Keir gets in a Saint George’s Day mix-up
Mark Perryman worries Keir Starmer doesn’t know his England from his Britain.
Keir Starmer has taken it upon himself to celebrate Saint George’s Day by urging all Labour General Election candidates ‘with enthusiasm.’
Perhaps if Keir feels the need to ‘urge’ the enthusiasm of celebrating he’s missing the point of celebrating Saint George.
I don’t need any such instruction thank you very much. Every England home game I’m with a bunch of friends at Wembley on the morning of matchday laying out thousands of cards to form a huge fans’ Saint George Cross flag. And every Euro or World Cup summer I’ll be bedecked in a Saint George Cross somewhere about by person. And no, I don’t need reminding 23rd April is Saint George’s Day either.
Keir has backed up all this instructing by writing ahead of Saint George’s Day for the Sunday Telegraph on his theme ‘ I have no time for those who flinch at our flag.’
Well it might help if Keir could get the flag right. Throughout the piece he lists off a nation’s achievements to celebrate: the home front sacrifice of 1939-45, working-class students able to go to university, creating the NHS. Magnificent achievements to be proud of as a nation, Britain, not England alone. It is the classic yet crucial slippage, England used to represent not itself but three other nations, Scotland, Wales and the North of Ireland too.
A pedant … me?
Well first off get yourself to Scotland and ask any passing Scot what they feel about England being used to represent them. Good luck with that.
And on the way back south of the border ask yourself how it feels to be in an England that is denied all manner of identifications that Scotland enjoys.
Keir’s Labour party membership cards in Scotland carry the Saltire, in Wales the Welsh flag. Labour membership cards in England? The Union Jack. No wonder Keir is confused.
In Scotland and Wales Labour has its own Scottish and Welsh Labour parties, their own conference, their own leadership. In England, no such English Labour Party. And no sign in his article Keir is in favour on one.
Unlike Scotland and Wales England doesn’t have a National Anthem to call our own, instead God Save the King, anthem of the United Kingdom. I know Keir is in favour of ‘fiscal discipline’ but here’s a change that doesn’t cost a penny.
Jeremy Corbyn added some substance to his very similar calls for what some Labour types label ‘progressive patriotism.’ Saint Andrew’s, David’s, Saint George’s and Saint Patrick’s days public holidays for the Scots, Welsh, English and Northern Irish. With a General Election in the offing what a trick to be missed, who’s ever going to vote against an extra day off work?!
And since 1999 Scotland and Wales have a parliament, an assembly to call their own. Nothing of the sort for England, we should have, and anywhere but London too.
Most people are deeply cynical of politicians. A performative politics of this sort, adopting a position for the instant-gratification of changing the image of a party, or leader, but with no practical outcomes to effect change. There’s a good reason for such cynicism. A politics riddled with contradictions, that actually reprioces the problem at hand but with sufficient spin to fleetingly impress regardless. What good is that?
Keir by the time of the next Saint George’s Day not much doubt you’ll be Prime Minster. No longer simply writing articles but in office, to make change. So when you fly Saint George on the 23rd April outside Number Ten just don’t forget there’s a nation it belongs to.
Mark Perryman’s book Breaking up Britain: Four Nations after a Union is available from here
Bella Caledonia St George’s Day Special Offer 20% off all Philosophy Football Saint Georges Day T-shirts quote coupon code StGeorgeBC here
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Ah, but Rishi tellt us, “Britain is just another word for England”, so his sir-ness must have learnit frae him.
Couldn’t agree more with this – but one minor point of order…..there is no such thing as “The Scottish Labour Party”, any more than there is the same for the Tories or Lib Dems. A quick check with the Electoral Commission will tell you that. They are, as often referred to in Scotland, “branch offices”. They are functionally, and legally, part of the UK Labour/Tory/LibDem parties they represent…..which just makes the likes of Starmer even more secure in his blinkered, Murdoch-loving, right-wing (dressed up as centre-left) spoutings.
Flinch at the flag? I would go a lot further: f**k the flags, f**k all the flags. Jesus, what level of evolution of humanity still thinks waiving flags should be important to *anything*? Oh yes, I know, patriotism – the last resort of the scoundrel.
The usual half baked precious cliches about flags and patriotism with the usual side order of snobbery. I like the Saltire. Its a flag that never harmed anyone on its own and if you deigned to even observe any of the independence marches you’d see it carried by thousands of perfectly harmless ordinary folk, families, children and dogs, carrying nothing more deadly than a packed lunch. But that’s your problem is it not, they are just so f**king ordinary.
I agree with much in this article but to be clear Scotland does not have its own National Anthem. Songs are sung at events I know and seem like anthems but they’re not in any official way. And heaven forfend if such as Flower Of Scotland ever became the National Anthem…
The usual nonsense about Scotland having its “own” labour party.
When will these people get it into their heads that there is NO Scottish labour party. Labour in Scotland in no different to the party branch in Hartlepool.
Did Starmer send this message re St George’s Day to English recipients only?
Surely he didn’t expect Scottish and Welsh LP supporters to fly the flag of St George?
“Did Starmer send this message re St George’s Day to English recipients only?
Surely he didn’t expect Scottish and Welsh LP supporters to fly the flag of St George?”
The message was addressed to Labour candidates, which (conveniently) also leaves out the 3,000 or so members of the Labour Party living in the six counties of Ireland that are part of the UK state. They have a branch and the right to vote in internal party elections but not the right to stand Labour candidates. It’s not clear whether it was directed at Labour candidates for Westminster constituencies in Scotland or Cymru-Wales, or the 4 current Labour candidates for Police & Crime Commissioner elections on 2 May in the latter. No-one accidentally missed the recent appeal by Sir Keir to everyone to fly the flag of Cymru-Wales on St David’s Day 1 March, or the Irish tricolour on St Patrick’s Day 17 March by the way – there wasn’t one.
I found the contrast interesting between a narrow and thin representation of Englishness, and the culture of another St George nation, Georgia, which Bettany Hughes says has been nourished by many identities over time and geography:
https://www.channel4.com/programmes/bettany-hughes-treasures-of-the-world/on-demand/76361-006
Apparently some English myths of St George portray him and his wife as immigrants who settled and raised a family in England.
Obviously there are Crusader associations with the flag. Perhaps England could follow Mississippi? I suppose Labour wouldn’t object to a red rose.
“I suppose Labour wouldn’t object to a red rose.” (as the English flag)
The entirety of the 5+ million population of Yorkshire might though. Some regional rivalries in England run deeper and over more centuries than others …
Mark makes some good points about the hypocrisy embedded prevailing Anglo-British nationalism of Labour ignoring the current asymmetric nature of the constitutional devolution they created back in 1999.
It wasn’t always so – Michael Keating in ‘Labour & Scottish Nationalism’ (pub. 1979) points out that until 1958 Labour’s Scottish members at Westminster strongly advocated ‘Home Rule’ (all taxes devolved and all policies apart from defence & foreign affairs). Yet by 1974 devolution was only narrowly carried at a Scottish Labour conference as a confidence issue and after the good old Labour leadership trick of strong-arming of trade union delegates (not helped by the Tribunite left and even the alleged marxists of Militant Tendency being strongly opposed to an elected assembly). Such hostility of course helped scupper the 1979 referendum and set back even limited devolution by two decades.
I have a couple of bigger problems with his perspectives though. Firstly, there are not “four nations” within the UK state – there are three strongly identifiable ones (Cornwall does also deserve discussion), plus an occupied part of a partitioned nation. One of the reasons why I have come to agree with the insightful late Allan Armstrong in referring to the “UK state” rather than “British state” favoured traditionally on the left, is because using “UK” reminds us about the difference between Britain and the UK – the six counties of the north east of the Irish nation. I appreciate that as a sports fan Mark supports the England football team, but a word or two about the nonsense every 4 years of “Team GB” needs challenging. As I understand it, this team covers a series of around a dozen independent states such as the Isle of Man and States of Jersey and Guernsey (the clue is in the title) and former colonial outposts, all united under the UK union flag and the UK’s so-called national anthem. Yet it’s never pointed out that a majority of those UK citizens and residents of the six counties competing in the Olympic Games can and do choose to compete under the banner, flag and anthem of Ireland. And that’s leaving aside the never ending question of a Team GB football team. As someone not remotely interested in Olympic sports, I find the continued absence of a critique of this orgy of utterly confused flag waving by those sports fans on the left in England more than a little confusing.
The confusing of England with “Britain” pointed out in the introductory sentence is legion across the English left, but they do have the common feature that neither exists as a democratic polity with institutions and elections. “GB” hasn’t formally existed since 1801. There is no such thing as “British elections” and a recent paper from Scottish academic Ailsa Henderson questioned whether political scientists should continue to refer to “British Politics” at all (“The End of British Politics?” published in a series on the impact of ‘Brexit’ – or should that be ‘UKexit’? – by the more appropriately named ‘UK in a Changing Europe’ academic think tank).
Complications and the slippery meaning of ‘British’ has been there for well over 1000 years. This is well documented if people bother to research it. We always tend to have quite a short-sighted and narrow view of this so-called problem. And part of that problem is that certain groups assume or adopt a meaning (or specific un-meaning) then attack others for using it wrongly (wilfully or neglectfully).
I agree that using UK is much clearer. Part of the major problem for me is how British has come to be seen as a purely political word, It isn’t and never will be.