“Labour needs a positive narrative about it means to be a modern English person: multi-racial, multi-cultural and outward looking.”

So to be English one has to be multi-cultural?

So to be English one has to be multi-cultural?

Of course.

What self-respecting Geordie or Yorkshireman would wish to see their native culture subsumed by that of a bunch of soft southern bastards.

Seriously, you’d expect Miliband to know his Orwell and realise the futility of wittering on about ‘Englishness’.

“All the culture that is most truly native centres round things which even when they are communal are not official – the pub, the football match, the back garden, the fireside and the ‘nice cup of tea’. The liberty of the individual is still believed in, almost as in the nineteenth century. But this has nothing to do with economic liberty, the right to exploit others for profit. It is the liberty to have a home of your own, to do what you like in your spare time, to choose your own amusements instead of having them chosen for you from above.”

The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius

Well I’m glad David wrote this, but i wish his brother hadn’t appointed Phil Woolas to the shadow cabinet – an action that rather outweighs any soft words in my book.

But the real swing voters are identity ambivalents (28%): economically insecure, worried about their local community, feeling threatened but open-minded and accepting of diversity – as long as their security is not threatened. So they feel more wage and job pressure from immigration, are anxious about their family’s financial future, but are, for example, much less likely to think “Muslims create problems in the UK” than cultural integrationists

But that sums up socialist, as I remember my time as a youth in the Labour movement we did not see a problem for people who came here to better them selves, people who wanted to make a living, people who needed help even.

But New labour went over the top with it, we ended up with Brown running around looking for a reason to be, even stealing the words from the BNP, British Jobs for British people.

But now of course we are hearing labour is for the NHS, when sadly new labour and the Tories basically sold the dam thing off to the higest bidder.

But hell I’m Welsh

Orwell’s quote sounds quite ahead of his time when you think about the dire, racist situation today, i.e. FREEDOM to do what you wish in your free time.

How dare people try to dictate what people wear or what religion to observe? Is that what cjcjc wants? And if so, what business is it of his/hers? Why does it bother some people that other people are different to them? Unless they are racist of course!!!

I’m afraid Miliband’s article just reads like gibberish to me:

“We need a demanding pluralism with a common core of shared values. And what’s more, people believe that such local community building is an effective bulwark against discord.”

We need a what pluralism? We need a demanding what? Translate it into English and I’ll figure out whether I agree with it or not.

Mr Miliband has formidable balls lecturing others on nationalism after working so hard to ensure the Chagos Islanders couldn’t retain their self-determination.

It strikes me as desparate when politicians start going on about Britishness or Englishness. I haven’t seen any convincing description of either that couldn’t be applied to other nationalities, so what is it intended to mean? Is it a mutable term that the reader applies to fit their own ideas or do they really think that they stand for something special?

I’ve struggled to find anything better to define what they mean to me than, “The place I was born and still live and quite like.”

Miliband D’s writing is meaningless, but there can be a nasty codified nationalism in this kind of stuff.

I can’t decide whether I’m ambivalent or not.

My response to this is the same as to the gay-only night clubs: identity isn’t fixed, and even if it were we are each at the centre of an enormous number of complimentary or competing discourses not restricted to class, nationality, ethnicity, gender or sexuality.

This is about slotting people into convenient boxes: bureaucratic ‘individualtion’ over individuality. Its the product of narrow minds who recognise only focus grpups and target markets, not the polymorphous polyphony of life as it is actually lived.

@ 8 Cylux

“I’ve struggled to find anything better to define what they mean to me than, “The place I was born and still live and quite like.””

Actually, I’ve usually found that people who put a lot of value on “Britishness” spend more time bitching about the country than most. Y’know, spend half an hour whinging that this place is going to the dogs and you never see a local bobby on his bike anymore and teenagers today have no morals or work ethic… then complain that the problem with this country is that nobody’s proud to be British anymore.

Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel, after all.

*Cylux? I mean Cherub. Sorry Cylux and Cherub!

I could have been flattered.

Labour always used to uphold a form of working class English/British patriotism. No reason why it shouldn’t still.

“Labour needs a positive narrative about it means to be a modern English person: multi-racial, multi-cultural and outward looking.”

We’re supposed to be creating an equal society, not wasting time teaching people to be “English”.

@6 – “We need a demanding pluralism with a common core of shared values. And what’s more, people believe that such local community building is an effective bulwark against discord.”

This is politico-speak for “…” – nothing at all. It is only idiot commentators (of any political persuasion) who believe words like these actually have any import; they are designed precisely to mean nothing. Those of us with a brain tend to mock such pathetic posturing on the part of politicians; those without tend to praise (or decry) such verbal diarrhoea by spouting their own vacuous phrases.

“… modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug.”

“Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.”

George Orwell – Politics and the English Language, 1946.

One reason, of course, is that it is harder to criticise: “it is not at all unreasonable to suggest that those not born in this country should perhaps be required to demonstrate the (relative) success of their naturalisation through some examination of their adjustment to the (imagined) peculiarities of our nationhood” – than, say, “immigrants should learn to speak English or get out”.

@ AdamBienkov.
No need to be afraid: it was gibberish, devoid of content. The language is reminiscent actually of the annoying style of Philip Blond. Yoke together two opposed or conflicting terms and refuse to expand much (because then the gap in thought would be exposed). Very Anglo-centric too, flipping between British and English as if there were synonyms, which they aren’t.

@ 10:

“Actually, I’ve usually found that people who put a lot of value on “Britishness” spend more time bitching about the country than most.”

Not really that surprising, when you consider that someone who cares more about a country would probably expect it to uphold higher standards than otherwise, and consequently get more upset when those standards are not met.

“Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel, after all.”

A quotation which, contrary to what some people think, is not a comment on patriotism, but rather a comment on how politicians try to use patriotism to prevent criticism of themselves.

Do Labour really want to know what it’s like to be a modern English person? I doubt it, but here goes. Being English means having to tell my teenage son who excels at maths and science that he should forget going to university unless he wants to be in debt until middle age. Being English means should I need to go into care in old age, having to sell my home to pay for it. Being English means worrying about getting cancer or alkzeimer for fear of being denied the drugs I need. Being English means seeing my already overcrowded country being deliberately flooded with foreigners thus diluting it’s identity. Being English means being denied the the same rights as the rest of the UK, ie. our own parliament/assembly and therefore having Scottish Labour MPs forcing tuition fees on my child that they won’t countenance for their own. Being English means having to pay hospital parking charges, prescription charges, eye test and dental check-up charges. Blatant and deliberate discrimination against the English and ALL UNDER YOUR WATCH ED MILIBAND so don’t pretend you care one jot about the English. All you care about is losing votes.

Jools B,you have said it all!

Really poor article from David Miliband. And patronising too. It’s just spin.

I thought that this Spiked article brought up some points that spinners like Miliband can never do.

EDL: a wet dream for purposeless lefties
The English Defence League has provided an easy target for politicians and campaigners in search of a cause.

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/10208/

D Miliband’s article actually talks about “British politics”, including in the context of the ‘identity ambivalents’, even though the Searchlight survey interviewed only English residents and the examples of ethnic division Miliband adduces are also taken from England only. The end of his article talks limply about the “as yet unformed and unidentified party of English or British nationalism [that] could begin to fill the space”.

Which is it: English or British? It seems that it’s liberal Britishers such as Miliband who are the ‘identity ambivalents’ when it comes to national identity, not the English working class.

Labour can’t do an English politics until it can actually say ‘English politics’.