In 2011, with the glass barely swept up after the London riots, the think tank Demos measured Britain’s pride in itself and found it obstinately intact. A net 74% of us were proud to be British. Last week Demos ran the ruler over us again. The figure is 47%. Pride in Britain’s role in the world stands at 13%. The BBC, which fifteen years ago enjoyed a net pride score of 48%, now sits at minus 11, meaning more Britons are ashamed of the Corporation than proud of it. That last number is, I suppose, at least evidence that the public can still see straight.
There is a VERY good reason the US Founding Fathers made provision for dealing with:
“ENEMIES, FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC”
Britain’s pride is like a steering a supertanker – it is slow to turn but carries a terrible momentum. Ever since Blair/Brown our leaders assumed the ship of state was looking after itself and were more concerned with the amount of braid on their dress uniforms. Meanwhile the passengers were becoming more and more concerned that the ship was heading for the rocks – and nobody seemed to care.
The facts of the dramatic explosion in world population, health, longevity, and wealth since around 1700 are mind-boggling to me, and it’s a conundrum that most people don’t consider or acknowledge that this trajectory may have had something to do with the propagation of British ideas and influences.
Good post and good comments.
The decline of British society, in recent years, is horribly obvious – which makes both parts of Jacob Rees-Mogg’s recent speech in Oxford horribly wrong (he claimed that British, and general Western, society-culture is strong – when it has been obviously falling apart for a long time, and he claimed that Islam is not a threat – which means ignoring what Muhammed taught and did, and the history of so many centuries).
But also the education system and most of the media now teach hated of Britain in the past – for example of the British Empire.
My feeling of national identity is based on shared ancestry rather than the adoption of so-called ‘British values’ (many things most of the population wouldn’t have believed in 1989 let alone 1939) or pride in flimsy institutions or constitutions. So I’ve never felt ashamed of being English/British at all.