Is civic nationalism the way forward for England?

What is striking about the general election in England and Scotland is not just the difference in outcome but emotional tone. In Scotland, burgeoning support for the SNP was not simply about particular policies but an expression of what the sociologist Emile Durkheim called ‘collective effervescence’ – powerful emotional identification with a wider community. By contrast, in England support for the Conservatives seemed based largely on judgments about Labour’s economic competence and fears about SNP influence, with no whiff of national euphoria about their victory. The Conservatives, far from offering a positive vision of society with which people felt a strong emotional pull, simply convinced voters that the alternatives to them would be worse.

One question now facing Labour is whether a political party south of the border can capture public imagination in the same way that the SNP has in Scotland. This is not simply an issue of electoral strategy, but a far deeper question about whether we can find ways of talking and feeling about society with which people feel excited and engaged. For people on the left, talk of national identity and patriotism has had connotations of racism and xenophobia, and both the history of the last century and Russia today provide us with more than enough examples of toxic forms of nationalism. But this should not shut off the question as to whether an English civic nationalism based on principles of tolerance, fairness and social responsibility could be a way of thinking about a national community that we can take pride in building up.

Some early post-mortems of Labour’s defeat have focused on the need to reconnect with voters’ sense of aspiration for themselves and their families. This may well be true. But a message of aspiration not connected to a feeling of national responsibility encourages an individualistic culture in which it becomes harder to speak about the problems of inequality. A sense of national community can challenge socially-disconnected forms of capitalism, in which the bottom line is the only concern, in favour of an economics mindful of our wider relationships.

Building a sense of civic nationalism is as much a cultural as political task. As Paul Mason has recently argued, it is pointless to try to construct an artificial ‘English’ identity with which everyone can identify, just as it is divisive to develop arbitrary criteria about who counts as being ‘truly English’, like Norman Tebbit’s cricket test. But this does not rule out the possibility of thinking about England as a national community to which everyone living in it can contribute or to pursue the idea of a country in which we feel proud to live.

Such a civic nationalism is not something that can be created through policy and regulation, but through the stories we tell about what exemplifies our best hopes for what our country could be like. It can mean both singing Jerusalem as well as thinking what it might mean to realise the aspirations set out in William Blake’s words. It involves remembering the good and bad of our heritage to understand what the country could be in the future. It is found in the English role models, past and present, who exemplify the qualities and values we want to celebrate whether Charles Dickens, Emmeline Pankhurst, Laurie Cunningham or Alan Henning.

Civic nationalism can be a moral ethos that transcends the division between public and private sectors, shaping both how we think about the public provision of health, education and social care as well as the value and purpose of wealth creation. It is a moral commitment to thinking both about what should be done to protect the most vulnerable members of our country, whilst reflecting on the opportunities and responsibilities that come with privilege and wealth. If such a moral investment could be made in civic nationalism in England we could find our politics re-energised, as it has been Scotland, through collective discussions about the kind of country we want to build together.