Jason Cowley is an award-winning journalist, magazine editor and writer. He has been widely credited with transforming the fortunes of the New Statesman, both as a magazine and website. In 2020 he was voted editor of the year (politics and current affairs) for the fourth time at the British Society of Magazine Editors awards.
So first of all, Jason, let me introduce you. You are, of course, as you know, the editor in chief of The New Statesman, which is described as by the left for the left. But I think one of the things I really wanted to say, having read your book,
Is this is very, very apolitical. Every single party seems to come in for a very honest appraisal. You’re also multi award winning. Congratulations. We’re very lucky to have you here and have been named amongst Britain’s most influential 500 people in the last 10 years. So really, really fantastic to have you.
And you’re described as a championing independence of thought and diversity of opinion. And certainly that was my impression reading this book. So I really do encourage you to take the time I have enjoyed taking to look at our country and particularly England over the last 25 years, which is what this book does
Through the ends of eyes of some very personal stories and some news events that we will all remember. And I’m just going to before I ask you the first question, recap for all of us some of the stories that we think, oh, gosh, yes, I remember that.
It seems so big at the time, but what’s happened? Why did it happen and what has been the impact of it since? So just to name check, a few of them all revisited in your book, the Brexit, excuse me, the Brexit referendum. And I’d actually like to
Touch on the Isle of Wight’s view on the referendum, of course, a very strong vote out here. The covid pandemic and lockdown, the tragedy of the cockle pickers and what it says about people trafficking and our relationship with immigration in the country, the moving reaction of the people of Wootton Bassett,
The repatriation of fallen soldiers, three lethal jihadi attacks in England, Shmima Begum, who went off to be a jihadi bride at the age of 15. Our reaction as a country to the death of George Floyd and the rise of the black, the BLM here, and obviously the taking of the knee.
The very famous Jillian Duffy, the lady who certainly Gordon Brown will never forget. And that’s to name but a few of the stories that you touch upon, the kind of big moments in our recent history. But what I wanted to start to talk to you about really is you start
With this question of what it is to be, you know, what is England now? Not so much what it is to be English, but what is England now? Who are we? What does all of that mean? Why did all of that happen? Why England? You’re not talking about Britain or the UK here.
You’re talking about England. Well, that’s a big question. Thank you for the introduction, Susanna. Wonderful to be here. Wonderful to be in the Isle of Wight again. I remember coming here in the late 70s and the holiday with my parents. And I thought I was going somewhere sort of warm and exotic.
And it was warm and exotic, I think it turned out. And the weather was even in October, it’s lovely in the Isle of Wight. So what a pleasure to be here. So thank you for being here in this wonderful church. And thank you for the introduction.
And then you state some it’s an open magazine. And you know what? I’m skeptical. I’m interested in different points of view, reaching out across difference and not excluding. So that’s what I’ve tried to do with the magazine since I’ve been editor. But that question on England, there’s a line actually from George Orwell
Who features in the book. He was writing in 1940 during the Blitz, the bombs were coming down on London. We’ve had we’ve had the retreat from Dunkirk and Orwell had been sort of hostile to his own country. He was an old Etonian, but he didn’t go to university.
He became a military policeman in Burma, but he didn’t like the Empire. He didn’t like the public schools. He came back to England and he went to Wigan. And deep underground among the miners, he discovered in England that he could finally was fed what he saw among those those
Those men working deep underground, the teamwork and the camaraderie began to change his view about what a nation is and why patriotism matters. And in 1940, as the bombs are falling on London, he wrote in a famous essay called The Lion and the Unicorn, he wrote,
It is it is of the deepest importance to try and determine what England is before giving before guessing what part England can play in the huge events that are happening. Now, the last 10, maybe 15 years in this country have been hugely divisive and polarized,
And it’s almost been a period of continuous crisis. If you think back to the financial crisis, the recession that followed. We had the Scottish independence referendum, which almost led to the breakup of the British state. There was a narrow vote for the status quo, but narrow.
One consequence of that 2014 vote was a collapse of the Labour Party in Scotland. So 2015, David Cameron won a surprise majority, which enabled him then to have the in out referendum on British membership of the European Union that he had pledged. We had the eruption of the
Radical left and the Corbinites in 2015. We had the Brexit wars. Through to 2019, when Boris Johnson finally took us out on a rather crude pledge to get Brexit done, whatever that means, then we were hit by the pandemic. And it’s just been an extraordinary period. And within so I wanted to
Understand what these huge events mean and what role England has hit and what is England today? Because I think England has been lost within Britain and within Britishness and all around us, we’ve seen the rise of nationalist movements, particularly the Scottish independence movement. And inevitably, that’s forced upon the English,
A reconsideration as to who they are. England is the largest country that doesn’t have representation at the United Nations. It doesn’t have its own discrete political institutions. And maybe we’re fine with that. Maybe we’re very relaxed about England being part of a larger multinational state. And I also value Britishness greatly.
And we can talk about that. But what is England? Who are the English today? And that was something that really interested me. And that’s why I began the exploration, which became the book. It’s fantastic, fantastically interesting seeing the culture of the country through the lens of different individuals and events.
Yeah. And that can only really be understood, again, if you read the very personal stories that feed into the bigger themes of Englishness that go through the book, which are wonderful. I think what’s interesting is you start off very locally in Harlow in your book with your aunt.
And this is really reflecting the importance of everyday life and community. And you juxtapose that with globalization, which is tied into the story of the cockle pickers and people trafficking. And I think, you know, there’s another whole piece around how Europe itself has lost its identity and doesn’t know what its role is.
So, again, can you talk a little bit about because, again, I think when we look at this island community, the importance really of sort of local identity alongside English identity and the importance of community. Because that seems to underpin everything. Yeah, I’m very interested in the local and communities and how we interact
Not just within our own families, but in wider groupings. I mean, what I call sort of intermediate institutions between the market and the state. Such as churches, sports clubs, trade unions and so on. And. Since 1997, when Tony Blair came to power, Blair Blair’s a progressive
And he wanted to ride this wave of progressive change. He said, why do I debate globalization and its effects? It’s inevitable as a changing of the seasons. Well, actually, a lot of people wanted to debate the effects of globalization and particularly what it had done to local communities and how certain communities have
Been disturbed by these enormous forces that had changed not only the United Kingdom, but Europe and beyond. I mean, globalization lifted hundreds of millions of Chinese out of poverty, which, you know, is a good thing. But there were also detrimental effects. But Blair Blair wanted to ride this wave.
I grew up many of you won’t know it. I grew up in one of the new towns that was created after the Second World War in a place called Harlow in Essex, West Essex. These new towns were created by the Atlee government, the labor government that won a landslide in 1945.
Clement Atlee had become Winston Churchill’s deputy in the wartime coalition. A former soldier carried off the battlefield of Mesopotamia and was a Gallipoli and was an old style patriot, as well as a labor prime minister. He believed in the nation and he wanted to dignify ordinary people’s lives by building institutions.
So they passed the New Towns Act of 1946 and Harlow was created as a consequence. One reason was to create housing for working class people from the east end of London when my parents came from and the poorer parts of North London because so much housing had been destroyed in the blitz.
And Harlow was it was a noble project in many ways, a utopian project. The idea of creating housing with gardens and laboratories inside the houses and green spaces. And it attracted progressive socialists, even communists to the town. And I was born there in the late sixties.
And I just grew up in the 1970s. And someone once said to me, growing up in Harlow in the 1970s was a bit like being in the old GDR, but without the stasi. Everything, everything was provided for you by the state. Our recreational spaces, our sports clubs, our schools.
And so it goes on. I didn’t understand any of this. I was just growing up. This is where I happened to live. And inevitably, when you try and create a utopian settlement, and we were called citizens of the future. And Lord Reath, the first director general of BBC,
Who worked on one of the new towns committee, called the new towns essays and civilization. But when you create a utopian project or attempt to create a utopian project, inevitably it begins to sort of crumble from within. And Harlow began to decline quite rapidly.
And later on became sort of caricatured and kind of like who on became sort of caricatured as one of the left behind towns. I mean, it’s only 25 minutes from London Liverpool Street station. The gateway to the gleaming metropolis of the financial district. But you visit Harlow today, it’s a rundown.
The estates are rundown. Nothing was renewed. The town center, which I remember as a young boy, was vibrant and teeming. More recently, it was desolate, boarded up shops. And so it goes on. So what I witnessed was the breakdown of a community. My aunt, my mother’s 87.
She has a sister who’s 92 and another sister who’s 95. The men are long gone. But the women are the women are the strong ones in our family. And my my aunt still lives there. She’s 95. And a couple of years ago, there was there was her local GP.
What do you call them? Surgery. And I remember I lived very close to this GP surgery in a place called Prentiss Place. It was announced that it’s going to be closed down. No warning, no discussion, just arbitrarily closed down. The local conservative MP Robert Halfon, good man, actually, knew nothing about it.
He mounted a small campaign. Nothing was done. It was a fait accompli. And my aunt then was about 90. She mounted the local campaign to try and save this GP service. Not least because it mattered to her. It was part of a community. And she was defeated. And I did a little
Interview with her in the New States and just talking about the themes. And it was picked up by the Daily Mail and other newspapers. And she was interviewed, the BBC interviewed her. And because of their greater resources, they were able to investigate what happened.
And it turned out the ultimate owners of this local GP surgery was in America. Yeah, it was a huge financial conglomerate that was in St. Louis. And it was no longer financially viable. Although it was in that NHS service. So I didn’t quite understand that.
But my aunt, age 90, had to take four buses to get to the nearest GP surgery after her local GP was closed down. And for me, this this mattered. So I went back to the town where I’d grown up to find out what had happened, how this had happened.
And it got made me interested in the themes of globalization that you mentioned. And in many ways, that’s the beginning of the book. And all the stories in the book were about transitions, crossings, migrations, movements across borders into England, out of England. And one of the journeys I
Take is to go back to to that that utopian certain that it that it declined. And I think what’s really interesting is it’s very hard, isn’t it, to create utopia? It’s kind of ludicrous. You think, oh, I’m going to create this amazing space.
It’s going to have a school. It’s going to have this. Everyone’s going to be happy. You set it up, people move in. Maybe they are living a better life. But then the next generation move out because they’ve moved on. So it’s I think what’s very interesting is the shifting culture of a country.
Yes. But also what a big theme through the book for English. Well, I’ll say culture is a sense of loss. Yes. You talk about a sense of nostalgia, something that is missing. Yeah. Something that’s got lost along the way. A need to belong. But certainly in our political parties,
And a lack of willingness to take ownership of Englishness. Yes. And so it’s almost like an amorphous thing, isn’t it? Englishness. There’s there’s an awkwardness about it. How do we feel about our past? Should we feel shame or should we just embrace and say it’s part of who we are?
And, you know, how do we look at a lens of Englishness today? These are all very difficult. But can you talk a little bit about because I think it underpins the Brexit result, if I understand correctly from your book. And again, obviously a strong outvote here is this sense of not being heard,
That politicians weren’t listening. They didn’t get it. Yes. And also a sense of being left behind that a few people were being taken on this globalization journey quite happily. And a lot of people being left behind outside this hit is going, you’re not listening to me. And the wonderful passage, which
I’m going to look up now while you’re answering the question from Jillian Duffy, who really hit the nail on the head with that, I think she was a warning canary in the mine about Brexit. I think so. She was I call it a visitor from the future. Remember that Jillian Duffy in
Rochdale, she appeared before Gordon Brown. She was heading actually off to buy some milk and some bread that morning. And she saw all these cars and black limousines. And someone said to her, oh, Gordon Brown’s in town, then prime minister. And a woman called Sue Nye, who was Gordon Brown’s gatekeeper.
And she said to Mrs Duffy, are you Labour? And she said, of course I’m Labour. And through nice, would you like to be the prime minister? And Mrs Duffy said, of course. So the gatekeeper opened the gate and Mrs Duffy walked right through it.
It’s on YouTube, if any of you want to see it again. It’s a one is absolutely wonderful exchange. And she was asking important questions about the local environment, the economy, student debt. And she eventually asked the question about immigration. But it wasn’t a racial question at all. It was a question about
Freedom of movement and the movement into the UK from the eastern states that had joined the European Union. And she was asking Gordon Brown about the effects of that. Tighly reasonable. She was dismissed as a bigot by Gordon. Gordon was caught on camera on a secret mic, a bit like this one,
If I leave this one on today. And he got called out. But I thought it was a really emblematic exchange because when she appeared before Gordon Brown, she must have seemed like a relic from the past, the past Tony Blair was trying to escape from. You know, the old labour, the
Old working class labour voter. But actually, she was she’d arrived before Gordon Brown to warn him about what was coming, not only for the Labour Party, but for the country. And I caught up with her many years later in the book and we had a nice chat and she voted for Brexit.
And I think her analysis of Brexit is similar to yours. I don’t know what your personal view is, but your summary of my view in the book is that in many ways, it was people were given the opportunity to vote on something important. The turnout was huge. Decided that people weren’t well
Informed about what they were voting for, as you know, the what London elites might say was nonsense. People wanted to say enough. Or many people wanted to say enough. No more. And that’s why Nigel Farage’s rhetoric resonated for so many. You know, this idea, Susannah, I want to get our country back.
Nigel was a populist, an agitator, but some of what he said cut through. And there are more moderate versions of what Nigel was saying. That others resonated resonated for many. Harlow voted 68% Brexit. Isle of Wight was what, 62%? Every district of Essex voted for Brexit.
And for many, I think it was an expression of mass disaffection. A reflection that the status quo for many was intolerable. Many Labour MPs in the north were campaigning and what we now call the so-called red wall seats. And they were knocking on the door saying, you know, we want…
Are you with us? Are you going to vote Remain? And they were saying, look, we haven’t had a pay rise for 10 years. Can’t get my child into the local school. The GP service doesn’t work. And when I go into town, I hear a lot of people speaking Romanian in Polish.
I mean, this is what was being reported. I mean, I always welcome migrants to the country. I mean, but this was what was being reported. And the Labour MPs had no answer to it. So when David Cameron said to voters, you will be worse off if you vote for Brexit, they
Were prepared to take that gamble. Yeah, what are we, seven years later? Was it a gamble worth taking? I’ll leave it for you to decide. My view, you know, I’m not prescriptive. I have my views, but the book isn’t the book is open. I ask questions rather than offer definitive answers.
If you want to know what I think, it’s in a new statement. Not in the book. I think it raises a really interesting question around politics today, doesn’t it? The whole area of politics and politicians. They’ve almost got sealed off in their own narrative.
And I wanted to just read a little passage because I think we may all relate to this. So you talk about how Joan Didion, Didion described how the political process was excluding the people for whom it professed to speak. It was becoming limited to its own professionals, to those who manage policy,
To those who report on it, to those who run the polls and to those who quote them, to those who ask and those who answer the questions on the Sunday shows, to the media consultants, the columnists, to the issue advisers, to those who give off the record
Breakfast and to those who attend them, to the handful of insiders who invent year in and year out the narrative of public life. And I think, again, I’m sure many people can think that politics in itself has become a little bit of a bubble. So let’s just touch on that briefly,
Because we again, we see the Scottish, the politics of Scotland being extremely forthright and maybe more connected to its nation than the English politics. And as you mentioned, we don’t have our own sort of house, if you like, a forum. Yes. So what has England lost in not having that?
I think things are beginning to change because of all of the things that I explore in the book and some of some of what you’ve touched on in our conversation. I mean, this is does seem to me like a new era that we’ve entered and I can talk about that.
Obviously, the Scottish creation of the Scottish Parliament allowed a flourishing of Scottish national identity. I don’t know if anyone’s from Scotland here in the audience, but the SNP were quite opportunistic and quite cynical, I think. And that’s interesting, they’re coming unstuck in very interesting ways, because although no doubt there’s legitimate movement
For Scottish independence, if I was in Scotland, I would be frustrated at what’s going on at Westminster and I would be seeking greater autonomy and self-determination. I understand the forces that have driven Scottish independence, but equally, the devolution settlement that was introduced by Tony Blair enabled the SNP,
Once it finally won power in Scotland, to claim all the successes of the British state as its own and blame all the mistakes on Westminster. So it was a very convenient outcome, I think, for Alex Sammon and Nicholas Sturgeon. But which other serious country would have a husband
And wife team as Prime Minister and Chief Executive? I mean, in many ways, I’d mind Nicholas Sturgeon as a politician, but her husband was CEO of the SNP for 22 years. And as this begins to unravel, and of course, no one’s been charged, a lot of Scottish voters are
Turning away from the party. And also, no nationalism is entirely benign. And there is definitely on the harder edges of the SNP, or the Scottish independence movement from quite unpleasant agitators, I think. We saw that in the so-called activities of the Slibernats online during the referendum campaign. But I understand the forces that
Have driven Scottish independence. And I don’t think the English have had a forum in which to discuss what it is to be English today. The Labour Party seems very, very anxious about the English question. They’re very happy to embrace Scottishness in Scotland, Welshness in Wales. But it’s Britain.
It’s the Union Jack rather than the flag of St George in England. And I’ve asked Keir Starmer about this. He always looks a bit edgy when I do. Of course, we’re a patriotic party, or he’s trying to reclaim Labour as a patriotic party, because those who came before many, many doubted their
Belief in the institutions, or their support for the institutions of the British state. But there’s still uneasiness about the English question, I think. Yes, and you talk about a sort of fear amongst politicians of what would be unleashed if there was a sort of recognition of the importance
Of Englishness or Englishness in its own entity. Yes, but it’s been suppressed, hasn’t it? But if you look at someone like Gareth Southgate, the England football manager, I think he’s one of the most thoughtful and interesting commentators on Englishness today. I mean, he’s both a traditionalist and a patriot,
But he’s also open to the diversity of his young team and indeed embraces and encourages it. Why should a football manager, I mean, he’s a very intelligent man, but why should a football manager be braver to discuss these issues than our politicians? I think what’s very interesting is in a time of
Rolling 24-hour media and social media, sometimes it’s people like the England football manager or a big music star like Stormzy, who can relate to people more immediately and more effectively than politicians who… We’re again, and I want to move off politics because there’s some other great stories,
Who are not really telling us the truth for fear of our reaction to that truth. And again, please buy the book because there’s some great statistics and some great stories in there about politicians trying to navigate this very difficult pathway between, “Well, we’re going to have to sign up to this, but if
We tell everyone this, that’s going to cause this.” And so we’ll just sort of carry on and brush it under the carpet. And maybe that’s a bit British as well. I know we were called out by the Dutch prime minister during the Maastricht Treaty saying, “You’re not going to tell them, are you?”
You’re not prepared to tell the truth. You’re not prepared to tell the truth to the Brits. He could see it and we weren’t told the truth. So again, a great path for the story. Just a little coda on that though. I think it’s also because in the 1970s, the flag of
St. George was claimed by the father of far rights, the fact the neo-fascist right, the BMP and others. And understandably, there’s anxiety about that kind of hard-edged, hard-core, unpleasant, exclusionary English nationalism. But why should we allow a few extreme far-right thugs to define what it means to be English
And to have ownership of the flag? And we’ve begun to see in recent years the flag be reclaimed. There’s something benign and open and inclusive, much closer to what Britishness is, the British identity, which is a very welcoming identity. And I think since the Second World War, no European
Country has absorbed so many migrants in the way that… So you have to be careful here because of course there’s been periods of racism and exclusion. But I think Britain on the whole has been admirable in the way it’s absorbed new communities into the country.
And I think one event can speak volumes and I just want to read another passage. So you may remember during the Black Lives Matter rallies post the death of George Floyd in America, it was hugely emotional. We had Keir Starmer taking the knee, footballers taking the knee. That was quite comic, though.
And kind of people were going, “What, are you woke signaling? You know, am I going to get cancelled?” All these words we have now. But quietly, one man’s, there was a big Black Lives Matter movement, well, I should say demonstration of support in London. And the EDL were turning up
There with that flag, I guess. EDL being the English defense. Tommy Robinson and his chum. Exactly. So again, we have the use of the George flag there. But one man who, a very large Black guy, thought, “Do you know what? There could be a bit of trouble down there today.
I’m just going to go down from my home. I’m just going to check it out.” And I want to remind you of what happened that day when he went down. Later that afternoon, something remarkable happened to Patrick Hutchinson. He’s this guy who went down that
Changed his life and set him on a new path. During clashes outside Waterloo Station on the South Bank, he noticed one of the counterprotesters, so one of the EDL. A shaven-headed white man wearing a T-shirt and denim shorts had become isolated. A multiracial mob was closing in on
Him at the top of a flight of stairs where he had stumbled. “I cannot watch a man being beaten to death,” Hutchinson thought. Without hesitation, he made his way through the crowd. The way he thinks as many as 300 people gathered around. Employing a fireman’s carry, he scooped up the fallen man.
And with his comrades creating a protective corridor, he carried him through the crowd to safety and delivered him to a group of nearby police officers who, rather than intervene, had been using selfie sticks to film the unrest on their phones. So again, we’ve got the establishments, politicians, police. All very difficult for them.
They’re all navigating difficult times. But two individual men representing two very different belief systems, different cultures, different sort of lenses through which they view their own identity. That interaction caught, obviously, on social media, hugely powerful. A Gillian Duffy moment, a Patrick Hudge’s moment, a Gareth Southgate moment, a football moment.
It brings unity, doesn’t it? It’s the lens that we see we are changing. Yeah, I like these little moments of these small interventions that have a greater meaning. They’re microcosms for something more meaningful and deeper, I think. And I admire courage when someone intervenes at a moment of crisis.
And it’s worth looking at the photographs of this character, Patrick Hudge, carrying this, you know, essentially a thug on his back, but probably saved his life or saved him getting a really terrifying beating. And that was a noble moment, a noble intervention. And it’s about building reconciliation, creating moments of harmony,
Reaching out across difference. That’s what interests me. I don’t like antagonism and hostility and hatreds and strident abuse. You know, I want a more dignified way of conducting our politics and public life. And I found that very moving, actually, as a consequence. I think it’s very interesting
That you talk about in the book, because again, I think we all recognise that. You know, I think we are a gentle, kind, decent, dignified nation. Have you spent Saturday night in Newcastle, see sense? I haven’t, but I would still believe that. But, you know, you talk about the
Fact that sort of England’s narrative, you know, what do we say about ourselves? You know, again, talk about the Scots, have a great narrative. Yeah. And the English really lack a narrative. But interestingly, you note that a melancholy nostalgia is present from the very beginning of English literature about ourselves.
What is this melancholy nostalgia that we have? What is our narrative? It’s a very good question. I think on England, there are many England’s and many, many different England’s. So when you say England is sort of gentle and kind, there are examples of the opposite, of course. So, loss and melancholy.
It is there right at the beginnings of English literature. You know, it’s there in Shakespeare. It’s there in Chaucer. But it almost goes back even deeper than that before the Norman Conquest. This idea that there was a deeper, more pure, a true England, that has somehow, somewhere been lost. And often for many,
Englishness is associated with landscape and the countryside and the rural rather than the city. But it’s there. It’s not just a recent phenomenon since the Second World War, the loss of empire. It’s there right in landscape poetry or lyric poetry. And think of some of the great speeches in
Shakespeare, John of Gaunt and so on. As I say, it’s there in Chaucer. But there is a sort of recognisable England, which an Anglo-Saxon settlement recognisably calling itself England, a unitary state, going back before the Norman Conquest. And it’s an old, old country. So when Tony Blair in 1995 said,
“I want to lead a young country.” You know, “I want this to be a young country.” You know, as if such a thing can be whirled into being. It’s a very old country. As is Scotland. And the Act of Union, what was it, 1707, created the state we call Great Britain today,
The complex multinational state. But there’s something much older than that. And who do you think is responsible for getting that narrative out? So our politicians have singularly failed. I’m trying. Yes, good. You are happening. So we aren’t called Britannia. We’re not all of those things. And again, Scotland seems to
Have this very strong identity. Do you think it’s going to be the media that creates that narrative? Or do you think it is a narrative that emerges from our communities and our culture? So again, let’s touch on Wootton Bassett. No doubt. I think it’s the latter.
I think again, that comes through the book. So we’ve talked about one moment in time there. Let’s talk about Wootton Bassett as an emerging demonstration of our national identity, maybe. Yeah, Wootton Bassett, if you recall, is the town in Wiltshire, small town, small market town.
And by chance, really, the bodies of the fallen soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq were coming back to Linum, RAF Linum. Bryce Norton, where they should have come back, the runway was closed. So they were coming back into Linum on their way back to the John Ratcliffe Hospital in Oxford.
And just by chance, Wootton Bassett was on the route through which the Hursians were carrying the bodies of the fallen soldiers. And early on, something began to stir within the town as the as the cars passed through and people began to appear along this very long, narrow high street.
And gradually, something began to build spontaneously, wasn’t wasn’t directed from the top, wasn’t organized. It was simply the local people coming together to honor those who have been fallen. And then as time went on, the cars began to stop. There was a kind of ceremony of mourning.
And my wife’s cousin was the hundredth soldier to be repatriated through Wootton Bassett. He was a bomb hunter, a sapper from the Royal Engineers, and he was out in Helmand Province looking for IEDs. And just behind him was the guy who would would diffuse the bomb if Lauren Molton
Thomas, the bomb hunter found one. And he was walking very quietly one Sunday morning in Helmand Province, very hot, dry morning. And he’s foot became trapped in a hole in the ground. And he stopped, tried to move his foot and couldn’t. And his friend behind said, you know, what’s the problem here?
He said, I think I’m trapped. I’ve trodden something. So the other soldier, chap called Ken Bellringer, came over to find out what had happened. And he saw that Lauren’s foot was in what he thought was a rabbit hole. But when he looked more carefully at it, it had very straight edges.
It was certainly not been made by a rabbit or an animal. And they realized it was an IED. But it may have been disturbed and hadn’t gone off. Under under military rule, this is what’s called a category A situation. And Ken Bellringer could have left left Lauren there trapped.
He could have said, look, I’m going to get I’m going to get some help and not returned. But actually, he stayed and tried to lift my wife’s cousin out of the trap. And you can imagine what happened next. Lauren was blown into a nearby wadi dead. Ken Bellringer’s legs were blown off.
His testicles were destroyed, damaged. He lost fingers. You know, he was the most severely injured soldier in Afghanistan, but survived. Although it’s profoundly disabled, but Lauren Molton Thomas. Came through with that as the hundredth as the hundredth fallen soldier. Inevitably, that that that caught my attention.
But what I liked about the wooden basic repatriations was that it wasn’t something that came from the top. It wasn’t something that people were told to do. It was a local community mobilizing not politically. To honor the fallen, and it very quickly became a site of conflict. The English Defense League got involved.
They turned up, you know, wrapping themselves in the flag. A hard line Islamist group was threatening to have its own parades through the town with an empty coffin. Because they wanted the British government to consider the Muslim dead. As a consequence of the American led invasion. So it immediately became
Something greater than what it was. It caught the attention of the world’s press. Barack Obama spoke about it. And very soon the world’s media was descending upon this this this this small town in Wiltshire. And I the chapter about what ambassadors I call it the
Is it the town that went the town that wept and something noble happened there. Something something meaningful. And I wanted to go back and think about it. Think about what happened and what it meant. What it told us about the kind of people that we are.
You might sound a bit of a romantic, but I think these kinds of things matter and they shouldn’t they shouldn’t be forgotten. I think it’s a particularly touching moment when you talk about a fallen dog handler was back and the all of the people brought their dogs out.
And you could just hear the dogs in the silence. It’s deeply touching. And again, it’s our culture on display. And I think one of the things I take about a takeout from your book and I’m going to come to questions now is the culture is really bigger than anything. Yes.
You know, history, your culture is built on your history and obviously your national psyche. And it kind of eats politics. It eats any given moment in time. But every so often it emerges and you see it on display. And as you say, it’s not a top down thing.
We can’t be told who we are or how to behave or what we should be. It comes from the edges and it grows up through us through time. And I think there was a great I’m just trying to find it here because I think there’s a wonderful Orwellian
Quote, which is “England has the power to change out of recognition and yet to remain the same.” I’ve got that quote here. We both pick the same one. Good. It’s a wonderful quote. I think it’s important. Orwell, Orwell again. Orwell 1940. What can the England of 1840 have
In common with the England of 1940? But then what have you in common with the child of five whose photograph your mother keeps on the mantelpiece? Orwell says nothing except that you happen to be the same person. That’s beautiful. That’s a definition of national identity. It really is. Something everything changes,
But something remains the same. That’s what interests me. And I think again, what I really took out of this book is that all of these headlines we read, they’re not it’s not a headline. It’s not a moment in time. It’s a reflection of who we are. And it’s often had an
Impact of who we are becoming to. So again, it’s made me think about how I absorb big news stories and what they really mean. What’s the media long gone and we’ve stopped talking about it. There’s just that little shift and that little refining. But it’s still very much a
Reflection of who we always were. Wonderful. And the stories we tell tell us who we are. So that’s why I tell stories in this book rather than pontificate and polemicize. It is. It’s very it’s a very, very human read. I’m going to take you to where I go.
Oh, no, for me. I’m all about the stories. Thank you. Anyway, thank you so much again. It’s so hard when there’s so much to talk about. Yeah, thank you so much. A few bits. But let’s let’s come to everybody here. If you’ve got any questions, I’ve got a lady at the back there.
There’s a microphone coming. Thank you very much. That was very inspiring, very thoughtful. And my question changed about five times during the talk. I have to own up. I’m a West Essex girl. I’m from Loughton. So I know. I know Loughton. I’m fortunate to be able to live here and in London.
Yeah. And for many years, I felt they were two different countries. Yeah. But recently, as a result of the lockdown, London has changed. My neighborhood has changed now. It’s changed all recognitions since I first moved there 30 years ago to that district. And it’s now people from everywhere. But the sense of community
Is one I recognize from here. Can anyone become English? Yes, I think so. I think I think it’s not about blood and soil or ethnicity. It’s about committing to, as you say, a community of belonging. And that’s the key. And I would never wish to exclude anyone who wishes
Wishes wishes to identify as English and be English. And we see that, I think, beautifully in the in our sports teams. And then we are we are a diverse and open society. It’s interesting what you say about London, because some say London was the fifth nation of the of the United Kingdom.
And it’s in many ways, it’s a sort of vast and unknowable city. But also it’s a city of interconnecting urban villages. And I was wandering around part of West London recently. I didn’t know at all. And it was like a little bit like wandering around the Isle of Wight.
Just once I got off the main road and turned into into certain neighborhoods, there was small shops and people, small coffee shops, bakery and greengrocer and people going about their business. I like that very much. So, yeah, good that you’re from Loughton. I know Loughton well. Anyone else from Loughton? You sir.
From Loughton. No. I think it’s crazy, I mean, we’ve said that there are nine and eleven times. Yeah, I do. When you said you were in a round match. Yes. In England, yes, Scotland. Scotland is very far from Scotland. I know. That’s touched on in the book. Yeah. I do think that’s strange.
And I do. I do touch on it in the book because maybe it shouldn’t, but it does bother me, actually. Recently, when England played Scotland in football, Scots sang the flower of Scotland and a national anthem was absolutely abused. It’s also their anthem as well.
And I understand maybe it was just sort of pantomime brewing, but it was pretty ferocious. The cricket team used Jerusalem, don’t they, sometimes? Did the rugby team use Jerusalem? Although I noticed for the cricket match yesterday, England got actually smashed by New Zealand. But maybe because it was a World
Cup, God Save the Queen had returned. But yeah, it is an interesting question there. I don’t know what others think of whether England should have its own national anthem as opposed to God Save the King. Hands up. Yeah. Who’s relaxed on this issue that don’t mind at all?
And quite a few don’t know. Like a perfect opinion poll. That’s a good question, I think. Great question. There’s a lady at the front. So a lady asked, has the term multiculturalism backfired or failed? This was Swella Breveman, wasn’t it? Her comment she made last week. She’s an extraordinary politician, isn’t she?
I mean, that speech she gave at conference. I mean, that’s probably the most hardline anti-immigration speech I’ve seen given by a mainstream conservative politician for decades. I mean, really going back to sort of the early 70s or the mid 70s, depends what I think multiculturalism, it’s sort of it’s really complex
Because I’m not quite sure what it means. Does it mean there’s a coexistence of cultures and one respects those cultures? I think I think that’s one definition. Is there a majority culture and minority cultures? And you extend your liberal respect and tolerance to the minority cultures? I think that’s the case.
But where it becomes more problematic is when the minority culture rejects the majority culture as can be seen at times. And then it becomes contested. But most modern states, most modern European states are now both multi-ethnic and multicultural. Therefore, the key for me is how do you bring sort of diverse communities together?
How do you create an overriding national identity which helps us all cohere and live harmoniously? And that’s the key question I think for me. It’s called the National Health Service. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I agree with that. I agree with that and love to… You don’t use it at all.
No. And those institutions that sort of transcend the individual nations of the multinational state and bring everyone together, they’re very important and there aren’t many of them left. The BBC, the NHS, what else can we think of? Football. But we’ve waited to our international teams and clubs. Oh, yes, of course we do.
Maybe the Olympics when GB… But I do agree with you about the NHS and I would say the BBC, although the BBC in many ways deserves some of the criticism it gets, I mean, it really does. And I have my own problems with the BBC. There’s still something sort of noble about the
Original idea behind it to inform, what is it, to inform, educate and entertain. The Ruthian values. There’s something noble about that. But these are great questions because these are live issues, multiculturalism, what brings people together, what brings diverse communities together, how do you help diverse communities to go here?
I mean, I might obsess about them. Others are very relaxed about these issues, but they certainly interest me. You talked a little bit about hoping that Covid and lockdown would give us a chance to reflect and reset and think about our values a little bit. Did it change?
As Miss Lady talked about, you know, the community in London and here and how it changed. Do you think Covid and lockdown and the shared experience, the pandemics changed England in any way? I mean, it’s certainly changed England. You can’t live through the shock of the pandemic, the
Worst pandemic in Europe for 100 years and not be changed by it. And I still think we’re grappling with the consequences of Covid and the lockdowns that followed, not least for children who what happened in schools. And my son’s 14, he’s an only child. And he really didn’t like being locked down, couldn’t
See his friends, couldn’t play sport, didn’t enjoy Zoom teaching. And I think the long term and also there’s what are we now? Five hundred thousand children, so-called ghost children have disappeared from schools, have never gone back after lockdown. So, yes, we’ve been changed by it.
I was hoping that the social solidarity that was no doubt shown during that period would change the way we interacted, worked, communicated. I don’t think it has. What it has changed is how we work. I mean, people don’t go into the office as much. It’s probably a good thing.
Sometimes I turn up in my office on a Friday. There’s no one there. I hope they’re having a long weekend. But, yeah, it has changed us, but it’s so recent that I think we’re still trying to understand how. Do you agree? Yes, I do. But I think the change is going to
Come through the generation behind us. Yes. I think it’s a generational shift through their experiences built on the shoulders of our history. And they’re growing up in a very, very different country to the one even we did. I think that’s right. Again, if there’s hope, it lies beyond.
Yeah, I would say because I think it comes it comes from underneath. Change comes from the sides and underneath not by being told. You know, a lot of corporations have discussions around what’s our mission purpose. Who are we? You know, what’s our role in the world? What are our values? And you
Can’t really sit down as who? The monarchy, the political parties, you know, who’s going to have that conversation about England? Yeah. You know, if you don’t inherently know that, you can’t really just enforce it. So we see it through these stories and moments in time, don’t we?
I also think huge changes are coming because of the climate climate climate emergency. The energy transition over the next decades ahead. I mean, I think I think the change, the way we work and consume, how we how we receive our energy supplies and so on will be will be utterly transformed.
And then you were into the mix comes AI, artificial intelligence, you know, the new robotics and machine learning that again is going to utterly change. I mean, so long as there are catastrophic wars in the in the decades ahead, which is entirely possible, as we know from human history, unimaginable what the
World would be like in 100, 100 to 150 years. I mean, really unimaginable, I think, because of because of new technologies and the changes that we’ve experienced in our lifetime. Imagine how they’re going to be accelerated by artificial intelligence. There’d be two robots sitting here before too long. We have a question there.
And in the start, we’re laying chests to the effect of human human beings. Oh, boy, I’m glad I’m not a politician. That’s a tough question. I need to think more about what’s happening now. I think we have a comment piece in the New Statesman this week, which
Because we like big and we like sort of a role for an active state, an intervention estate. We don’t like leaving everything to the market and market forces. But clearly, there was a lot of control over over Hs2 and its budgets. But I do worry about connectivity in the north.
Because if you imagine Hs2 was kind of is that is that a T? So you had the line going up to Manchester and then the line going east and west. And as I understood it, the line going north was was the hub that connected everything else.
So you try getting a train from sort of leads to Manchester or from Leeds to Liverpool. Yeah, you can’t get anywhere. So and I have family in the northwest. So I know I know that that that part of the country very well. And it’s got a very good interconnected motorway network.
But try getting anywhere on trains. What do you think about it? I think it’s a far from. Yeah, I think that’s a definitive statement. Yeah, I have another question. Oh, up to three now. So gentlemen, the back or over here. I thought the comments you made about how the Brexit
Vote, the perhaps unexpected Brexit vote was an opportunity for people who felt they were unrepresented, didn’t have a stake in England to make their point. I offer no value judgment on this at all. But I simply observe that a greater and greater proportion of people are now recognising that
It might have been a terrible mistake. Do you think that’s a fair price to pay for democracy? It’s a good question. Yeah, I’m a great believer in democracy, but I’m very suspicious of referendums. And I think it was probably too much of a strategic risk to on something as fundamental
As your your your national interest in your foreign policy to cast it out on a binary one binary plebiscite. Simple yes and no. There could have been a better way of doing it. I understand there was a lot of unrest and agitation about the European question.
There hadn’t been a referendum since 1975 when Howard Wilson’s Labour Party sort of confirmed British membership of the then European community. But there could have been a more smarter way of doing this, maybe two referenda, rather than just one maybe building in a majority. 6040. It’s such a it’s such a huge change.
Can you imagine the Chinese losing control of their foreign policy in the way that the British did? I imagine what will happen is I presume Keir Starmer wins the election next year. He won’t seek to take Britain back into the European Union, but he will seek closer relations.
He’d be more pragmatic than the present conservative government here seek to build alliances. A civil a senior diplomat said to me at the time of the Brexit referendum, he said it would take 10 years to leave, properly, 10 years to realise it hasn’t worked and 10
Years to get back in on the terms that you want. But that’s a long cycle, 30 years. So who knows what the European Union will be like in 20 years. Another question. [INAUDIBLE] Yeah. Sorry, I’ll just say the latest part about lack of information. If we’d had different information,
Would have been a different outcome. Yeah, because I think who knows. But I think the process should have been different, as I just said to the gentleman’s question. It could have been a citizen’s assemblies before the vote. A second vote, once you realise what the terms of leaving would actually be.
You can do this smarter and better in the way that Ireland, for example, debated the abortion question in Ireland and how that was then changed. But a lot of that involved citizen’s assemblies. And you can do this much smarter than David Cameron did it. David Cameron was supremely confident, insouciant
Even, smooth, fluent, presentable, a good speaker, used to winning until he didn’t till the day he lost. I remember a story I was told by Ken Clark, the Europhile conservative cabinet member who returned to the Osborne Cameron cabinet, pro-European. And when he knew that Cameron wanted to hold his
In-out referendum, he pulled David Cameron to one side and said, “David, do you know the risk you’re taking? What if we lose?” And David Cameron took Ken Clark’s arm and said, “Don’t worry Ken, I always win.” Really? So what information could have been given to
You to make everything clear for people to base a better decision upon, I presume. Explain exactly what your membership of the European Union Intel. What was the customs union? What is the single market? Why was there freedom of movement? What would be lost if we left certain alliances and
What institutions would leave London, for example? What about the Erasmus scheme? What about the movement of students? So much could have been explained better. I’m interested in politics, but I didn’t know as much as I should have done about how the European Union worked. And I just don’t think…
I mean, it’s disastrous the way David Cameron handled it. But I think, again, what I learned from your book was it really goes back to the master’s treaty. It’s kind of where it began, the lack of being able to be totally transparent about freedom of movement. Absolutely. That’s where it all started.
And if you’re honest then, you can’t suddenly start being honest. You couldn’t suddenly let the truth of all of it out. So again, I encourage you to read that because there’s a whole section on Brexit, which is great. But I agree with that. And also, freedom of movement.
After the Eastern states, the so-called accession states joined the European Union after 2004, there was something called transition controls. Seven years, is it? Seven years, transition controls? France, Germany, Spain, Italy, the big economies all imposed transition controls on the Eastern states. In other words, a block on freedom of movement. Blair didn’t.
Britain, Sweden, and Ireland didn’t. So they immediately were opened for freedom of movement. And the Labour government at the time said their estimate was there would be between eight and 13,000 people from the Eastern Europe arriving in Britain a year. 13,000? I mean, we know what happened.
I mean, we know what the numbers were. And the strains, perhaps, that poor– It was a million in those intervening years. It was 13,000 per year. But there was no preparation. There was no open discussion. There was a series of botched promises, miscalculations. So you’re right.
A lot of it is bad government, a failure to talk openly about the truth of the matter. It would have been really opening the whole book again, which wouldn’t necessarily have been a bad thing. One last question if anyone’s got one. That hand went up first. I’m sorry. Yes.
I think your hand up went up. Can we get the mic, please? The mic. I’m just wondering how much you think that the concept of Englishness is affected by regionalism. Because so many people think of themselves as Cornish or from Tyneside or Yorkshire, and then they are English. I agree with that.
And that’s– I like that. I like the idea that we have multiple or compound or hyphenated identities. You can be a Yorkshire woman, Muslim, English, and British. Some areas have less distinct local and regional identities, though, don’t they? And I mentioned Newcastle, Philly, Santo on a Saturday night.
Very strong identity in Essex, actually. If you think of all of the counties in England, Essex has a particular identity, although it’s a very diverse county. You have the sea, you have an epic forest, you have rural Essex, you have the new towns, and so on. But there’s a particular caricature of Essex.
We all know what it is. We know the only way is Essex. Educating Essex. Can you imagine the only way is Bedfordshire? Or educating Hertfordshire? It doesn’t quite work, does it? So certain parts of the country have much stronger identities to which people, therefore, are inevitably attached. I think that’s good.
That’s all part of the diversity of the nation. Impossible questions to answer. Well, amazing. And actually, you’ve brought us right back to the importance of community, which is where the whole book starts. So it’s a perfect ending. So thank you so much, Jason. So much to cover. I really recommend the book.
I’m not just saying that. I’ve heard it so much. Thank you so much for your questions. And Jason will be signing. So we’re going to walk up to the marquee, I believe, which is where the book signing area is. Very cool. Thank you.