ENGLAND ARISE

Dear Mr Goodhart,

I enjoyed your piece immensely , and welcome more intelligent analysis along these lines.

The noble British habit of understatement ( aka emotional repression by some Americans ) alongside a disinclination to fuel the zealots of political correctness ( which, c1992, Geoffrey Thomas pointed out does not stand up to linguistic analysis : usage of the word ‘correctness’ implies a standard, which itself demands a consensus of opinion - which would remove the need for PC etc ) might help explain the possible outward appearance of wearing national citizenship lightly …

However , this might not mean that the British , for whom it was once a successful evolutionary imperative , feel their nationality lightly ( and some of whom also feel guiltless pride about the Empire ; regretting only the 80 million or so British passports
granted to colonials by Mr Atlee, according to Andrew Marr , with little or no consultation )

What hope of real integration for the 2 million or so Muslims, who presumably for a similar evolutionary imperative now choose to live and worship among us, if , as Theodore Zeldin reported : ” 2/3Rd’s of Brits do not trust the French” ( BBC Newsnight , March ‘08 ) amid our current near histrionic demands for the promised referendum on Europe ? ( ” What’s Europe got that we haven’t ? Rabies ! ” )

It could be argued that “the enfeebling effects of socialism” ( most visible against Brown’s claim of ” lifting 2 million children out of poverty “… straight into illiteracy / drug abuse / prostitution / suicide / knife crime ) means that the British are more unlikely than ever to willingly exchange their former proud allegiance to ‘God, King, & Country’ for New Labour’s criminally over-priced, operationally inefficient ‘ Client State ‘, where under the disguise of ‘redistribution of wealth’ , morally corrupt politicians ( how dare these public servants vote against disclosing how they spend the public’s money ) and lawyers get even richer ; and the dependency culture encourages unprecedented levels of crime throughout the country

Moreover, the ‘top-down’ idea that all foreigners moving to the UK become instant ‘ pot-noodle’ Brits could be why many of the Island’s indigenous population ( i.e. chilblains since Doomsday etc ) now describe themselves colloquially as English / Scots / Irish /
Welsh / Cornish - giving rise to the idea of further devolution - while leaving the slightly cartoon
sobriquet ‘ British ‘ for those whom they refer to off-stage, as it were, collectively - and without malice -
simply as Ethnics .

On a smaller scale , as even urban immigrants complain about the number of non-European immigrants in our cities , relatively affluent Brits who can retreat to the hills - ergo the countryside, more at ease among it’s reassuring monoculture ( despite New Labour’s envy-led attempt to rip the heart out of rural Britain by imposing the ban on hunting with hounds ; since when support for the sport has dramatically increased ) ; leaving the frustrated urban white working class, who perceive their own ethnicity / birthright as under threat from ethnic minorities ( now the majority
in several London boroughs ) to vote BNP , and go a-head-butting around the football fields of Europe