On flags and fascists

ere I come back to Gordon Brown’s explicit suggestion to achieve a new harmonious order under the flag of a unified British national identity.

The ethnic/civic divide

Barack Obama is about to lead a country with millions and millions of houses the front gardens of which are decorated with American flags. Gordon Brown’s own brand of patriotic fervour would like to see something similar happening in his country. More about it next time. This time, our topic as such is not the good international news following the catastrophe of a global financial quasi-meltdown. There is plenty of it anywhere else. Our topic is still how Gordon Brown goes on about his mission of articulating a sense of ‘progressive’ British national identity. To do so, almost three years down the line, I still take as reference the symptomatic keynote speech he delivered in the Fabian (Society’s) Future of Britishness Conference (14 January 2006). This week I go academic and I  do a bit of name-dropping. Next week I’ll look at it from a more political angle.