Civic nationalist here. Although I agree with some of what you said, trying to build a patriotic identity solely on the deracinated values you suggest won't work.
That inclusive national identity needs to be built from specifics: creating a shared sense of national history and heroes, heritage, festivals, landscape and sports teams (not all will appeal to all). Anyone of any ethnicity can celebrate Agincourt or Trafalgar, Shakespeare or the Beatles, thrill at the Tower of London or Bonfire Night, or cheer on the England football team yes, but we can't remove all these things and replace them with 'values'. Sometimes this shared heritage can be broadened - Commonwealth soldiers in the world wars, 'downstairs' in the stately homes, but they must be taught and promoted to convey love, belonging and pride, not self-loathing and shame - and not just a set of values that could be from anywhere in the world.
Another civic nationalist here. I agree that "shared values" can feel a bit empty, especially as I want them to ultimately be universal values not just British. Also I love history but understand why those who are newer to the country feel less connection to it. What helped me is similar to your points about landscape and football teams — there's a rich national experience available to everyone living here right now that we can connect over.
And ultimately most of that history and heritage is rooted in that landscape. All of us are pretty remote from Edward I or the Tudor period - but whatever ethnicity we can visit the great Welsh castles, Hampton Court and Stratford Upon Avon and see the history right there. Choosing to opt in to that identity is a big part of integration.
I think it's also unclear that you can extrapolate from successful integration in the past - when immigrants were a small percentage of the population - to cases where immigrants and second / third generation immigrants are 30% or more of the population.
I agree there must be a limit but I don't think we're near it. Looking at inter-marriage rates, how few "ethnic enclaves" there are, employment and English language rates , integration is quite healthy. (Though I think a lot of voters wouldn't agree with that.)
Personally I think it'd make sense to have an immigration budget, and try and work out some integration indicators (to consider alongside other factors like the economy) to try and guide a level that is set each year.
This is all well and good. But really quite a large number of the UK electorate don’t accept that the cultural change that historically high immigration brings is acceptable, and they vote against it.
I will do you the courtesy of taking what you write at face value, and believe that you truly do not understand why people who are not racist might have concerns about a rapidly-changing demography.
I am a civic nationalist. I believe that anyone can be an Englishman if he will behave like one; I don't care in the slightest about racial or ethnic heritage. I'll do the obligatory point here of trying to prove my bona fides by saying that while no-one would doubt that I am an Englishman, many of my ancestors had not that luxury.
I care very much about there being a high baseline of acceptance of key values I hold dear, such as respect for the law, fairness, honesty, personal liberty and equality, and tolerance of those with different beliefs and backgrounds - in short, classic Liberalism. My experience is that these are not universally-held beliefs; by global standards they are deeply unusual and are largely limited to the Anglosphere (and, to a lesser degree, Europe).
My concern is that extremely high volumes of migration from areas where these ideals are uncommon - we have imported ~5m people in the last 5 years, and have had consistently high migration for about a decade before that - will significantly reduce the baseline acceptance of Liberal ideals, to the extent that one will no longer be able to trust the legal system, the police, or the government. There are a number of cases where we can already see this to have happened, both recently (the West Yorkshire/Maccabi incident) and over a longer period (the cover-up of SE-Asian grooming gangs across the country; the systematic fraud around access to social housing in London; sectarian voting at both local and national levels). This is particularly relevant when much of that migration comes from the Commonwealth and thus has automatic voting rights; it is even more relevant in relation to countries such as India where the government has adopted the use of its diaspora to effect political change as an explicit policy goal.
I am also concerned that such a high level of migration, particularly when clustered in specific areas, reduces the likelihood and speed of integration and adoption of our shared values and norms. The examples you have given of integration - turning a family from Irish to British (or maybe even English) - are valid and are shared by my own family. But they took place at a time when net migration was likely negative, or, if positive, extremely low. I was born in the early 90s; more people crossed the channel in small boats last year than the entire net population increase in my birth year. Under the conditions of our grandparents or those before them, integration is highly likely and hard to avoid.
But the conditions now are not those of our grandparents. As part of my work I regularly perform surveys of schools across the country. I recently visited a large, nominally non-religious girls' secondary school in east London where all but three of the girls were wearing headscarves. According to the 2021 census, over half the population in the area around the school was born outside the UK; about a third is Muslim. In those circumstances, _there is nothing for the child in that school to integrate into_. They will remain in headscarves and will likely progress to face coverings like their mothers unless they move away. When everyone you meet behaves as you do, why would your behaviour change? If you have arrived from a country where Liberal values are rare, and you never need to interact with anyone who hasn't done the same, why would you spontaneously adopt Liberal values? If your children live in the same bubble as you do, why would they? It's not that integration _cannot_ happen under these circumstances, it's that it's significantly harder and slower. If the trend continues (which is I assume what Goodwin is arguing), it will eventually become impossible and the values I want to preserve will be lost.
I'll end by saying that I haven't read the article you are referring to and don't know anything about Goodwin - if he's anything like the rest of the Reform recruits then Gorton & Denton will be better off without him - I'm responding in isolation to your article above, and trying to sincerely answer the question you've posed.
I totally agree here. Thank you for putting it so well.
Another problem with values-based citizenship/nationalism is that they can become very non specific to Britain. Plenty of people in both the elite classes, cosmopolitan middle classes and even the working poor are mostly on board with free speech, women's rights and democracy. And have affection for all the quirky pieces of British history that they have to learn in the citizenship exam.
Yet there is something missing, and a disruption in cultural continuity, from the sheer volume of new arrivals. Which maybe tells us there is a third factor that makes someone British.
That is not race, by the way. I do not believe in mystical blood ties to the land.
But there is some profound location of self in Britain that we are not currently asking for, which we really need people to find again.
My feeling is that multiculturalism is driven foremost by the logic of civic nationalism which operates as a very shallow form of national identity with citizenship being the primary cultural conduit of civic nationalism.
This allows a contested field of secondary cultural mores to prosper with the result that secondary cultural identities become more important than the overarching national citizenship which in the main is simply a passport to access State goods and services. Thus civic nationalism is foremost mediated through the State rather than Society.
The alternative is ethnic nationalism which to date is largely determined through a narrow racialised lens which in turn largely excludes immigrants hence the emergence of Diversity, Equality and Inclusion as a progressive antidote and one which seeks to displace ethnic nationalism with civic nationalism. This however results in the secondary cultural identity cycling stated above which in turn feedbacks into the cycling of ethnic nationalism.
Clearly this incessant cycling between ethnic and civic nationalism does not create a stable sense of a coherent national identity with this cycling between ethnic and civic nationalism being the fundamental basis of the modern culture wars.
So perhaps a solution is to dispense with civic nationalism altogether and instead promote a multiracial ethnic nationalism which seeks to displace secondary cultural mores that are often based on an explicit or implicit dual national citizenship. This means dispensing with ideas of British Pakistani or British Asian for example or any other dual nationality speak with informal cultural strictures that seek to force old and new generations of immigrants to choose between their national identities with those choosing a foreign national identity being stripped of their British citizenship.
Obviously many immigrants may formally renounce their foreign national identity whilst informally maintaining it, primarily in order to sustain access to State goods and services. But this arrangement puts into sharper focus what it means to be ethnically British. Obviously supporting Pakistan in a cricket match isn't being ethnically British. Nor is sexually segregated public or social spaces as this is an extension of misogyny. Thus the intention of a multiracial British ethnicity is to enforce a clearer and deeper sense of British cultural mores by Society as a whole rather than a shallow national civic identity that is largely mediated by the State.
Without commenting on Goodwin's numbers, I find civic nationalism unconvincing. I don't think what binds me to other culturally English people – to use a necessarily vague term – is that we both believe in democracy, liberalism with a small L or any other of the values I'd expect to be associated with English or British civic nationalism, not least because some Englishmen don't believe in those values, or at least do so in a different way to me. Added to that, there's many people who roughly share my politics who are nonetheless from a different culture, even if that culture is likely to be European.
To give a charitable gloss to the views of people like Goodwin, which in mild terms reflect my own, the fear is that sustained mass migration will displace or marginalise the once dominant English or British culture from the UK. Given the effect of mass migration on certain places in the country, I don't think this fear is entirely misplaced. Population forecasting is notoriously unreliable, and mass migration always involves some assimilation, so I'm sceptical of the more hysterical warnings, but I'm not entirely relaxed about it.
Obviously to the cosmopolitan-minded these views can be bemusing and may be seen as motivated by bigotry. But I'd argue that open borders advocates think humans are more cultural malleable than we are, perhaps based on a somewhat parochial extrapolation of WEIRD people that they tend to socialise with.
This is a disappointingly weak piece that offers no real solutions, and doesn't convincingly dismantle the position it attacks. Liberal nation building needs a more muscular argument than this
Civic nationalist here. Although I agree with some of what you said, trying to build a patriotic identity solely on the deracinated values you suggest won't work.
That inclusive national identity needs to be built from specifics: creating a shared sense of national history and heroes, heritage, festivals, landscape and sports teams (not all will appeal to all). Anyone of any ethnicity can celebrate Agincourt or Trafalgar, Shakespeare or the Beatles, thrill at the Tower of London or Bonfire Night, or cheer on the England football team yes, but we can't remove all these things and replace them with 'values'. Sometimes this shared heritage can be broadened - Commonwealth soldiers in the world wars, 'downstairs' in the stately homes, but they must be taught and promoted to convey love, belonging and pride, not self-loathing and shame - and not just a set of values that could be from anywhere in the world.
Another civic nationalist here. I agree that "shared values" can feel a bit empty, especially as I want them to ultimately be universal values not just British. Also I love history but understand why those who are newer to the country feel less connection to it. What helped me is similar to your points about landscape and football teams — there's a rich national experience available to everyone living here right now that we can connect over.
And ultimately most of that history and heritage is rooted in that landscape. All of us are pretty remote from Edward I or the Tudor period - but whatever ethnicity we can visit the great Welsh castles, Hampton Court and Stratford Upon Avon and see the history right there. Choosing to opt in to that identity is a big part of integration.
I think it's also unclear that you can extrapolate from successful integration in the past - when immigrants were a small percentage of the population - to cases where immigrants and second / third generation immigrants are 30% or more of the population.
I agree there must be a limit but I don't think we're near it. Looking at inter-marriage rates, how few "ethnic enclaves" there are, employment and English language rates , integration is quite healthy. (Though I think a lot of voters wouldn't agree with that.)
Personally I think it'd make sense to have an immigration budget, and try and work out some integration indicators (to consider alongside other factors like the economy) to try and guide a level that is set each year.
This is all well and good. But really quite a large number of the UK electorate don’t accept that the cultural change that historically high immigration brings is acceptable, and they vote against it.
I will do you the courtesy of taking what you write at face value, and believe that you truly do not understand why people who are not racist might have concerns about a rapidly-changing demography.
I am a civic nationalist. I believe that anyone can be an Englishman if he will behave like one; I don't care in the slightest about racial or ethnic heritage. I'll do the obligatory point here of trying to prove my bona fides by saying that while no-one would doubt that I am an Englishman, many of my ancestors had not that luxury.
I care very much about there being a high baseline of acceptance of key values I hold dear, such as respect for the law, fairness, honesty, personal liberty and equality, and tolerance of those with different beliefs and backgrounds - in short, classic Liberalism. My experience is that these are not universally-held beliefs; by global standards they are deeply unusual and are largely limited to the Anglosphere (and, to a lesser degree, Europe).
My concern is that extremely high volumes of migration from areas where these ideals are uncommon - we have imported ~5m people in the last 5 years, and have had consistently high migration for about a decade before that - will significantly reduce the baseline acceptance of Liberal ideals, to the extent that one will no longer be able to trust the legal system, the police, or the government. There are a number of cases where we can already see this to have happened, both recently (the West Yorkshire/Maccabi incident) and over a longer period (the cover-up of SE-Asian grooming gangs across the country; the systematic fraud around access to social housing in London; sectarian voting at both local and national levels). This is particularly relevant when much of that migration comes from the Commonwealth and thus has automatic voting rights; it is even more relevant in relation to countries such as India where the government has adopted the use of its diaspora to effect political change as an explicit policy goal.
I am also concerned that such a high level of migration, particularly when clustered in specific areas, reduces the likelihood and speed of integration and adoption of our shared values and norms. The examples you have given of integration - turning a family from Irish to British (or maybe even English) - are valid and are shared by my own family. But they took place at a time when net migration was likely negative, or, if positive, extremely low. I was born in the early 90s; more people crossed the channel in small boats last year than the entire net population increase in my birth year. Under the conditions of our grandparents or those before them, integration is highly likely and hard to avoid.
But the conditions now are not those of our grandparents. As part of my work I regularly perform surveys of schools across the country. I recently visited a large, nominally non-religious girls' secondary school in east London where all but three of the girls were wearing headscarves. According to the 2021 census, over half the population in the area around the school was born outside the UK; about a third is Muslim. In those circumstances, _there is nothing for the child in that school to integrate into_. They will remain in headscarves and will likely progress to face coverings like their mothers unless they move away. When everyone you meet behaves as you do, why would your behaviour change? If you have arrived from a country where Liberal values are rare, and you never need to interact with anyone who hasn't done the same, why would you spontaneously adopt Liberal values? If your children live in the same bubble as you do, why would they? It's not that integration _cannot_ happen under these circumstances, it's that it's significantly harder and slower. If the trend continues (which is I assume what Goodwin is arguing), it will eventually become impossible and the values I want to preserve will be lost.
I'll end by saying that I haven't read the article you are referring to and don't know anything about Goodwin - if he's anything like the rest of the Reform recruits then Gorton & Denton will be better off without him - I'm responding in isolation to your article above, and trying to sincerely answer the question you've posed.
I totally agree here. Thank you for putting it so well.
Another problem with values-based citizenship/nationalism is that they can become very non specific to Britain. Plenty of people in both the elite classes, cosmopolitan middle classes and even the working poor are mostly on board with free speech, women's rights and democracy. And have affection for all the quirky pieces of British history that they have to learn in the citizenship exam.
Yet there is something missing, and a disruption in cultural continuity, from the sheer volume of new arrivals. Which maybe tells us there is a third factor that makes someone British.
That is not race, by the way. I do not believe in mystical blood ties to the land.
But there is some profound location of self in Britain that we are not currently asking for, which we really need people to find again.
Only half an answer to my own question.
Goodwin hasn’t the guts to say wogs out.
As someone who lives in the constituency, I really hope Goodwin gets the (electoral) shoeing he deserves.
SG
My feeling is that multiculturalism is driven foremost by the logic of civic nationalism which operates as a very shallow form of national identity with citizenship being the primary cultural conduit of civic nationalism.
This allows a contested field of secondary cultural mores to prosper with the result that secondary cultural identities become more important than the overarching national citizenship which in the main is simply a passport to access State goods and services. Thus civic nationalism is foremost mediated through the State rather than Society.
The alternative is ethnic nationalism which to date is largely determined through a narrow racialised lens which in turn largely excludes immigrants hence the emergence of Diversity, Equality and Inclusion as a progressive antidote and one which seeks to displace ethnic nationalism with civic nationalism. This however results in the secondary cultural identity cycling stated above which in turn feedbacks into the cycling of ethnic nationalism.
Clearly this incessant cycling between ethnic and civic nationalism does not create a stable sense of a coherent national identity with this cycling between ethnic and civic nationalism being the fundamental basis of the modern culture wars.
So perhaps a solution is to dispense with civic nationalism altogether and instead promote a multiracial ethnic nationalism which seeks to displace secondary cultural mores that are often based on an explicit or implicit dual national citizenship. This means dispensing with ideas of British Pakistani or British Asian for example or any other dual nationality speak with informal cultural strictures that seek to force old and new generations of immigrants to choose between their national identities with those choosing a foreign national identity being stripped of their British citizenship.
Obviously many immigrants may formally renounce their foreign national identity whilst informally maintaining it, primarily in order to sustain access to State goods and services. But this arrangement puts into sharper focus what it means to be ethnically British. Obviously supporting Pakistan in a cricket match isn't being ethnically British. Nor is sexually segregated public or social spaces as this is an extension of misogyny. Thus the intention of a multiracial British ethnicity is to enforce a clearer and deeper sense of British cultural mores by Society as a whole rather than a shallow national civic identity that is largely mediated by the State.
Without commenting on Goodwin's numbers, I find civic nationalism unconvincing. I don't think what binds me to other culturally English people – to use a necessarily vague term – is that we both believe in democracy, liberalism with a small L or any other of the values I'd expect to be associated with English or British civic nationalism, not least because some Englishmen don't believe in those values, or at least do so in a different way to me. Added to that, there's many people who roughly share my politics who are nonetheless from a different culture, even if that culture is likely to be European.
To give a charitable gloss to the views of people like Goodwin, which in mild terms reflect my own, the fear is that sustained mass migration will displace or marginalise the once dominant English or British culture from the UK. Given the effect of mass migration on certain places in the country, I don't think this fear is entirely misplaced. Population forecasting is notoriously unreliable, and mass migration always involves some assimilation, so I'm sceptical of the more hysterical warnings, but I'm not entirely relaxed about it.
Obviously to the cosmopolitan-minded these views can be bemusing and may be seen as motivated by bigotry. But I'd argue that open borders advocates think humans are more cultural malleable than we are, perhaps based on a somewhat parochial extrapolation of WEIRD people that they tend to socialise with.
Do you like oily balls?
Reference 3: is that a biscuit or cake?
This is a disappointingly weak piece that offers no real solutions, and doesn't convincingly dismantle the position it attacks. Liberal nation building needs a more muscular argument than this
Then why don't you write it? What a pointlessly negative comment
Matthew Yglesias fan. Figures.