Personal Blogs

Over the past couple of months I've been reading a great deal about the concept of Englishness, it has timed perfectly with the erection of flags around so many of our towns.

There's a couple of quotations that I have come across over the past weekend that have resonated and, perhaps, suggest why the flag flying has taken over.

In his essay The Lion and The Unicorn George Orwell wrote "In the working class patriotism is profound but it is unconscious. The working man's heart does not leap when he sees a Union Jack, but the famous insularity and xenophobia of the English is far stronger in the working class than the bourgeoisie."

Contrast that with the words of sociologist Krishnan Kumar in 2014: "Bereft of empire, no longer a global economic or political power, confronted by seccessionist movements without and by 'alien' cultures within - the English seem to have found it best to turn in on themselves. Never having had an identity as an ethnic group, never having needed one, they are now... in the process of inventing one."

It seems to me that the flag flying epidemic stems from both of these extracts. Englishness has never need a strong identity (and indeed didn't even need one in the Second World War), but the loss of status - particularly felt by those who have been left behind - means all of a sudden we need to discover one, and one which may be deeply affected by the xenophobia Orwell identified 80 years ago.

There are numerous definitions and debates about whether populism is an ideology or a discourse, a form of rhetoric or tool that is used to present a set of ideas. In all of that debate, however, there is one constant, populism is "a way of perceiving the political world that sets a morally pure and fully unified - but... ultimately fictional - people against elites who are deemed corrupt or in some other way morally inferior" (Muller 2016)

Populists and populism always seeks to set 'the people' against 'the elite'.

If you want to see a clear example of populism in action then there is no need to look no further than Nigel Farage's performative act yesterday (and subsequent posting on X) of watching Prime Minister's Questions from the public gallery instead in the chamber of the House of Commons.

Mr Farage seeks to set himself as being attacked, week in, week out, from the despatch box with no right of reply, something that is undoubtedly procedurally true.

The Labour government now class Reform UK as their main political threat and are choosing to attack Mr Farage and his party almost constantly from the front bench, and it is true within the chamber there is no way for Reform's MP to rebut the constant barrage.

So, Mr Farage has decided to take the populist route of saying that he is part of the people who also do not have a voice. In doing so his actions seek to set him against the elite establishment.

It may be a protest that is somewhat peurile, the rules of parliament have been developed over centuries and shouldn't be changed for one MP (especially one who believes that parliament should be sovereign - a constant argument of the Leave campaign), but the actions of Government highlight the point of populists everywhere.

When even a prominent voice of the people can be attacked continually by an elite and not given the right to respond, Mr Farage will argue there is something fundamentally wrong with our system.

Even if the establishment aren't prepared to listen to his argument the people will.

The Government are clearly being played by Mr Farage proving the point that he continues to make. He is both a populist and a very smart political operator.

My son has recently started a degree in politics and international relations at a prestigious university and recently had a seminar about the decline of western economies (and, potentially, democracies) in an increasingly interconnected world.

Driving him back to university after a weekend back home he asked me 'how do we stop the decline?'

It's a question that I have given a great deal of thought to in recent years and one where I think there is an answer. And the answer is fairly simple.

We have to accept the world that we live in and our place in it.

For a period of around one hundred years there is a strong argument that Britain was the world's leading nation. It was a nation boosted by the growth of empire but, more importantly, as the birthplace of the industrial revolution.

That period came to an end in the first half of the twentieth century as other nations competed with us industrially and our imperial dominions, one by one broke away. In terms of population, productivity and natural resources other nations have caught and overtaken us.

At the same time, and Britain isn't alone in this, we have become addicted to higher welfare standards, material possessions and paid holidays. So much so that that the cost of living for all has increased beyond recognition and the cost of paying for those who are not economically productive has become extortionate for those who are.  The situation is so dire that millions of younger people can no longer afford their own homes or their own children.

So the first part of the answer is simple. We must face reality.

Coincidentally, this morning's Times reports on a story about McVitie's Club biscuits. 

If you are of a certain age in the past McVitie's  would advertise their product using the tagline 'If you like a lot of chocolate on your biscuit, join our club.'

The problem is McVitie's can no longer claim their Club biscuits contain chocolate, because they don't.

The price of cocoa has increased so much that the company's formulation for their confectionary contains more palm oil and shea oil than cocoa solids and, as such, the most that they can legally be called in 'chocolate flavoured'.

In the scheme of things it is a minor issue but it is a perfect illustration of where we are in the world.

We used to have chocolate biscuits but external pressures mean that realistically we no longer can. The price of ingredients is more than we would be prepared to pay in order to make their production profitable.

So, instead of being honest and saying 'if you like a lot of palm oil and shea oil on your biscuit, join our club', manufacturers will come up with some meaningless compromise that no one believes, but enough are prepared to suspend their disbelief to allow things to muddle on.

The same is true of Britain.

We know our living standards are unaffordable, we know that other parts of the world are overtaking us.

But instead of admitting that and strategising for a different future (like Jeremy Hunt's "Can we be great again" so excellently does), enough of us listen to politicians that offer us a type of 'chocolately flavour' instead of the reality of changing our diet.

Until we realise that the inevitable conclusion is that we will end up with more and more palm oil that at some point the chocolate will no longer be recognisable we will continue down the same route. At which point it will become impossible to catch those who can actually afford the chocolate.

We can only start to address the wider issue once we acknowledge what it is.

Cas Mudde's book 'The Far Right Today' is an excellent summary of the development of the far right from it's first, post-Second World War phase in the late 1940s, to its current fourth wave phenomenon ranging from the populist radical right to extreme right terror groups.

It asks the questions on a global scale why have far right policies and parties become so prevalent and considers ways to challenge them, with Mudde potentially moving from the realm of academic to activist?

Mudde is particularly interesting on the response to the rise of the far right and how liberal democratic parties have moved from demarcation (effectively ostracising the far right), to confrontation, cooptation (of their policyviews, if not the parties themselves), to incorporation. It is interesting to consider the rise of the populist radical right in Britain and contemplate where we are in that process today? (In many ways it is sad the Mudde's book was written in 2019 and given all that has happened needs a five years later revision.)

Mudde ends his book with twelve theses on the fourth wave of the far right and leaves us with some hope for challenging its current dominance. He notes that, in the not too distant future, with society rapidly changing demographically and in its acceptance of diversity, there is hope to defeat extreme rhetoric.

He ends the books stating: "The ultimate goal of all responses to the far right should be the strengthening of liberal democracy. Put simply, only fighting the far right does not necessarily strengthen liberal democracy, but strengthening liberal democracy will, by definition, weaken the far right."

For those of us interested in defeating far right rhetoric defending a pluralistic society honouring fundamental rights will see the their disturbing and regressive views confined to history.

Yesterday I visited the Cheltenham Literature Festival where I was fortunate enough to sit in on a talk 'Inside Auschwitz', featuring the respected historians Anne Sebba and Laurence Rees.

As the talk was coming to an end, inevitably perhaps, Mr Rees was asked about the rise of the Nazis and parallels with the popularity of the populist right, some may say far right, in Britain today, his response reply was illuminating.

To start out with Rees said that we must never call today's populist right 'Nazis', or compare them with Hitler. The rise of the Nazis was particular to a time and place that was receptive to that phenomenon. We are no longer in that time and place and have the benefit of the lessons of history, it is not unreasonable to assume that if a similar party were to emerge the opposition to it would be far stronger this time around.

In essence, Rees was rightly saying we must not jump to easy and wrong comparisons because they are both easy and wrong but also jeopardise our understanding of their impact in the modern world.

But, if history is about understanding, that does not mean we should not draw parallels. One hundred years later there may well be similar levels of dissatisfaction with the elite, similar concerns about immigrants, similar disaffection about supranational bodies and the actions of neighbouring states, similar worries about being left behind by large demographic groups, similar symbolism and similar targetting of 'the other'. Rees suggested in the talk (and when I was getting my book signed by him at the end) that those parallels are real, and we should be very worried indeed.

Perhaps the most worrying statement however was something Rees said on the stage. We must not take democracy as a given just because have it now. We all know that in federal elections the Nazi party never secured a majority of the popular vote, but what I had never given huge consideration to was that in the 1932 federal election, when you take the communist vote into account, there was a clear majority of Germans voting for the removal of democratic structures.

That is a majority of people in a major western nation explicitly voting for some form of authoritarian government.

History is about learning the lessons of the past and one clear lesson is that our democracy isn't set in stone, it is under threat and if we believe in it we must be prepared to fight (rhetorically at least) for its principles. 

When the global economic crash took place in 2008 I was working in a district council in England as their Revenue Services Manager, in that role I was responsible for all of the money that the council collected in through council tax, business rates, housing rents and other sundry debts.

Our senior board of directors became extremely perturbed when they discovered much of the reserves that our local authority held were invested in Icelandic banks - the ones that had just gone bust. In the short term the council lost millions and millions of pounds and was on the brink of having to declare itself bankrupt.

To cut a long story very short many of us in my tier of management were made redundant but before that we were asked to identify where savings could be made?

After looking at our budget sheets I informed the board that there was one particular way to save a significant amount of money. With appropriate notice we could stop an effectively blanket policy of  giving charitable ratepayers discretionary business rates relief.

Let me explain.

At that time and possibly still now - I have been away from local taxation for a long time - if a charity occupied a rateable 'hereditament' they were entitled to mandatory 80% relief from the normal bill.

At the same time local councils could, if they chose, top up the remaining 20% relief but they would be responsible for meeting the amount that had to be paid into the national rating pool. Effectively, if awarded, local council taxpayers would be paying the charity's 20% discretionary element directly into central government coffers.  

Most councils did not award blanket 20% top ups but in its days of largesse mine did. I suggested, perhaps, councillors may want to revise such a policy saving hundreds of thousands in the interim?

I didn't make the suggestion because I wanted to make life tougher for charities. I suggested that there could be a mechanism to award the top up for those charities that were struggling at the time of the crash (and could be revisited in the future when things got better), but I made the point that even at a time of economic crisis some charities were rolling in cash.

My observation wasn't one made up on the fly but one based on evidence because in order to claim the discretionary element we used to ask charities to submit their audited accounts.

From those accounts it was clear that some charities, most in fact, were only just managing to get by in order to meet their charitable objectives, whilst others sat on reserves of millions of pounds boosted by legacy donations. In my rural local authority area they were nearly all animal charities.

We had dog charities with millions in their accounts, cat rescues with reserves that would last for many years and donkey sanctuaries with enough funds to ensure their charges lived the life of Reilly.

The economics of it were very simple, we are a nation of animal lovers and many people leave their estates to animal charities when they die. It is absolutely their right to do so but my question was whether our local taxpayers should be subsidising these charity's business rates when they were more than able to meet a 20% contribution themselves?

Not having been a councillor at that time and not understanding the potential blowback from residents when the charities started their highly effective lobbying operation, no matter however right or sensible my suggestion was I was quickly told it wasn't an option, "we would have to find savings elsewhere".

We did, through massive service cuts and job losses including my own. 17 years later I'm extremely grateful that was the course events (although I wasn't at the time).

The reason I recount this story is that today's Sunday Times has published an article revealing that we give donkeys £40 million a year, and asking whether it is money well spent? 

It reveals that The Donkey Sanctuary has 700 members of staff, an income of £60 million of which two thirds comes from legacies and operates a 200-seat restaurant at its Devon HQ sanctuary. If you want a plaque to go with your donation then it must be for a minimum of £900, and just under 20 percent of legacy income comes from gifts of more than £250,000.

The Donkey Sanctuary is clearly a charity but it is also a highly effective business too.

And, the Sunday Times reports, it's only the fifth largest animal charity for legacy income in Britain today.

I'm certainly not saying that animal charities should be penalised, they should not. But my question is whether they should be given preferential treatment  too?

2025 is not - so far - a time of global economic crash, but our economy is in a bad way and taxes are increasing.

Is it time to ask in general whether charities should continue to receive the tax benefits they have always enjoyed (and instead award them more judiciously)?

Our heartfelt reaction will be to say 'of course not', we are after all a nation of animal lovers. But without the emotion is it a policy area that the government should be giving serious thought to? 

This week the Canterbury Cathedral has been in the news for allowing a graffiti inspired art installation onto its historic walls and pillars.

The installation has drawn the ire of those you would expect it to draw the ire of. The Times reports that US Vice President Vance has described it as making a “beautiful historical building really ugly”, while Elon Musk has called it “shameful”. Ordinary visitors have likened the installation to "an underground car park in Peckham" and even the cathedral's administrators have accepted  the installation has "divided public opinion".

But isn't that missing the point?

Any church, and especially a great cathedral, is 'a house of God' but to be one it must also be a place of community. It is a place of prayer but it also where throughout the centuries people have gathered. Historically churches were stone built places where people would seek sanctuary, some were even fortified. 

Places of worship were places of commerce too, he may not have liked it but even the Bible recounts Jesus throwing traders out of the temple.

The historical record shows that churches were used as hospitals, as schools and even as a place of politics (how many churches are used for political hustings even now?)

The important part is that churches were lived in, and with a massive reduction in those claiming to be practising Christians there is a danger that will not continue.

Added to that, and it may bait the usual voices off, but graffiti has always had a place in history. You will find graffiti on Hadrian's Wall, the Great Pyramind of Giza and the Colosseum and, if you look closely, in countless places in every town and village in the land. I've no doubt that Canterbury's installation is a reflection of that.

As the world changes we must find appropriate uses for our historic buildings or they will become nothing more than empty shells with little contemporary meaning.

Ed Smith, the new president of the MCC gets it right in this week's New Statesman saying of Lord's "It is a primary question, how a great building faces the world, hot it connects and interacts with the wider community. Get that right and everyone wins: the visitor, the casual passer-by and the institution itself."

In that respect Lord's is no different from Canterbury Cathedral or any other great historic building. It must have a use more than simply becoming an exhibition in and of itself.

If people were really concerned about Canterbury Cathedral, and accepting that it has bills to pay, they should be more concerned about the fact that you have to pay £21 to get in. Would that have been the case when it, and Christianity, was a living, breathing community?

Last month Reform UK adopted a new policy that would see indefinite leave to remain being scrapped for migrants. Perhaps the most controversial aspect of the policy was that the party would seek to change the rules for those already holding ILR status in the UK, demanding that in future a new application for the status be made every five years, with much higher thresholds for earnings and a better standard of English required.

In essence the controversy was not that Reform UK were planning to change the rules (although that is controversial enough), but that they were announcing changing the goalposts for those already here.

The only reason I highlight this now is because I've been reading Owen Bennett's 2015 book "Following Farage", a light hearted look at the rise of Mr Farage's first vehicle, UKIP up to and slightly after the party topping the poll at the 2014 European elections.

That book includes a chapter on the 2014 Rochester and Strood by-election, brought about when Tory MP Mark Reckless crossed the floor and, many would say, honourably called a by-election to reaffirm the support of his electorate.

It's fair to say that Mr Reckless was not as charismatic or respected as his colleague Douglas Carswell who had followed a similar path months earlier and when questioned about the rights of European citizens to remain in the UK following a long hypothecated In / Out referendum suggested that after a period of time they would be expected to return to their home countries. Effectively retrospectively changing the rules.

At that time Mr Farage couldn't have been clearer, rejecting the position of Reckless, saying "whilst I think it is madness to have an open door (policy).. anybody (who) has legally come to this country in good faith has every right to be here."

In reality, what does this suggest?

Whilst everyone has a right to change their mind and change policy it is clear that in this respect Mr Farage's views have changed, what it also suggests is that the Overton window of what was politically acceptable a decade ago has also moved significantly in that time.

In 2014 the thought of changing the rules and repatriating people here legally was unacceptable in the mainstream of politics, in 2025 it isn't.

It's just another way how things have changed. 

I've never met Rupert Lowe and have no desire to. Having been friends with one of the parliamentary staffers involved in the circumstances leading to his departure from Reform UK I know of his reputation and, it's safe to say, I doubt we would see eye to eye on most issues.

Sometimes, although politics should be a battle of ideas, it is incredibly difficult to take the personal out of it.

That said, one of the truest cliches in politics is that 'even a stopped clock is right twice a day', and this morning I have some sympathy with one of the many, lengthy posts Mr Lowe has posted on X.

In writing about his former party's control of Kent County Council Mr Lowe criticises the group's apparent u-turn regarding council tax. After a campaign claiming to be able to find massive efficiencies, the descent of Reform's British version of DOGE and, arguably, the hoodwinking of thousands of county voters it is now being reported that the party plans to increase council tax next year.

Mr Lowe argues that in opposition to this Reform UK should 'cut, cut and then cut some more.'

There is not a single Reform UK controlled county council that can freeze, let alone cut, council tax by efficiency savings alone. The demographic timebomb we are living under means any cuts are being massively outstripped by the increasing demand for elderly people receiving social care (and the SEND crisis).

Where Mr Lowe is right is when he says 'Difficult decisions need to be taken, really difficult. That will mean frustrating some voters. That is exactly what must happen, in all councils. Quite frankly, a big majority of politicians just don't have the courage to do it. They want votes. That is all.'

In this quote Rupert Lowe has the bravery to say one of the unsayable things in politics. Government spending is massively outstripping revenue, and servicing historic debt is now one of its main line items. 

Tax income can only ever reach so far and the portability of wealth is making it far harder to collect from the ultra rich. At some point government must look at what they are spending our hard earned money on.

The difficulty for most politicians is that cutting most of those line items are unpalatable: 

• In work benefits? (We are already seeing multiple calls for the removal of the two child cap)
• Retirement benefits? (Take a look at the u-turn on the winter fuel allowance)
• Disability benefits? (Ditto for PIP)
• How about education? (Spending on totally unnecessary universal breakfast clubs)
• Healthcare? (The NHS has become a quasi religon)
• Defence (with the United States rightly telling NATO members to pay their share increased spending here is unavoidable)

Politics desperately needs a generation of decision makers who can convey that challenge with honesty and clarity.

If we don't so urgently it may become too late to do so.

It may already be too late.

Back on the 15th May Councillor Dan Harrison became Reform UK's first council leader, saying of his council, Leicestershire County Council "We're now looking at the cost, the efficiency, well then have money for front line (services) but we'll also be able to cut council tax."

Mr Harrison was so proud of his statement that his local Reform UK branch shared the story, it's still sat on their social page now.

A constant message of Reform UK's election campaign was that council tax cuts could be secured through eradicating wastefulness and getting rid of environmental initiatives.

Obviously, anyone who understands the decade of financial challenges that councils have been under and huge demographic changes that are still taking place knows that such an assertion is balderdash, but dissatisfaction with the political establishment ran so deep that at the last county council elections voters returned Reform UK in unprecedented numbers.

However, things are starting to unravel quickly.

The Financial Times are now reporting that Reform UK's flagship council, Kent County Council, are planning on increasing council tax next year with one cabinet member claiming "Everyone thought we'd come in and there were going to the these huge costs we could cut away but there just aren't."

No one, who has an understanding of local government finance thinks that though.

Reform UK should have known better, and they are smart enough to have known better. One can only conclude that they did know better but deliberately chose to tell another tale.

No one with an ounce of understanding expects council tax to be frozen in Leicestershire next year either, the pressures and the budgets do not allow it.

But as long as voters are willing to listen to policies without a shred of evidence backing them up, then politicians will continue to offer them.

With Englishness being an early focus of this year's Open University module it's both opportune and interesting to see that its nature has become such a contemporary issue.

Today's Sunday Times sees a further intervention, this time after Professor Linda Woodhead, the FD Maurice Professor in Moral and social Theology at King's College London, saying of the appointment of Archbishop Dame Sarah Mulally:

“I think her challenge is to reconnect the Church of England with English society. This is a Church that can only operate if it is embedded in culture and society, and it’s drifted away from that, and she’s got to try to reconnect it. We are in cultural wars and the Church of England’s whole point is, after civil war, to hold things together.

“There’s a real opportunity because who else is talking about English values? We don’t just want to hear it from Robinson and Farage, The Church of England needs to be the church of England and not be embarrassed about it. [Mullally’s predecessor] Justin Welby wanted to make it a global church, and he was embarrassed about it being a national church, but it is a national church.

“Members of the Church of England are proud of being English, they voted Brexit more than the average. They’ve got a sense of cultural identity and she’s got to re-engage with that, and make it not a racist, divisive thing, but ‘we’re a big tent, tolerant, multicultural country’. Politicians speak for Britain, but the Church of England can speak for England.”

It is very clear that Englishness is a hugely contested issue. There is a vast swathe of opinion between academics, politicians and clergy and the St George's flag raising man on the street.

The question must be how they can ever be reconciled?

I'm a former member of the National Conservative Convention and a Tory Association Chairman, I'm a Conservative but I'm also very much a political moderate.

With that in mind I'm really disappointed to hear that Kemi Badenoch has announced today that, if they win the next election, the party will take Britain out of the European Convention on Human Rights.

I'm disappointed, but it's really not worth getting angry about, it's very much like a bald man being upset that he has forgotten his comb.

Until the Conservatives return to being a one nation party that believe in fundamental human rights they will continue to be a pale (and less successful) imitation of Reform UK.