that's a kind of national self-confidence.
I mentioned stereotypes of Britishness and the fact that often those suggested by the English as British are often actually seen by the non-English British as being stereotypes of Englishness rather that something that they identify with: stiff upper lips, old maids on bicycles, warm beer and football hooliganism, that sort of thing.
But Britishness is a useful portmanteau identity, encompassing people from many different backgrounds, ethnicities, beliefs and more. Identity is a lot more complicated than those diversity questionnaires that you get from your HR department - it's not just a question of ticking a box but of recognising the multiple identities that each individual holds.
British might be the big headline identity, but (rather like those envelopes you addressed as a kid to Kent, England, UK, Europe, the Earth, the Solar System, Milky Way, Space, more space) there are layers: I'm European, British, English, a woman of Kent, Ashfordian and from the specific village and parish that my parents still live in.
But I live in London, feel more at home in Brussels, I'm a Christian and belong to a church community, and to a work community... and if it comes right down to it I express a bit of who I am through the Facebook groups I choose to join (Facebook and YouTube - the only context in which memes actually seem to make sense).
But as identity is that personal, the state trying to define Britishness for us rankles a bit.
Although again that might be because each of us knows what Britishness is to us - and as I've been trying to say, I suspect that's actually a very British trait. You start wondering where was the consultation on what went into the citizenship exam (and the fact that the crib book that was issued in its first draft said that there were 5 founding countries in the EU when there were 6 makes me doubt how thoroughly it was thought out in any case)?
In any case, there are citizenship classes in schools already which, if done properly should be able to teach something of the values that make up Britishness - if we every manage to agree what they are.
I know what I think Britishness is not - and that's what the British National Party stands for.
If I didn't dislike them enough already, this week they've launched this advertising campaign using Jesus, presumably intending to capture the white Christian vote that feels oppressed by the secularism that's increasingly prevalent in society. Don't fall for it - Jesus would engage with the people that opposed him, not throw them out. The Ekklesia article here sets out a rather worrying parallel of language though - if the Cof E was trying to appropriate the language it's a bit of a c*ck-up.
But I guess we need to get all this stuff sorted out somehow. And then wait til we try to define being European...
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