After Kemi Badenoch's McFarce earlier this week, Conservative leadership hopeful Robert Jenrick is emerging as the champion of the party's right-wing, and the outright frontrunner in the four-way contest. In an opinion piece for the Daily Mail, that megaphone of Middle England, Jenrick claimed that left-liberal policies on immigration and the culture had "put the very idea of England at risk."
Without detailing the minutiae of what constitutes Englishness, Jenrick awoke the dormant conversation surrounding the identity of the largest nation in the Union. What was once the preserve of irrelevant, eschewed political parties, such as the English Democrats, is now contested on Sky News, and in that sense, Jenrick has already won the day by bringing the issue to the attention of the public. In addition to his predictable commitments to having Britain leave the ECHR, the Tory candidate has reminded us that England matters too, advertising himself as the man to revive the Conservative Party's voter turnout rate among its traditional base.
In the referenced Sky News interview, Matt Barbet began on the offensive, asking Jenrick the simple, yet immense question "What is English identity?". The candidate's imprecise answer, a smattering of "it [English identity] is our history and our culture", though not optically impressive, captures the the difficulty of the debate. The skill of Barbet's line lies in the contrast between the simplicity of the words used and the scale of the question at hand. The MP for Newark could not reasonably be expected to distill everything from Athelstan to Charles III into an interview-friendly response and, upon mentioning this, was met with the smarmy retort that it was he who had attempted to distill it in an op-ed for the Daily Mail in the first place.
However, that a question of such immense proportions cannot be answered in a short interview nor a tabloid opinion piece does not suggest that the question has no meaningful answers at all. One might begin by observing and recording the outward characteristics of the English — they are largely descended from the conglomeration of Angles, Saxons and Danes who were resident in the southern portion of Great Britain in the first millenium. Their common language is English, and the intricacies of that language continue to reflect the millenium-long story of the English and their relations with other peoples. The English play football and rugby in the winter, cricket in the summer, but their real national pastime, complaining about the weather, is practised all year round. From the loins of the English sprung Chaucer and Shakespeare, then later Shelley, Tennyson and Kipling. The English eat fish and chips on Fridays and roast dinners two days later. The English built parishes churches in their villages and constructed cathedrals skywards in their cities; that these congregations have dwindled is the great shame of that people.
A number of objections arise against this description. First, it might be mentioned that many of these cultural manifestations are not English in origin and therefore not English at all. Christianity, the historic religion of England, was born in 1st century Palestine; the potatoes from which we make our end-of-week takeaways were introduced from the Americas, the critique goes on. Such an argument appears viable because it divorces English items from the context in which they are habitually enjoyed. For example, Christianity is practised the world over (in part due to the English, it must be noted) but the Christianity of the English — marked by organs, chapel choirs and prayers for the health and wisdom His Majesty the King — differs from the megachurches of Accra and Lagos and the gowned mystique found in the churches of the East. Identifying that some of the ingredients of Englishness are foreign in origin does not contradict the fact that such ingredients enjoy a peculiar role in the English way of life.
More interestingly, one might note that many English people do not partake in all of these practices. There are Englishmen who despise rugby and most Englishmen do not, of their own volition, watch Shakespeare plays or attend Kipling recitals. Conversely, there are millions of people abroad who love the Bard but who would laugh at the suggestion that they are English. Nevertheless, these emanations of culture are still of value in describing Englishness. An Brazilian who changes TV channel when he sees cricket on his screen likely does so because of his unfamiliarity with the game. An Englishman who does the same makes that decision precisely because of his acute familiarity with the sport. The English are the nation who ascribe value to educating their children in the common English culture, even if many of them do not grow to be adults with particular attachments to such articles. Outward manifestations of Englishness such as sport, music and literature, though not unanimously cherished at home, remain useful markers of identity.
Jenrick is presumably capable of regurgitating arguments similar to the ones outlined above. That he did not when interrogated highlights the crux of the conversation. Englishness is seldom articulated because few dare say that Englishness, like oxygen, is invisible and ubiquitous. In the United Kingdom and across the world, Englishness remains the modus operandi. The national dress of the English is worn in boardrooms from Tokyo to Toronto and the language of the English facilitates such interactions. Boys from Cape Town to Canberra wear blazers and ties because their schools were founded by Englishmen. That the modern world would be unrecognisable without Englishness should be an exhortation to defend English identity when it comes under threat.
In the referenced Sky News interview, Matt Barbet began on the offensive, asking Jenrick the simple, yet immense question "What is English identity?". The candidate's imprecise answer, a smattering of "it [English identity] is our history and our culture", though not optically impressive, captures the the difficulty of the debate. The skill of Barbet's line lies in the contrast between the simplicity of the words used and the scale of the question at hand. The MP for Newark could not reasonably be expected to distill everything from Athelstan to Charles III into an interview-friendly response and, upon mentioning this, was met with the smarmy retort that it was he who had attempted to distill it in an op-ed for the Daily Mail in the first place.
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| Mark Babet (left) and Robert Jenrick (right) on Sky News |
However, that a question of such immense proportions cannot be answered in a short interview nor a tabloid opinion piece does not suggest that the question has no meaningful answers at all. One might begin by observing and recording the outward characteristics of the English — they are largely descended from the conglomeration of Angles, Saxons and Danes who were resident in the southern portion of Great Britain in the first millenium. Their common language is English, and the intricacies of that language continue to reflect the millenium-long story of the English and their relations with other peoples. The English play football and rugby in the winter, cricket in the summer, but their real national pastime, complaining about the weather, is practised all year round. From the loins of the English sprung Chaucer and Shakespeare, then later Shelley, Tennyson and Kipling. The English eat fish and chips on Fridays and roast dinners two days later. The English built parishes churches in their villages and constructed cathedrals skywards in their cities; that these congregations have dwindled is the great shame of that people.
A number of objections arise against this description. First, it might be mentioned that many of these cultural manifestations are not English in origin and therefore not English at all. Christianity, the historic religion of England, was born in 1st century Palestine; the potatoes from which we make our end-of-week takeaways were introduced from the Americas, the critique goes on. Such an argument appears viable because it divorces English items from the context in which they are habitually enjoyed. For example, Christianity is practised the world over (in part due to the English, it must be noted) but the Christianity of the English — marked by organs, chapel choirs and prayers for the health and wisdom His Majesty the King — differs from the megachurches of Accra and Lagos and the gowned mystique found in the churches of the East. Identifying that some of the ingredients of Englishness are foreign in origin does not contradict the fact that such ingredients enjoy a peculiar role in the English way of life.
More interestingly, one might note that many English people do not partake in all of these practices. There are Englishmen who despise rugby and most Englishmen do not, of their own volition, watch Shakespeare plays or attend Kipling recitals. Conversely, there are millions of people abroad who love the Bard but who would laugh at the suggestion that they are English. Nevertheless, these emanations of culture are still of value in describing Englishness. An Brazilian who changes TV channel when he sees cricket on his screen likely does so because of his unfamiliarity with the game. An Englishman who does the same makes that decision precisely because of his acute familiarity with the sport. The English are the nation who ascribe value to educating their children in the common English culture, even if many of them do not grow to be adults with particular attachments to such articles. Outward manifestations of Englishness such as sport, music and literature, though not unanimously cherished at home, remain useful markers of identity.
Jenrick is presumably capable of regurgitating arguments similar to the ones outlined above. That he did not when interrogated highlights the crux of the conversation. Englishness is seldom articulated because few dare say that Englishness, like oxygen, is invisible and ubiquitous. In the United Kingdom and across the world, Englishness remains the modus operandi. The national dress of the English is worn in boardrooms from Tokyo to Toronto and the language of the English facilitates such interactions. Boys from Cape Town to Canberra wear blazers and ties because their schools were founded by Englishmen. That the modern world would be unrecognisable without Englishness should be an exhortation to defend English identity when it comes under threat.
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