It echoes a lament that has recently intensified. The Tories and Labour appear desperate to outdo Reform UK leader Nigel Farage (who owns 20 pairs of Union Jack socks) in the patriotism stakes. Last week, Keir Starmer served Melton Mowbray pork pies at a reception for St George’s Day at Downing Street, having previously been at pains to declare there was nothing patriotic about Reform.
I was born in Britain 31 years ago and have lived here ever since, making friends of mostly British heritage. But the last time I recall any of us “celebrating” being British was when my friend, who was born in Russia, received British citizenship after a fraught and lengthy process (she’s lived here for a decade). We used our first-ever Union Jack emojis in response to the news, turned up to celebrate dressed in red, white and blue, and asked her eagerly what questions she’d had to answer to pass the test.
But in a sense, isn’t this lack of celebration about being British precisely what, for many, it means to be British? We are a nation of self-deprecation. Nul points has become part of the national lexicon, despite the fact that away from Eurovision, we can claim The Beatles, Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd. We talk down where we’re from, as per the bestselling book series Crap Towns, featuring the likes of Milton Keynes and Luton, chosen by popular vote.
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Read MoreI feel kindredness with my fellow Brits most when I am on the Tube and someone starts up a ludicrous, noisy conversation over the phone – or with themselves – and I exchange a furtive smile with another passenger. I feel even more British when the carriage is so at pains to pretend nothing’s happened that not a single eyebrow is raised. I think about how if we were on the subway in New York, someone else would have screamed at the offender to shut up by now. Britain is special.
While some of the right’s fervour around how “Britannia rules the waves” can feel a little like virtue-signalling to me, I don’t buy the suggestion on much of the left that Britain is somehow the most racist nation in the world, either. I’d rather be here than, say, Spain or Italy, where I’ve always felt more eyes on me because of the colour of my skin. For a month last year we had a Hindu Prime Minister, a Muslim mayor of London and First Minister of Scotland, and a black First Minister of Wales. Where else would that happen?
And sure, were it not for the Commonwealth, my mum and dad probably wouldn’t have emigrated to this country 40 years ago from Sri Lanka. I wouldn’t have the freedoms I do now, or have spent my life under a democracy. But in the same breath, the civil war that prompted my parents’ displacement might not have occurred were it not for the British policy of “divide and rule”, often considered to have favoured a Tamil minority and stoked resentment among the Sinhalese majority. Is it un-British to engage with this reality?
I wonder if, in that sense, British patriotism lives on in more ways than we realise – quietly, and slyly self-assured.
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