Labour’s core purpose is a patriotic one – and we must not be shy about it

No politician was ever chosen to govern a major democratic country without being at ease with its national symbols of pride and patriotism. Yet the politics of identity has become more complex. A much more consciously multi-national United Kingdom that it was 25 years ago presents new challenges about how to engage with the competing patriotisms across Scotland, Wales, England and Northern Ireland. Views about Brexit split the country almost down the middle – and reflected deeper educational and geographic divides that parties can either reinforce or seek to transcend.

The era of so-called culture wars presents particular challenges to Labour and the centre-left. When there is a binary zero-sum political conflict, the particular danger to Labour is that everybody thinks it is on somebody else’s side.

Yet the instinct that patriotism seems like a pointless distraction at times like these may become more popular among progressives, when the economy is in a state, those least well-off are suffering most, and the planet is heating up. What this view risks underestimating the potential of patriotism in fostering the sense of solidarity that can underpin and sustain effective social coalitions to address such priorities.

A duty of care to each other helped to create and sustain consent for welfare states and public services. Addressing climate change will require global cooperation – and a sense of obligation towards each other at a local and national level too.

Patriotism becomes more important as it becomes more challenging to get right. In the liberal, individualistic, diverse and fast-changing societies that Britain and other major western democracies have become, it is more important to put the effort into finding the sense of belonging that can help to bridge our differences, and help bind people together from different places, different backgrounds, different social classes, faith and ethnic groups.

So any Labour or centre-left account of national identity naturally differentiates between civic patriotism and ethno-nationalism. Yet as an advocate of an inclusive patriotism, I think that too strong an emphasis on the importance of a “progressive patriotism” as an inoculating force can miss the mark. Labour needs to find its own voice on the state of the nation, but no single political tradition has the standing or status to define national identity as a whole.

That is the rational case for patriotism. Yet there are dangers of making this too rational and conceding too much of the content that can make an inclusive patriotism resonate. ‘Blood and soil nationalism’ has become a shorthand for the most toxic expansionist, xenophobic and even genocidal nationalist projects in history, from Hitler’s Holocaust to Pol Pot’s killing fields in Cambodia. It is used as an unthinking cliché. Soil is not blood.

An inclusive patriotism should find plenty to say about place, rural and urban, and from coast to coast, about what is special about the land we all share now and the island that is our common home. An appeal to a shared sense of place can be one of the most important ways to mitigate social and political conflicts. It is because we live side by side that, whatever political choices are made, people across Scotland and Northern Ireland, England and Wales, need to find ways that we can live well together.

So I would advocate a shared sense of a civic and cultural patriotism that can make an inclusive emotional appeal to the heart as well as the head. Politicians do not need to try too hard to engage with this. Political speeches on abstract values about national identity, patriotism and British values rarely convince. A sense of taboo-busting frisson can simply reinforce the idea that this is anxious and difficult terrain for the left.  

An effective Labour patriotism may be better pursued through a “show, not tell” approach which normalises patriotism. This would involve demonstrating an everyday ease with our national symbols – from Remembrance Sunday to the Jubilee, national sporting events and major anniversaries, from the 75th birthday of the NHS to the arrival of the Windrush and St George’s Day.

These high days and holidays of the national calendar can be a useful antidote to cultural conflicts. They offer important opportunities to reach across social divides, showing how we can both respect our diversity and share what we have in common. Each has the potential to reach across towns and cities, engage across generations and also ensure the invitation to take part includes everybody who calls Britain home today.

This approach to patriotism should have policy implications too. The high immigration figures demonstrate the challenges and dilemmas of control – and how to manage the pressures of population change fairly so as to secure the potential gains for the NHS and the labour market. But immigration policy is about more than deciding who gets a visa; it should be about what happens next too.

Handling migration fairly for those who come to Britain and the communities they join is partly about handling impacts on public services fairly, but what will increase confidence most is the quality of social relationships with our new neighbours.

The pragmatic case for immigration is that ‘they are good for us’. We should have a bigger ambition than that. A proactive agenda of contact and inclusion, from universal English fluency, expanding welcoming schemes beyond Ukrainians and Hong Kongers and the promotion of citizenship can broaden confidence in sustained migration by showing what it takes for people who join our society, and their children, to become part of the new ‘us’.

A sustained but normal engagement with national symbols and moments can provide a useful foundation for the substantive argument that the party wishes to make about the state of the nation – both the strengths of our society and what needs to change in government and politics to bridge our many divides.

If general elections could be won by a competition to find the biggest flag, we might have seen a Liz Truss landslide, not the shortest premiership in political history. What Labour voices should do is make the argument is that Labour’s core purpose is a patriotic one: a desire to change the country for the better once again.