One of the more comical adventures occupying the best brains of the Leftist establishment (or at least it would be comical if it didn’t have such catastrophic implications) is their on-going mission to construct what might be described as an ‘inclusive identity’. By this is meant an idea of Britishness that can incorporate all who live here now and all those who might conceivably come to live here in the future. People that is. Of all ethnicities, racial types, religious affiliations, sexual orientations and so on ad-infinitum. The phrases ‘British sense of fair play’ and ’traditional British values such as tolerance’ are nauseatingly familiar to anyone who picks up a newspaper from time to time and are seemingly intended to form the back-bone of the new ‘national identity’. The reason for this is two-fold. These values have to be taken to unnatural extremes to avoid the inevitable conflict generated by multiculturalism/racialism. But also these concepts are sufficiently banal as to be able to encompass virtually anyone with ease.

The problems facing the Left are insurmountable. There is no such thing as an ‘inclusive identity’ and trying to formulate one is like trying to square the circle, in other words, it is impossible. Identity by its very nature is exclusive. Identity is what a person or social group constructs in order to distinguish itself from others and something that is shared by all parties simply does not function as a means of identifying ‘self’ from ‘other’. Those within a social group can share a social identity with each other, but this as the term suggests is what distinguishes them collectively from other social groups. A social identity is not meaningful at an intra-group level. English people for example do not use their Englishness to affirm a sense of self among other English people, If every one around you were English it would be nothing exceptional, what would be the point. Collectively though, in relation to other nations, nationality is a meaningful part of who we are.

Another illustration is provided by the liberal sentiment of humanitarianism. This is perfectly acceptable in a certain context I will agree, but ridiculous in others. The basis of the humanitarian view for some people is that we all share a common human identity and that this should somehow form the basis of who we are and motivate us accordingly. Now empathy is one thing, but to argue that my status as a human-being can be used to provide me with a sense of self is nonsense. Every intelligent life form I have ever come into contact with has been human and so the term has no currency as a means of identification. I am aware intellectually that I am a human, of course, but never have I identified my self as such in relation to anyone else. The only way that our humanity can become a source of identity to us is if we were to come into contact with some alien civilisation. But in this instance you can be sure that the Left will dump humanitarianism like an old bag of potatoes and instead embrace ‘carbon-based-life-form-ism’.

Constructing and maintaining an identity is at heart a right-wing matter. Sentient creatures construct a mental image of themselves in order to navigate their way through life. In some ways, identity is to the human mind what the immune system is to the body, namely, a method of self-preservation. The Left have never been concerned with the business of self-preservation, preferring instead to concentrate always on ‘other’. For this reason, no state can afford to leave its left-wing in control for long, if at all. They will destroy us more effectively than any war could ever do.

The problem of inclusiveness forces the British Left to describe our nationality in ever-more meaningless ways. If Britain is to include people of all religious faiths for example, then the British social identity cannot be synonymous with one particular faith. We must not be permitted therefore to define Britain as a Christian nation (This, despite the fact that for most of the people living here Christian traditions are the primary, if not only, means of religious expression). Likewise, if Britain is to be able to incorporate West Africans and Chinese people, the British social identity cannot be given a particular face. If Britishness is to include those who have only recently arrived, then British identity must not even be defined by place of birth. You get the picture!

If the extreme Left remain in power, there will be no real British social identity at all and therefore no British society. The only option for the establishment, if it were in any way inclined to maintain some semblance of order, is to forcibly engineer an identity that is purely political, meaning in essence that inclusion is nothing more intimate than a set of official documents handed down from a remote bureaucracy. This of course is not a real identity at all, at least not one that any thinking or feeling person would accept. A solely political identity puts me in mind of the Ingsoc party in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. The State is best as a servant of the people, not the master. For this, there needs to be a people defined independently of the State itself. A real society. This is of course the impulse that brought the political philosophy of Nationalism into being, although not many on the left would be prepared to admit it today.

Although it is beyond the scope of the article to discuss the meaning of nationality, it‘s worth pointing out that a community such as America is not founded upon a solely political identity, at least it wasn’t originally anyway. The American State was instrumental in defining what it meant to be an American for sure but American society did not identify itself with the State alone. In the days when America was European dominated (culturally and racially), American identity was as much to do with roots and Christian faith as it was to do with being a part of the State community. What’s more perhaps, is that even before the republic was founded, generations had been and gone since the first settlers had arrived and so the USA is more the creation of a people than were the people moulded by politics. In a time gone by, before the idea of ‘a nation of immigrants’ became popular, the new-world pioneers seemed content to let themselves continue to grow organically into a healthy people.