Tolerant and fair-minded or obsessed by class and suspicious of foreigners? Peter Kellner unveils research for Progress on how the English view themselves

If George Orwell and John Major are to be believed, the defining characteristic of Englishness is nostalgia. Orwell wrote of ‘old maids bicycling to holy communion through the morning mist’. Major quoted this with approval, adding his hope that we would long continue to enjoy ‘long shadows on cricket grounds, warm beer, invincible green suburbs, dog lovers and pools fillers’. The former prime minister also hoped that children would continue to read Shakespeare for generations to come – presumably including John of Gaunt’s paean of praise to ‘this blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.’

One virtue of nostalgia is that it deflects attention from today’s difficulties. Diminished in the world, unsure of its place in Europe, challenged by Scots who want to go their own way, seldom displaying its own specific flag, the cross of St George, England presents an uncertain face to others and, perhaps, to itself.

Or is that unfair? Beneath the surface and despite our problems, are we in fact confident about ourselves and our future? On behalf of Progress, YouGov has done something that I think has never been done before, at least not in the way we have done it. To mark St George’s Day, we asked people throughout Britain – Scotland and Wales, as well as England – to say which attributes apply to English people today. We listed 20 words and phrases – a mix of positive and negative – and asked respondents to say which four or five apply most to the English.

Top of the list are three traditional qualities: ‘suspicious of foreigners’, ‘stiff upper lip’ and ‘patriotic’. No wonder James Bond and war films such as the Dambusters remain so popular – or that the BBC’s programmes marking the centenary of the first world war are so successful.

After these first three is a gap, followed by five qualities that score similar amounts. Three are variations on feel-good, progressive Englishness: ‘tolerant’, ‘fair-minded’ and ‘democratic’. The other two show our worries about England’s dark side: ‘obsessed by social class’ and ‘tendency to drunkenness and hooliganism’.

At the other end of the scale, very few of us regard the English as ‘greedy’, ‘stupid’ or ‘dishonest’. But then, hardly any of us describe the English as ‘clever’. In other words, few people think Englishness is associated with either an abundance or scarcity of brain cells. I would like to think that this reflects a sober judgement that people of all nations are fundamentally similar in their range of attributes and deserve equal treatment; but it would be easier to draw this conclusion were we less hostile to immigration, overseas aid and the European Union.

Those are the overall figures. Within them there are some notable differences between groups:

Conservative voters are more likely than Labour supporters to cite the ‘progressive’ virtues of tolerance and democracy – and also to say the English are patriotic. Labour voters are more likely than Tories to consider the English are arrogant, narrow-minded and obsessed with social class.

Liberal Democrat voters have broadly similar attitudes to Tories – except that they are less likely to regard the English as patriotic or democratic.

United Kingdom Independence party voters are more likely than supporters of the other three parties to regard the English as tolerant, generous and hard-working – and also as having a tendency to drunkenness and hooliganism.

Among men, the most widely cited characteristic is suspicion of foreigners; among women it is (by a narrow margin) patriotism.

The essence of Englishness for the over-60s is suspicion of foreigners, followed closely by patriotism and tolerance; for the under-25s it is a stiff upper lip, with nothing else coming close.

When we compare what the English say about themselves with the responses of Welsh people and Scots, we find that the figures for some characteristics are similar – and for some, very different. Thus suspicion of foreigners, patriotism and a stiff upper lip all elicit much the same response. In contrast, the Scots and Welsh are much less likely than the English to regard English people as tolerant, democratic, fair-minded or generous – and more likely to accuse the English of arrogance, narrow-mindedness and being stuck in the past.

Within England, regional differences are less pronounced. However, Londoners stand out to some extent as considering the English slightly less patriotic, hard-working or generous than the rest of the country, but slightly more tolerant.

The larger truth, however, is that there is no common narrative to the idea of Englishness. The most widely cited quality, suspicion of foreigners, still registers with barely one person in three. The fact that nothing approaches 50 per cent indicates that ours is a country whose sense of self is notable for its variety far more than for its unity. Whether that is a good thing or a bad thing is a matter of taste and, perhaps, a subject for debate. Is it possible to have both variety and a common understanding of what and who we are?

More widely, is it inevitable that Englishness must have an uncertain definition when England comprises 85 per cent of the United Kingdom? People from Scotland, Wales and northern England seldom make the mistake of conflating the characteristics of their nation with those of the UK as a whole; but nobody is surprised when people south of Hadrian’s Wall and east of Offa’s Dyke use ‘English’ and ‘British’ interchangeably.

We might regret this uncertainty and ambiguity, but do we simply have to go on living with it? Or can progressives draw on the histories of people such as the Levellers, John Milton, Tom Paine, William Wilberforce, Charles Dickens, Emmeline Pankhurst and George Orwell – and reclaim the cross of St George from those who exploit it for the cause of rightwing nationalism?

———————————