The late Tom Nairn writing in New Left Review 1/24 had a pithy summary of what English identity means which may be useful to Mr Jenrick…
“English separateness and provincialism; English backwardness and traditionalism; English religiosity and moralistic vapouring; paltry English ‘empiricism,’ or instinctive distrust of reason …”
Nairn was Scottish but this was part of an argument that he developed with Perry Anderson in New Left Review in the 1960s. The view was that Britain had had at best an incomplete bourgeois revolution and was therefore stuck hopelessly in the past.
E P Thompson’s well known riposte was published in the Socialist Register (1965) as Peculiarities of the English. Notwithstanding that Jenrick is a nasty and ill intentioned racist albeit very likely someway short of leadership potential. That doesnt mean he wont be Tory leader of course
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