A Free Left Blog

The language of human ‘identity’ often misleads us into thinking about it as something out there which matches something in here – a literal ‘it’ which is identical in both, rather like in a mathematical equation. In this way you would have an English identity for example if you somehow matched up to a list of English identifiers which we can measure you against. There is an ‘it’ of Englishness out there in this sort of account, and whoever has access to it can decree how English you are by comparing their checklist to you and your likes, dislikes, activities etc. My point here is that someone else other than you can carry out this operation of identity without involving you at all. It is an authoritarian relation, attained by someone with authority matching their knowledge of what an identity is against you and coming up with a result on their terms of what these ‘its’ - of identity and you - are. The same goes when we measure up any sort of identity – to English...

St George’s Day is meant to be England’s national day, but if you were not looking out for it you would likely miss it. That shouldn’t reflect badly on you or on anyone else. England’s national day has been long neglected in England for various reasons, not least the priority put on other identities in national – British – life. Liberal universalists – who largely dominate our public sphere - insist that borders are redundant and should ultimately be abolished. They seek to include everyone, but they just divide in other ways. Their forms of division are international, but they are still divisions – not by territory but by identity and ideology; in their way of thinking you may not belong where you live on account of having the wrong thoughts. This point of view needs to be resisted strongly by all of us who believe in the connection between people and the earth they stand on. As a part of this politics, England needs to find itself again.   The first ...

Dear potential UKIP voter, We wanted to let you know that we understand you and your concerns. We have been looking at the polling and it proves that you are all white, male, ageing, ignorant, hypocritical, working class racists and losers. This makes us feel very smug and superior, and we thought we would write you a letter to show how things really work around here so you might get with the programme. Firstly, it seems you have not read the memo which says no one is allowed to speak truth if it is the wrong truth. It has been decided that all immigration is beneficial both socially and economically, so any evidence that some immigrants or communities are causing social problems or abusing the welfare system must be suppressed immediately or detached from any association with immigration. We are also seeking to establish that it is people like you who are the real cause of social problems and who abuse welfare, so it has been necessary for us to make allusions and associa...

Around 45% of people voting in Scotland’s independence referendum voted for a separation of Scotland from the United Kingdom, and therefore a severing of the Scottish from the British. As media interviews with Scots during the campaign seemed to show, this desire for severing and separation came largely from a resentment of, dislike and contempt for ‘the English’, who have been perceived to be doing all sorts of nasty things to the Scots from their remote base in London or specifically Westminster. This is quite an interesting phenomenon on a number of levels, not least for how it shows how similar feelings north and south of the border can be funnelled in different directions by the action of opinion – otherwise known as politics. The Scottish nationalists have shown how effective they are at this, though alas not effective enough to win the referendum. This distaste for ‘Westminster elites’ as spat out by angry Scots is actually largely shared, though not in such org...

Our public debate on immigration in Britain almost always focuses entirely on money and thereby misses the main point, a point that our political-media class finds difficult to deal with and that many regard as almost illegitimate. This is how people feel . It is emblematic of the state of democracy in Britain that any sort of negative opinions about immigration routinely get shouted down and lambasted as ‘wrong’ by the siren voices of people and institutions, most of which are on the supposedly ‘liberal-left’ side of politics. It is particularly disturbing the way that anyone who talks about negative effects of immigration is routinely attacked (often by hordes of lefty people on Twitter) as ‘racist’. These voices have a huge and in my view poisonous impact on the debate, forcing anyone who wants to make some nuanced points about immigration and identity into defending themselves against charges of racism, which is well established as one of the the worst offences one...