[Killer Whale]

Here you go.

https://archive.is/DeIG4

It's bollocks, obviously.

She wonders why there's no unifying trait that can be regarded as 'English' and, rather than going with the obvious answer that England has 55 million people living across a diverse geography so it's entirely natural that Englishness should be a spectrum of things, she concludes that it's because we daren’t admit that it's really whiteness that defines Englishness.

Exactly the kind of weak pish that Telegraph readers will lap up, of course. That's obviously the entire point of the exercise.

[Watchman]

Home counties “whiteness”

[Tubby Isaacs]

Unbelievable. About all we're missing is David Brent standing alongside her saying "See, she doesn't think it's racist"

[Andy McDandy]

English identity is strangely muted. Historically, its language, dress, and the institutions of Empire were its defining features. But these have been exported so successfully that they no longer feel distinctly English. So what remains? Cricket and ale? A stiff upper lip? Polite reserve? It’s hard to say. What we do know is that many are struggling to name what it is that makes someone, or something, English.

"English culture" (as pointed out, specifically the culture of the Home Counties middle and upper classes) was the default. I'm reminded of a children's encyclopaedia my mum had, from the late 40s. A page or two full of people in national costumes - grass skirts and robes and that. Scotsman in his kilt. Welsh woman in stovepipe hat. Englishman in a suit (with a caption saying that this has become the standard dress of most men in the western world).

We have allowed what once made England distinctive to be diluted, denigrated, and demonised. Now, more than ever, we must define what it is we are fighting for – before it slips away entirely.

"We don't know what we're fighting for, but we're fucking well going to fight for it. Because we know what it's not, and we're going to kick some fucking heads in."

And funnily enough, that's what a lot of people think of when you start talking about English identity.

[RedSparrows]

Imagine if there was a whole field of human activity looking at how to articulate and explore these problems, and the rich and exciting world they offer anyone with the curiosity and moral integrity to engage and feel at home in a world of overlapping identities, localities and cosmopolitan abstractions.

But nah, academia is for poofs and traitors. Let's make it about colour and a sense of loss that justifies being cunts.

[Bones McCoy]

Interesting, and oh so Suella that she equates Englishness with fighting.


If you want somebody who has tried to define a positive Englishness without going "full Tommeh".
I'd direct you to the long career of Billy Bragg.

[Andy McDandy]

Terry Pratchett's Tiffany Aching books presented "The Chalk" - by no means sanitised, but a rural landscape that owed a lot to the south of England (the bits people don't often see). Others might offer up Dream Academy, the Black Dyke Mills band, and standard issue northern terraces. Lazy inlets on the East Anglian coast lined with charming villages full of antique shops. Sprawling Manchester housing estates. And so on.

Just as the bayous and draping mosses of the Louisiana bayous are just as "quintessentially American" as the Wild West, or New York's urban grime, or the art deco pastels of Miami Beach. "All of the above" is your starting point. Not drawing up a list of what to exclude.

[RedSparrows]

Terry Pratchett's Tiffany Aching books presented "The Chalk" - by no means sanitised, but a rural landscape that owed a lot to the south of England (the bits people don't often see). Others might offer up Dream Academy, the Black Dyke Mills band, and standard issue northern terraces. Lazy inlets on the East Anglian coast lined with charming villages full of antique shops. Sprawling Manchester housing estates. And so on.

Just as the bayous and draping mosses of the Louisiana bayous are just as "quintessentially American" as the Wild West, or New York's urban grime, or the art deco pastels of Miami Beach. "All of the above" is your starting point. Not drawing up a list of what to exclude.

This is the point. Identity is so clearly - if you're being honest, that is - built of myriad different facets, both concrete and abstract. The relationship between them is the shape of identity: i.e. being a posh Etonian or being a chippy Scouser aren't naturally more English than the other (again, being honest and before you put some arbitrary, self-aggrandising frame on things). The relationship between them, the fact they coexist in the same polity, is the actual defining thing. Repeat that across a billion things and you have England.

It's messy and contradictory and complicated, and... tough shit! If you end up with something ungraspable or displeasing or confusing, the problem is not that fact. The problem is your attitude and expectation as to what the world 'should be'.

There's always a moral subtext to this: 'oh please world, give me a nice neat story so I might feel good about myself'.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Interesting that, barring the little intervention of the Channel, the chalk of the South Downs merges with Les Pays de Caux in Normandy...

As do the traditional ways of life. And to an extent the language.

So much for nations.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Kent and the Pas de Calais both have shit Kipper politicians now you mention it.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Has Kemi been forced to comment on this absurd nonsense? It was bad enough that people were asking if Rishi Sunak was English. Now we've got Suella saying that his great-great grandkids won't qualify. Pretty offensive, surely?