The British exceptionalism of England’s left
‘She had often seen a cat without a grin, but never a grin without a cat’
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
There is something odd about the politics of the left in England. I won’t call it the English left, because, very largely, it thinks of itself as British (and is sure that to be English would be something rather unpleasant and reactionary).
While its preferred national identity may be ‘British’, the left’s politics do not appear to relate to any actually existing Britain at all. It is increasingly common for activists on England’s ‘British’ left to express sympathy for Scottish independence, or at least for a second independence referendum. Many see Scottish nationalism as a progressive force that deserves a paternalistic pat on the head from south of the border. In the main England’s ‘British’ left is often indifferent to whether Scotland stays or goes. Those who do want Scotland to stay demonstrate little interest in how the union might be reformed to make that more likely, or where England might sit in a future union.
‘British’ left activists in England combine an extraordinarily casual disregard for the actual union their British identity is meant to reflect with a total absence of interest in England’s lack of democratic institutions. Many rejected Keir Starmer’s decision to sit in front of the union flag: a flag that had previously been regarded as a rather integral symbol of British identity. While smiling benignly on the possible break-up of the UK, England’s ‘British’ left remains almost wholly antipathetic to the English nationhood that would be the most obvious and inescapable consequence of Scotland’s departure. (Most voters in England want English Laws made entirely by English MPs, the ‘more British than English’ who make up the strongest part of Labour’s electoral base and most of its activists, show little enthusiasm for any form of national democracy). The same ‘British’ left that happily acknowledges the role of national identity as vehicle for progressive politics in Scotland and Wales rejects any similar possibility in England. But it hasn’t any serious political counter strategy that might see the people of England, Wales, Scotland and, indeed, Northern Ireland might be part of a shared project to build a stronger fairer and more inclusive union.
The reality is that this ‘British’ left does not seem to belong to any real nation at all. Campaigning in England, Labour will call it Britain, even though Britain is England, Wales and Scotland. While Welsh and Scottish Labour address the Scottish and Welshness of their national politics, the Labour Party in England (UK Labour as it is called) refuses to be English at all. If England’s left has any concerns about the future of the union it is the belief that Labour cannot govern England without the support of Scottish MPs. England’s ‘British’ left is saturated in the belief that Labour can never win England again. Its political strategy depends on a union government imposing policies on England that England has not voted for, while being indifferent about the future of the union itself and smiling benignly on the possibility of its break-up.
While there are obvious and important activists to whom this description is unfair, this ‘British’ left in England is a curious thing. Ask its national identity and it will say British. Ask where and what Britain is, it will not be quite sure. Ask how it feels about the British state, it feels no commitment to its existing institutions, but opposes changes that would allow England a voice. Ask it for a flag and it will reject the only British flag there is. It is a Britishness that is hardly patriotic, and which associates neither Britishness nor Englishness with positive values.
In short, England’s ‘British’ left has a national identity, but not one that is rooted in a nation which that identity expresses. Alone of the nations of Europe, England has given birth to a left which has a national identity without a nation.
This ‘British’ left is British exceptionalism writ large. At the time of empire, the definition and boundaries of nations were for others to worry about. Apart for occasional angst about Irish Home Rule, if you lived at the heart of empire you did not need to ask who you were. In the brief post second world war period when England, Britain and the union were fused in a single unitary British state it did not matter. But when the divergent paths of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland became apparent in the 1960s, England’s left clung to the exceptionalism of being ‘British’ as a national identity with no defined nation. That’s why Labour could create devolved administrations without giving England a moment’s thought.
The irony, of course, is that the same left is usually the first to rail against British exceptionalism — the claim that by virtue of its people, history, constitution, monarchy and values Britain is inherently superior to other nations. Exceptionalism did pervade the Leave campaign and ran through Johnson’s bombastic and disastrous response to Covid-19. But in its lack of grounding in any national belonging England’s ‘British’ left is suffused with the same exceptionalism.
Only in England could a left believe that it needs no nation, needs no state, needs not relate to any physical geography, needs no national symbols, needs no national democratic institutions, and needs not relate to any national community. If you want to know what British exceptionalism looks like, look at England’s British left. With apologies to Lewis Carroll, we can imagine a nation with no left politics, but a left politics with no nation is a curious thing indeed.
