The Spectator’s Notes | 11 October 2018

Although, in David Goodhart’s famous distinction, I see myself as one of the ‘Somewheres’ rather than the ‘Anywheres’, I do not believe in nationalism (as opposed to patriotism). Nationalism always involves falsified history and sees identity as a zero-sum game. Nation states should be respected, not deified, and are usually the better for not being ethnically ‘pure’. But the Anywheres’ attacks on nationalism are interestingly selective. They hate Viktor Orban’s Hungarian version, for instance, but love Leo Varadkar’s Irish one. The avowedly internationalist EU uses Irish nationalism as its biggest moral justification for blocking Brexit.

And thus does Scottish nationalism, being seen as left-wing, escape criticism for its coercive righteousness. The Revd David Robertson, the minister of St Peter’s Free Church in Dundee, produces a well written blog called TheWeeFlea.com. In it, he relates how he was recently bicycling through his parish when he noticed a poster which said, ‘Dear BIGOTS, you can’t spread your religious hate here.