The British government has finally woken up to the idea of nationhood. The recently unveiled review of British citizenship suggests a “Britishness Day” and the swearing of an oath of allegiance to the Queen by school children. You might think that – like a hungry trout that sees only the worm, and not the fisherman’s hook – the nation would rise up to bite this morsel of Britishness. “Britishness”, after all – and even as it remains undefined – is the Prime Ministers new word.

But, his word means nothing, of course. He is a politician, and, worse still, a Labour politician – and, who can forget, elections are looming. Unsurprisingly, reaction by British citizens was overwhelmingly negative, with some rejecting the idea of an oath because it was too American and “un-British”, and others because they don’t like the Queen or are opposed to monarchy as a general rule. Many more Brits see it as nothing more than a desperate bid to claw back a few of constituents. A collection of entirely crass individuals, Labour has hardly disguised its contempt for Britishness. As far back as 1999 one-time leader of the Conservative Party William Hague denounced the government, saying:

Because New Labour do not understand the British way, they pursue policies which not only threaten our political institutions but also, because those institutions shape our national character, threaten Britain itself. This is not some academic threat [...] here in Westminster, we find a Government which, you could be forgiven for believing, thinks that British history started on 1st May 1997, [and] that understands nothing about our traditions except that it wants to destroy them

Destroy them it has. British history is hardly even taught at school today, having been replaced by lessons on ‘citizenship’, and the culture of other countries. After years of attempting to destroy Britishness once and for all, so that it might have a political blank slate of faux socialism, the people aren’t buying the sudden burst of flag waving. Nor does Labour seem to believe its own hype.

Since the Prime Minister’s conversion, the Labour government has stripped the Queen’s personal attendant, ‘Black Rod’ (a position created in 1350 A.D.), of most of his functions, which will be handed over to a bureaucrat. Likewise, the laudably titled “Culture Minister”, Margaret Hodge, has publicly denounced the country’s foremost patriotic ceremony, the Proms (a series of concerts that conclude with a night of patriotic compositions and the national anthem, with the audience waving the Union Jack). For Hodge, its just too traditionally British, and not representative of modern, multicultural Britain.

In Labour’s eyes “Britishness” is, or should be, a synonym for “multiculturalism”; without the latter the former has no existence, and no purpose. A section entitled, “British Culture” on the government’s website for the U.S., states that “Like the US, Britain is proud of its multicultural heritage”, and an accompanying section “The History of Multicultural Britain” seems to suggest that ancient Britain was as nearly ethnically diverse as the modern country, or perhaps more-so. In this supposed British history, the largest paragraph out of only nine is on the Muslim community, and the word “Muslims” appears four times while “Celts”, “Angles”, “Saxons”, “Norse”, and “Danes” appear only once. “English”, “Irish”, “Scottish”, “Welsh”, and “White” don’t appear at all.

Again, as Prime Minister Gordon Brown invokes “Britishness” at every turn, he erodes it in policy and practice. He himself has recently confined the figure of Britannia to the trash. This embodiment of Britain as goddess-figure has endured for nearly 2,000 years, as if proof of the nation’s defining fortitude and spirit, and emblematic of its history and culture. It was on ancient Roman coins in use in Britain and had been re-adopted for the country’s coinage nearly two centuries before America became an independent nation, but will, with the Prime Minister’s signature, be replaced by a more modern symbol for the modern, less traditionally British country.