Oh dear. A British politician has made a terrible gaffe. Robert Jenrick made the shameful error the other week, proclaiming himself not merely proud of being British (which we can just about tolerate in a vague, post-imperial ironic fashion), but English. This is a clear admission of racism (because what else could it be?), and even worse than that: a grave historical error. Yes, the mocking laughter ran throughout all levels of British society, from the Marxist academics to the failed comedians.

Didn’t he know? Rather like the tooth fairy, Father Christmas, King Arthur and Jesus Christ, England doesn’t exist. We have to tell children something I suppose when the football scores are announced on the nightly news, and the reality is too sophisticated for 8-year-olds or Reform voters to understand. But at a certain point, you’ve got to grow up. 

To quote a great philosopher, “what is truth?”

It was all very embarrassing for the would-be Tory leader. Proud Welshman Matt Barbet sat him down for a brisk tutorial to correct his schoolboy error. “I am going to interrupt you”, he broke into Jenrick’s call for children to be taught to be proud of their Englishness, “what is English identity?” Jenrick looked nervous. “Just as every nation has its own distinct history and culture”, he tried to explain, “so too does ours in England”. We in the audience were suppressing our smiles. It’s an easy mistake to make. One travels to countries like Ireland or India, where they have their own distinctive history and culture, and assume that because they do, so must we! But correlation does not equal causation, dear boy. Read David Hume. We were all young once, and didn’t know better.

How to explain it to the layman? If you imagine that other countries are like harmonious oil paintings, or tasteful watercolours, then England is a sort of collage or bricolage. Looked at from a distance you might imagine it was a distinct whole. But get it under the microscope and you discover that, as David Osland kindly pointed out, “‘English identity’ is based on Middle Eastern religion, the Roman alphabet, Arabic numerals, a Syrian patron saint and a German royal family”.

English identity, you see, has advanced well beyond that of other, not lesser (perish the thought), but shall we say more old-fashioned, cultures. If they’re still producing the civilisational equivalent of Michelangelo’s David, we’ve long since moved on to auto-destructive art. To quote a great philosopher, “what is truth?”

For those who have reached the end of their PPE degrees, we’re well past Hume, and on to Derrida. You may think that England is the oldest continually existing nation in the world, that there has been an Archbishop of Canterbury since 597, and a King of England since 886, and a direct continuity of law, custom and language – but that’s just the artificial dominance of signified over signifier. Stephen Bush was on hand to tease apart the language game that is the phantasmagoria of “English identity” – “Neither as a political entity, nor a religious one, nor a legal was the England he ruled the beginning of the island’s story, anymore than it came to an end in 1066 or 1707.”

You can theoretically locate the origin of Englishness anywhere. Why prioritise King Alfred?  Why not the founding of Oasis, or the first hunter-gatherers to cross the land bridge into our vibe-based islands? Why not the evolution of Homo Sapiens in Africa, or the formation of stars from cosmic dust in the first dawn of creation, as the music of Gustav Holst (a composer from…somewhere) echoed out across the primordial void?

Never mind postmodernism – a healthy dose of modernist literary criticism would do Jenrick and his ilk a world of good. As Stephen points out, “Take it up with Vera Lynn, who sang that England’s flag was ‘red, white and blue’.” And as good believers in the death of the author (or the singer in this case), there’s a very real sense in which Vera sang: 

There’s never been an England
And England shan’t be free
If England means as little to you
As England means to me

Makes you proud to be British, doesn’t it?