‘The NHS is, rightly, the biggest reason most of us are proud to be British,’ Jeremy Hunt said in his Budget this week. The Chancellor isn’t wrong: according to polling from last year, the health service is the top reason to be proud to be British among 54 per cent of British citizens; far more than our history (32 per cent), culture (26 per cent) or let alone democracy (25 per cent). But this is not something to be celebrated; instead, it is illustrative of the malaise that today affects British national identity.
It is a sad reflection on how feeble British national identity has become
Traditionally, there are two ways to look at national identity. One of them is ethnic. According to ethnic nationalists, a shared ancestry is what makes a nation’s people who they are. To be British, on that view of the world, your ancestors must have arrived onto the British Isles hundreds of years ago and had looked much as you do today.
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