The purpose of patriotism.

In the spring 2021 edition of Renewal both James Stafford and Eunice Goes examined Keir Starmer's 'patriotic turn'. (1) They shed useful light on how Starmer has approached patriotism to date, but also epitomise the limitations of Labour's current debates and of the Leader's office strategy. Their contributions were written before Starmer's conference speech and the publication of his lengthy Fabian essay, The Road Ahead. This article considers the arguments made by Stafford and Goes, and more recently by Starmer. It suggests that there is potential for Labour to frame its politics in an ambitious programme of 'progressive patriotism' that can appeal across the different nations and revitalise the Union itself.

Both Stafford and Goes presume that patriotism is an essentially electoral problem. In this view, a significant section of voters, including many who have previously voted Labour, are patriotic but see Labour as unpatriotic. Labour has no choice but to engage with patriotism if it is to bring and hold together Labour's electoral coalition of voters. According to Stafford, 'minimal displays of reverence for the coercive arms of the state are simply the price of entry into national electoral competition'. For Goes, Starmer's patriotic turn suggests 'his roadmap to victory relies mostly on winning back... those older voters who felt abandoned by Labour'.

They see clear limits to Starmer's approach to patriotism. Stafford thinks Starmer is just the latest in a string of Labour leaders--naming Brown, Miliband and Corbyn--who 'display their allegiance to ideas of British identity that have no room for them and never will'. Though seeing the risks of risks of Labour defining patriotism in narrowly conservative terms, Goes thinks that, with development, the Labour leader's trajectory 'might just about fly'. Both agree that Labour's national story needs to draw on a broader and more radical history, weaving in 'popular movements, past and present' (Stafford) and 'radical dissent and the fight for democracy and equality' (Goes). They highlight the need to offer a future that includes the concerns of Labour's current supporters who, on average, are younger, educated to a higher level, and hold more liberal and cosmopolitan values

It is certainly true that Keir Starmer in front of a Union Jack does not look very different to Robert Jenrick in the same pose, but the criticisms of 'flag-shagging' so widespread on social media are ill-judged. Long before a voter considers party policies, let alone ideology, they ask more visceral questions: 'Do these politicians understand me? Will they stand up for people like me on things I really care about?'. It's the most fundamental relationship in politics, and one that continually frustrates the left.

Most people in Britain, including Britain's ethnic minorities, see themselves as patriotic, and are instinctively suspicious of those who are not. They have few problems with flags, a monarchy seen as being above politics, or a military composed primarily of working-class recruits. This is true in the 'Red Wall', amongst the southern English conservatives whom Labour must also woo, and amongst a significant if often overlooked part of city electorates who share similar values.

Politicians of the right take care to press these buttons, while the left disdains them. The horrified reaction of activists to the very idea of a patriotic Labour only confirms to many voters that Labour neither understands them nor wants to stand up for them. Within its limits, Starmer's identification with mainstream symbols of the nation he wants to lead makes sense. As Goes observes, his record of public service provides an authenticity that Jeremy Corbyn lacked.

But for all that Labour cannot get elected as an unpatriotic party, there are not many votes in symbolic patriotism itself. The rewards of patriotism will be thin unless it accompanies a more persuasive and inclusive story about nation and people that can give a richer meaning to the idea and symbols of the nation.

Patriotism and Labour

The discussions in Renewal highlight the narrow terrain of the debate within Labour. The failure to speak clearly to the different ideas of nation, identity and sovereignty within the UK have underpinned every defeat of the left over the past twenty years. But in Labour's debates, patriotism is seen as an issue to be handled or negotiated, rather than one that might play a central role in left politics. And Goes and Stafford share a remarkably Anglo-centric view of the politics of patriotism, making no mention of patriotism in Scotland or Wales, and assuming that to be patriotic in the UK is to be British.

When patriotism is framed as electoral issue it reduces the question to one of 'what', and 'how much' Labour must do to attract patriotic voters without putting off those wary of the symbols of conservative patriotism. The debate becomes about the length of the spoon with which to sup from the inherently distasteful bowl of patriotism. Patriotism itself becomes framed in the most conservative terms as Stafford and Goes describe.

Reducing patriotism to a segmented electoral demand represents a very limited conception of what patriotism can be. It does not see patriotism--understood as a pride in and affection for the nation and its people--as an integral part of Labour's politics. That many Labour activists and a part of its current electorate are not particularly patriotic or may be actively hostile to the very idea is not seen as a problem (except in that they might be offended).

This is a break with the historical traditions of social democracy. It is hard to think of any significant social democratic success--from the emergence of Swedish social democracy in the 1930s to the rise of the radical Syriza in Greece much more recently--that did not express its politics within a positive story of the nation and its people. As David Edgerton has argued, Attlee's socialism was distinctly British nationalist. (2) It combined an appeal to the idea and symbols of the nation with the politics of change. Labour's 1945 poster 'Now Let's Win The Peace' was clear that a better society had to be fought for. As Goes acknowledges, Wilson and Blair also appealed to a sense of the nation that went beyond narrow sectional interest. In more recent years the left and centre has lost interest in creating a shared and unifying national politics. When its leaders have tried to appeal to a conservative patriotism, much of the membership has rejected the very idea of a patriotic national politics.

Yet there is a good case that patriotism, as an integral element of progressive politics, should play an important role in forging a popular left strategy in the twenty-first century. A shared sense of nationhood is not only necessary for the election of a Labour government; it is also essential for generating support for the progressive transformation of society. Only a popular progressive patriotism can create a shared sense of nationhood in our fragmented society.

A strategy for our...