by Bijan Omrani, CapX
Far from bringing any sense of national cohesion, St George’s Day this year seems to have set politicians and commentators at loggerheads more than ever. It is not just the row that followed the Church moving the saint’s day this year to the following week because of its clash with Easter celebrations. It is also that the day has highlighted how little people agree about how to define Englishness itself.
The Labour establishment likes to proclaim an inclusive idea of Englishness. Speaking at a St George’s Day reception at Downing Street, Keir Starmer hailed the country’s ‘wonder and diversity’ while lambasting ‘those who want to divide this nation’, particularly those who rioted after the Stockport killings.
Likewise, in a St George’s Day message the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, called England ‘a tapestry… of different cultures, faiths, histories and ideas’. For him, the heart of Englishness is – like St George against the dragon – standing up ‘for what we believe in even when it’s not easy’. At the present moment, he continued, the dragons to slay are ‘populism and prejudice’.
Beyond this, both refer to abstract values: decency, honour, fairness, democracy, a love of queueing. They also evoke the enjoyment of various cultural artefacts: football before anything for Starmer, along with Pimm’s, English sparkling wine and Tracey Emin; for Khan, fish and chips, Sunday roast, Wimbledon and Ada Lovelace.
Yet, they offer no story to bind together these disparate notions. Starmer referred to ‘all our nation has been through over generations’, but the idea that he feels any great affection for English history is belied by his recent removal of the portraits of Shakespeare, Elizabeth I, Sir Walter Raleigh and Gladstone from No 10.