After a 14-year stretch as a one-woman parliamentary party, Green MP Caroline Lucas will stand down from the House of Commons at the next general election. This book, as parting shot, may be a surprise to some: it’s an appeal to her fellow progressives to speak up for England. An England, she worries, that too many of them fear and see in terms of a rising English consciousness, belonging to the right, something they don’t feel part of – “as if the flag of St George is little better than the hammer and sickle or the swastika” – and so seek to keep it tamed and suppressed within a broader Britishness.
Lucas feels that this is wrong: a view that was the result of a journey that began with losing the Brexit referendum and leaving her liberal, cosmopolitan Brighton constituency to talk to those on the other side. Not so much was said, explicitly, about England in that 2016 referendum. Eurosceptic campaigns invariably preferred the union flag and told stories about British history, identity and sovereignty. But Lucas comes to see these as primarily reflecting an expression of English identity, noting that the arguments for taking back control from London’s elites resonated most strongly with those who prioritised their Englishness over their British identity (while recognising that Brexiters secured a narrow majority in Wales, too).
Lucas finds that progressive instincts on how to talk about identity – such as “myth-busting” narratives on the right – too often become exercises in preaching to the already converted. She notes that it is unlikely that Sir Francis Drake continued to play bowls while the Spanish armada arrived in 1588, but also that legends often retain their potency even after being debunked. She suggests that an emotionally intelligent, progressive politics might focus a little less on factchecking and a bit more on how to compete to shape the myths, memories and stories that shape who we think we are to progressive ends. How the legend of Robin Hood was reshaped over the centuries, for example. Since identity is about the stories we tell ourselves, Lucas looks for her new England primarily in her first love, literature, diving deep into how the literary canon, from Chaucer and John Donne to Virgina Woolf and Zadie Smith, tells a contested, plural story of England with many tributaries flowing into it.
