On St George’s Day, why are politicians still fighting over who can be English?

England has long settled on Englishness being an inclusive quality, writes Sunder Katwala. As politicians and podcasters seek to divide us, making more of St George’s Day – and our Englishness – might be just the thing to bring us together

As a national moment, St George's Day has caught much of England unaware. A late Easter sees the patron saint's day fall just after many of us are returning to work and to school. But a lack of fanfare for St George is not a new thing – and this year has shown why we should talk more about England.

At a Downing Street reception to celebrate St George’s Day, the prime minister said the country faces a “never-ending fight for our flag and what it represents.” This year has shown why we should talk more about England. A handful of politicians and podcasters have tried to turn the clock back several decades on what it means to be English. And as today is St George’s Day, our national day, it feels an appropriate moment for those of us who believe in an inclusive Englishness, relevant to everyone who feels English in our nation today, to redress the balance.

Very little had been said about the Indian ethnicity of Rishi Sunak when he became Prime Minister. The election of Kemi Badenoch as Conservative leader settled the question of whether the mostly white elderly party membership could see past skin colour.

Yet earlier this year, English identity was declared to be much more exclusive. A debate begun by the Russian-born podcaster Konstantin Kisin, asking how on earth, since Sunak was "brown and Hindu", he could be English, was then endorsed by Sunak's former Home Secretary Suella Braverman.

She in turn claimed never to have identified as English. That should be her choice. What was bizarre was to combine it with appointing herself the arbiter of who can and can’t be English – and to define it in ways that the vast majority of those who do feel English reject. “How many generations must pass before one can claim to be English? Five? Six? It is a question without an easy answer,” said Braverman.

The exclusion of anybody black or Asian was surely the point. "Of course I'm English, born here, brought up here," Rishi Sunak – Braverman's direct target – told Nick Robinson of the BBC. "On this definition, you can't be English even playing for England, let alone supporting them. I genuinely thought it was ridiculous."

Public attitudes research provided thumping support for Sunak calling Kisin and Braverman’s so-called argument “ridiculous.” Three-quarters of people believe that England's ethnic minorities can be just as English as white people today. The number who still reject this “inclusive nativism” – that if you were born here and identify as English, then you are English – has halved between 2012 and 2019, as older people adopted this new social norm.

‘What Kisin and Braverman failed to recognise is that today’s multi-ethnic English identity is not so much a break with a thousand years of English identity, but a continuation of it’ (Getty Images)

How that change happened is less well understood. English identity is a little less civic than the British citizenship identity – because migrants have invariably identified themselves as British, rather than English. Yet, across most of the last millennium, the children and grandchildren of migrants have often felt a birthright claim to Englishness too, sometimes surprising their French, Jewish or Irish parents and grandparents.

What Kisin and Braverman failed to recognise is that today’s multi-ethnic English identity is not so much a break with a thousand years of English identity, but a continuation of it: that when those born in England identify as English, they are accepted for doing so. England is an unusual country. It is a nation without a state, being part of a multinational United Kingdom. That makes England, like the other British nations, a country where most people hold more than one national identity. Some may be surprised to find that the English majority, as well as their neighbours from ethnic minority backgrounds, have more than one flag to wave.

For a long time, we took a very English approach to this problem by electing simply not to talk about it. In the past that may have reflected a sense of confidence, as well as England’s role in broader projects such as the United Kingdom and its Empire, while that lasted) but it is less useful today. What makes the habit hard to break is that England has relatively few institutions: national football, cricket and rugby teams, and an Established Church. British institutions – such as the BBC – think about Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, but rarely about an English national dimension. That has been the pattern of political devolution too.

We are an old country, but a changing one, and at times we can struggle to link the past, present and future together. Instead of a national story of how our history has shaped the nation we are today, we can instead pick a fight – or a “culture war” – about how the two can jar with each other. That is something we need to address: you cannot be a people without a story of who you are, where you come from and where you are going.

There is much to celebrate about England and Englishness. From Shakespeare, who was born and died on St George’s Day, to the Beatles, James Bond and Paddington Bear, the English language, literature, music and culture have resonated around the world. We invented or codified many of the sports played globally today. We have a rich history of both tradition and change, including that of the new people who have become English over the last ten centuries: Angles, Saxons, Normans and Huguenots; people from Jewish, Irish, Caribbean and Asian backgrounds; the Saxe-Coburgs (now the Windsors) and the Katwalas too.

In a changing England, can anxiety about how we talk about English identity – and celebrate it – really be so hard to overcome? Doing more to mark St George’s Day – and inviting all of England to the party – would be one riposte to those who want to narrow the idea of Englishness.

Sunder Katwala is director of the think tank British Future