The ties that bind us

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The aim of the new future ex-Prime Minister’s quick tour of the UK this week has been billed as being to “strengthen the ties that bind us”.  I’m sure that it looked like a nice rhetorical flourish to whoever came up with it, although it may not have occurred to him or her that it could also be heard as meaning “tighten the knots”.  As with much – most – of what he says, the rhetoric replaces rather than illuminates the detail, and it’s not at all clear that he’s really thought about what the nature of those ties might be, let alone how they might be strengthened.

I’m in no doubt that there are factors which lead many in Wales and Scotland – the majority in the case of the former, but maybe not any more in the case of the latter – to believe that the union is of some value, whether economic or emotional, but I’m not at all convinced that the PM understands what they are, seeing the union, rather, from an Anglo-British nationalist perspective.  When pushed, people will generally refer to the economic factors, or at least, their own understanding of the economic factors, but I’ve long suspected that the emotional factors are actually stronger and more influential.  But the nature of the emotional attachment to the union, in both Wales and Scotland, is not the same as the nature of the emotional attachment to the same union which is common in England.  Many people in Wales are quite relaxed about considering themselves both Welsh and British (and similar feelings apply in Scotland); it’s not so much dual nationality as overlapping and complementary nationality.  In England, the distinction between being English and British is a lot less clear. 

The result is that they can end up taking a very different approach to strengthening those ties.  From an English perspective, emphasising Britishness is much the same thing as emphasising Englishness – they genuinely seem to find it hard to understand why that approach doesn’t work very well in Wales and Scotland.  Taking control of the money being spent in the devolved administrations in order to rebrand it as British spending and increasing the number and prominence of union flags around the place may, to them, look like inculcating a greater sense of Britishness and togetherness, but they look entirely different to many of us.  A leader serious about strengthening the ties would start by trying to understand the differences and then look to see how a successful union might reflect those differences, pay heed to different voices and perspectives, value the views of those with a different viewpoint.

That’s precisely what they are not doing – perhaps “tightening the knots” isn’t such a bad translation of Johnson’s policy after all.