Thatcher’s funeral showed us how far we are from One Nation

If Ed Miliband ever thought building “One Nation” politics was going to be easy – which I’m sure he didn’t – yesterday’s pageantry in Central London, and the profoundly divided responses it received, will have convinced him otherwise.

For one Britain, yesterday was an incredibly mournful moment, in which not only their hero – but also their way of doing things – felt like it was being buried. As the professionally hyperbolic Melanie Phillips tweeted during yesterday’s ceremony:

“Watching the funeral, finding it hard not to feel we are today somehow burying England.”

Melanie may feel that England – her England – was being buried yesterday, but mine, an England borne out of (but in opposition to) Thatcher and all she stood for, is still alive and kicking. A few hundred protesters lined the streets of London yesterday, silently turning their backs on the coffin as it passed, but thousands – millions – more registered their discontent in other, similarly silent ways far from the maddening crowds.

The England that thronged the streets around St Paul’s yesterday – the England of Melanie Phillips perhaps – cheered when Norman Tebbit appeared. Not a representative England (Tebbit would have been unlikely to receive such cheers even in his 1980s pomp), but an England – and a part of Britain – all the same.

And then of course there’s the other England, and the other Britain. It neither mourned nor reviled Thatcher yesterday. It was either to young, to busy, too politically disengaged or just working too hard trying to pay their rent and mortgage or spend time with their family to exert much time giving much thought to a much discussed politician who last won an election 25 years ago. They doubtless feel the impact of the deceased as much as anyone else, but this is not their fight.

A truly “One Nation” agenda would unite all – or most – of these disparate groups with their disaparate notions of England and Britain and Society, behind a common cause or sense of purpose. Yet such unity is a near impossible task. One Nation can’t encompass everyone – the question is, should it try?

Today I’ll be at the One Nation Labour Conference (for those who can’t be there, I’ll be doing the customary liveblog) but what I’ll be looking out for is an answer to this conundrum – how do you bring together and heal a deeply divided society whilst staying true to your (Labour) values? Britain may be able to unite as one around the Olympics and times of great societal joy or despair, but we have seldom been able (outside of wartime) to come together around politics. As yesterday showed, one Britain’s epoch defining hero is another’s generation defining villain. And for another (larger?) group, yesterday’s events were a remarkable irrelevance.

It may well be possible to bring a nation together. And as Thatcher showed, it’s also possible to lead from the front as a “conviction politician”. The question is – can you do both? No-one – outside of the Churchillian leadership of wartime – has achieved it before. In the end the choice invariably comes down to one or the other.

One day, maybe soon or maybe years hence, Ed Miliband will have to choose.