Panorama this evening was about Britishness. The programme wanted to know whether Britishness was about race or about culture, and whether the notion of Britishness had any meaning in our multi-cultural (or is it now post-multi-cultural?) society. The message appeared to be that no-one - except perhaps the BNP - really knows what even they themselves think "Britishness" means, that the idea was born in conflict and Empire, and that the concept is probably now redundant.
In my view, the programme had half a point. Its half a point was that Britishness cannot coherently be understood in the kind of terms Gordon Brown seeks, other than racially. But just because Gordon Brown is confused, we should not therefore conclude that there is nothing to being British other than race or platitudes.
In my view Britain in its non-geographical sense is not to be understood racially or culturally. The British have always been a mongrel race, and though I understand it gives us bad teeth, that aside our racial mix has not been any particular problem since early Norman times. There is no British culture. Instead, we have many rich and diverse local cultures, often with precious little in common with one another and frequently at loggerheads.
At one time, people used to search for a common British culture. That may have had some vague meaning when we were talking of those elements that Britain brought to her empire. But even that will be better interpreted in terms of the concept we shall offer in a moment. More generally, the search for a British culture or identity has been connected to the flawed doctrines of self-determination and nationalism. If one believes in a one-nation-one-state political system, then if one believes in Britain being one state one had better believe that Britain is one nation. But of course Britain is not one nation. And if one believes in the doctrines of self-determination and nationalism, one will have all sorts of concerns that Britain for a long time lacked. For example, a nationalist or believer in self-determination had better worry about the wrong sort of immigration and how it is located. Because if you believe that any self-declaring people can have its own state, then you will worry if, say, lots of Poles come in and live in the same area - what if they were suddenly to declare themselves a state? Would Britain lose the territory? Similarly, if you are a believer in self-determination, you had probably better believe in assimilation or synthesis of immigrants - multiculturalism is going to lead to a loss of national identity, the loss of the "demos", and the basis of electoral legitimacy and territorial integrity will be gone.
I, on the other hand, don't at all believe in nationalism or self-determination. So I am relaxed about where Poles live, and (subject to certain qualifications I'll go into another day) whether they shop at Polish shops or more traditionally "British" ones; whether they go to Catholic churches; and so on.
So, then, do I need an account of "Britishness" at all? Perhaps I don't need one, but I have one nonetheless. In my view, Britain is not about race or culture. Instead, Britain is a political entity. It is a particular constitutional arrangement. To be "British" is to have a constitutional arrangement in the spirit of ours, for example because we introduced it in our empire. So, to be British is to respect and enact freedom of speech, constitutional monarchy, private property, the rule of law, ordered liberty, due process for the accused, the presumption of innocence, the strict burden of proof falling on the state as accuser or taxer, parliamentary democracy including crucially unelected elements as checks and balances, toleration of non-conformists, a state Christian church that has influence but few special favours, a constitution that evolves organically and in which tradition and precedent are vital, and many related constitutional norms and conventions. The British Constitution was the creation of the Whigs, and the Whig Party's daughter, the Conservative Party, is its defender. No Conservative Party, no Whiggish Constitution. No Whiggish Constitution, no Britain. The British constitution relies on us for its continued organic development, and on us to mend it when our rivals damage it in their (mercifully) brief and occasional forays into office.
Of course, Socialists would love to redefine Britain as being something to do with values that Socialists prize - so Britain, we are told, is about "fairness" or "equality" or "democracy" or "being multi-racial". And Nationalists and believers in the self-determination doctrine would love to define it in terms of a single culture or race. But as Conservatives, we should not be taken in and we should not surrender easily a concept that is our own. Our mother party, the Whigs, created our British constitution, and it is for us Conservatives to conserve it. That is why we came into existence as a party. That is what we are for. If we don't do it, no-one else will, and Britain and the Conservative Party will fall together.
