Patriotism, scoundrels, and rule-breakers

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In his attempt to explain, during PMs Questions last week, why it was that other countries have both a lower death rate from Covid-19 and fewer restrictions, the PM came up with an absolute classic example of the English exceptionalism which is proving so damaging to the whole of the UK. He said, “Actually, there is an important difference between our country and many other countries around the world: our country is a freedom-loving country. If we look at the history of this country over the past 300 years, virtually every advance, from free speech to democracy, has come from this country. It is very difficult to ask the British population uniformly to obey guidelines in the way that is necessary”. I’m not sure which is worse – the possibility that he actually believes any of this, or the possibility that he knows it to be absolute guff and says it anyway.

It is one of the problems of a certain kind of nationalism that those nationalists have a desperate need to believe that their nation is in some way ‘better’ than other nations; claiming that ‘we’ invented virtually everything of value plays to that. I wouldn’t argue against the proposition that the UK has been the home of people – both native-born and immigrants – who have been responsible for a number of major advances (more than average for a country of its size, even) in a range of fields, including science, technology and political philosophy, but most advances are the result of a process of collaboration and synthesis of work done in many places. Ideas feed off each other. However, conflating the genius of particular individuals who happen to reside in one place with the characteristics of a nation is a nonsense – and a dangerous nonsense at that.

To take one specific of his claim, the idea that a state more than half of whose parliamentarians hold their position due to heredity, religious affiliation, or appointment rather than election, and where a governing party can gain an overall majority on around 30-35% of the vote, can be regarded as the ‘inventor’ of democracy is laughable. At best it requires a strange definition of democracy; at worst it’s a deliberate attempt to mislead.

To turn to the more immediately relevant specific, the idea that ‘the British’ love their freedom so much that they can’t be made to follow rules sounds like an attempt to project his own attitude onto the population at large. He certainly has some difficulty getting his own family and advisors to follow rules, but – despite such application of double standards – most of the population were willing, for an extended period, to follow the rules laid down.

He may, though, have accidentally stumbled upon a key point, even if it isn’t the one he thinks it is. There is indeed a key difference between the UK and most of the rest of Europe, and it’s about social solidarity. One of the key elements in getting a population to follow advice willingly and collectively is that they should believe that it is for the common good. That works better in much of Europe that it does here, because in the UK the Tories (aided and abetted by New Labour) have spent four decades promulgating the idea that there is no ‘common good’. People, they have argued, should put their own interests first and look after themselves rather than expecting the state to look after them. Competition, they have told us, is good – there must always be winners and losers, and the losers have only themselves to blame. The problem is not, as Johnson effectively says, that people in the UK (and he largely means England here, of course) are too fond of their freedom to follow rules, it is that they have been drip fed an ideology (by Johnson and his ilk) which encourages them always to ignore the needs of others and pursue their own selfish interests. Against that background, the surprise is not that some have not been following the rules, but that so many have done so.