England and the EU
After weeks of trench warfare on the EU economy - much heavy shelling on both sides but no defences breached - the referendum argument has shifted on to patriotism. David Cameron evoked key dates in our history, stretching back to the Spanish Armada.
"The truth is this: what happens in our neighbourhood matters to Britain….That was true in 1914, in 1940 and in 1989. Or, you could add 1588, 1704 and 1815... And if things go wrong in Europe, let's not pretend we can be immune from the consequences.”
His argument may have warned of security threats, but his references were to moments of national threat and triumph. Cameron’s predecessor, Gordon Brown, has weighed with an even more explicit appeal to a patriotic idea of who ‘we’ are.
“I think most people would agree that it’s not British or in tune with the Churchillian spirit, to simply disengage when Ukraine is in turmoil, Russia is the aggressor and Europe’s eastern border is in chaos. It’s not British – in the spirit of a country that defeated fascism on the continent of Europe – to retreat to Europe’s sidelines when there is a common fight against illegal immigration and terrorism.”
Of course, both sides are hoping to appeal to different tellings of history. One person’s ‘refusing to disengage’ can be another’s ‘proudly standing alone against all the odds’. Patriotism may be Johnson’s ‘last refuge of the scoundrel’ but it is powerful. The referendum is as likely to be determined by imagined stories of what sort of country we are or want to be, as it is by supposed cash gains or losses.
But, if you are going to evoke a national character, it’s as well to be clear what nation you are talking about. As the UK’s fragmenting politics continues to show, we have complex national identities. Gordon Brown’s home part of Britain has just re-elected the SNP and came close to leaving Britain. David Cameron’s history makes Elizabeth I a British monarch
The Remain campaign has recognised this to a limited extent in some places. Britain Stronger In Europe campaigns north of the border as Scotland Stronger In. The Welsh have Wales Stronger In. England is the only part of mainland Britain where the campaign is officially Britain Stronger in. This odd omission betrays the widespread elite assumption that English and British are the same. And it is all the more odd given the current close correlation between prioritising your English identity and likelihood of voting Leave.
Recent polling by the Future of England study, and evidence from the 2014 British Election Study both presented at recent seminars organised by the Centre for English Identity and Politics confirm this trend. The BES suggests that support for Brexit is correlated with the intensity of feeling English. The more recent FoE survey in 2015 found less than 20% of those who identified as ‘English only’ would support Remain, while around two-thirds of those who are ‘mostly British’ or ‘entirely British’ were pro-EU.
The most common national identity in England remains ‘equally English and British’, where opinion marginally favoured Leave, but either side of this the proportion of those prioritising their English identity has been rising in recent years, whilst those favouring a British identity has been shrinking. In other words, it looks as though the target of the Remain campaign in England should be those who for whom ‘English’ is a significant part of their identity.
Other than a St George’s Day poster with ‘Stronger In’ set against a St George’s Cross the Remain campaign has made little effort to open up an explicit appeal to English voters. The most intense English identities are often found in those communities who feel most let down by traditional politics, ruling elites and international economic forces. Certainly an appeal to British patriotism would seem to have a stronger potential appeal to those voters than an economic case constructed by those same elites, but it surprising that more has not been done to develop an English case for Remain to match those in Scotland and Wales.
The Leave campaign has also largely avoided an English case. This may be because they already poll so strongly amongst those voters and also because, with the somewhat xenophobic reputation of some Leave campaigners, an appeal to English national interest might produce a hostile response from some swing voters.
Professor John Denham
John is Director of the Centre for English Identity and Politics at Winchester University. An alumnus of the University of Southampton, he was Labour MP for Southampton Itchen for 23 years and served in Gordon Brown’s Cabinet.
