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The Left and the England argument
Every year when it’s St George’s Day, familiar tweets are recycled.
“St George’s was a Syrian immigrant.”
“The English identity is inherently imperialistic.”
“Constructing socialism around a national identity is bad.”
I imagine there are other takes that I have forgotten, but it is usually condensed into these three tweets. Still, every year we get the familiar discourse about Englishness, the virtues — or — vices of civic nationalism and whether a leftist can be a patriot. There is also a corner of the left that — very disingenuously and lazily — espouses the line of “progressive patriotism” which it then proceeds to forget for the rest of the year.
And on and on it goes.
You wouldn’t believe that this was also a party where only a 180 out of 533 seats were obtained in England; that this was a party which conceded 47 seats and witnessed its rivals pick up 48 on their way to dominating England with 47.2% of the vote share.
Labour’s efforts to be a broad church of all-encompassing interests is quite clearly, failing. The Conservatives find it far easier to concede ground in Scotland and Wales because the party that governs England is ultimately the party that governs the country. 345 seats is more than enough to command a majority in…
