Oh goody, the Fabian’s have come with an 11-point plan for a new definition of ‘Britishness’ (yawn), let’s see what they have to say

Write down the constitution

While we now have a Human Rights Act, the lack of public debate over its introduction means that it is not embedded in our political system. The lesson should be that the public process by which we renew our political system and create a homegrown Bill of Rights will be as important as the outcome. If it is to renew our democracy, further constitutional changes must arise not from a committee of the great and good but after a “great national debate” involving the largest public deliberative gatherings ever conducted: what rights and responsibilities should we have? What role should religion play in a society of many faiths and none? Should more power be held locally? Is the electoral system fair? Could voting be considered a duty of all citizens? This could then lead to a British constitutional convention.

Ok, we’re actually off to a pretty good start. A written constitution, a proper bill of rights and a ‘great national debate’ – yeah I can go for that.

Except, what all this about “the role of religion in a society of may faiths and none� – what the fuck has that got to do with a written constitution which is about defining the lawful governance of the country, the role of the various institutions of state and, crucially, the boundary between the legitimate authority of the state and the rights of its citizens. This doesn’t need debating, it just needs an express constitutional separation of church and state and a basic right to freedom of religious observance, whatever role god-bothers then want to play in wider society is up to them.

Should more power be held locally? Yes.

Is the electoral system fair? No.

Could voting be considered a duty of all citizens? Only if ballot papers include a box marked ‘fuck the lot of you’.

Renew our national symbols

The monarchy, which retains strong public support across ethnicity and faith, could be an important symbol of a renewed Britishness. We would best end gender discrimination in the rules of succession - where an elder daughter of Prince William would lose out to a younger son - well before the prince were to marry. The next coronation should be a new multi-faith ceremony with a new coronation oath where the monarch pledges to serve the people and the democratic institutions. But change needs be discussed now: there will be little time or appetite to do so following the death of a monarch. Nations should honour citizens’ contributions. But our honours system needlessly excludes those who would feel it hypocritical to accept honours in the name of an empire that no longer exists or because they are not monarchists. Let’s replace the OBE with an Order of British Citizens - and offer a choice of receiving honours at Buckingham Palace, which would remain very popular with most recipients, or from the speaker of the House of Commons.

Is that it? Is that all you can come up with for ‘renewing our national symbols’?

Hey we should all continue to bow and scrape to a bunch of inbred, degenerate, freeloading, Greco-German privilege-monkeys as long as they let the girls inherit the throne and keep right on throwing jolly-junkets at Buck House and handing out gongs. And why? Because the ‘ethnics’ and god-botherers love ‘em to bits!

Who’s writing this shit? Is there some sort of weird cloned bastard of a love-child of Iqbal Sacranie and Alf Garnett behind all this crap?

Oh, and lets not forget the multi-faith coronation and a meaning promise to serve the public and its democratic institutions while we’re on – what have you got in mind here? A special coronation tour of Brick Lane, Finsbury Park and Golders Green before heading off to Westminster to finish the fucking job?

Way to go. Let’s renew our sense of “Britishness� by grovelling at the feet of an archaic, outmoded symbol of unjustified and unmerited privilege – that’s real fucking modern and 21st century that is.

I got a better idea – how about we take a leaf of France’s book and renew our sense of Britishness with a new national anthem and a guillotine – that works for me.

Launch a national community service scheme

We need new national symbols too. A new national community service scheme where citizens aged between 16 and 21 spend a year working on community service could increase interaction across class, faith and ethnic boundaries. At the end of their year’s service, participants should be offered a £3,000 credit which could be used to offset the costs of education or training, to help buy a first home or to set up business. While this approach could help to make a voluntary scheme the norm, there is a good argument for making participation compulsory, and part of the rites of passage of adult citizenship.

Yep, it’s the new improved national service for all scheme and best of all its for ‘chari-dee’.

What a great new national symbol of Britishness that’s going make eh?

You can imagine the new coats of arms all this national symbolising is going to generate. How about ‘sullen teenager with wet wipes and incontinence pad on a field of care-home vomit and shit’ for starters.

Where the fuck are you getting all these sparkling ideas? Little Britain?

Just one question here – while all these teenagers are off doing their community service in return for a three-grand bung at the end of it all, just who is it you’re expecting to feed, clothe and house the sullen little bastards?

Is this the new national symbol you’re talking about? Crossed parents reamed on a field of bullshit? There are other rites of passage to adult citizenship, you know…

… like getting a fucking job!

Introduce a Religious Equality Act

There is no rational defence of our current religious arrangements. We can’t say that it simply isn’t the done thing here to ban books or to mix up religion and politics without scrapping our outdated blasphemy law and rethinking the role of the established church. A society of many faiths and none should treat major faiths equally within a human rights framework, with the practical boundaries being negotiated politically. This probably won’t involve US style strict separation of church and state but working out which of the current privileges of the Church of England could be shared across all major faiths and which need to be ended: a mixture of disestablishment and limited co-establishment, such as in a new multi-faith coronation.

‘This probably won’t involve US style strict separation of church and state�?

Why not? Why shouldn’t we enforce just such a separation? It works well enough over there – very well considering the high incidence of evangelical wing-nuttery you get over the pond, so why not here?

‘A society of many faiths and none should treat major faiths equally within a human rights framework’ – aren’t we forgetting someone here? What about treating the ‘none’ equally within a human rights framework as well?

Ah, but aren’t we giving the game away here - “the current privileges of the Church of England could be shared across all major faiths and which need to be ended: a mixture of disestablishment and limited co-establishment� – not religious freedom at all just a few more noses in the trough of privilege and patronage.

There is just a slight fly in the ointment here – courtesy of Henry VIII and his daughter, Elizabeth I, the official state religion in British is NOT just Christianity but Anglicanism. If you’re going down the road of ‘co-establishment’ then do we just add Islam, Judaism, Sikhism and Hinduism to the official list of established religions or does you largesse here also extend to Catholicism (whoops, there goes that Act of Settlement again never mind Ian Paisley and crew), Methodism, Presbyterianism and the various Baptist, Evangelical and other non-aligned Christian churches as well? Fuck it, let’s just go the whole hog a recognise Christian Voice while we’re about it and get the full set…

How about just having a secular society with constitutionally protected religious freedom, instead.

Meet the pledge to end child poverty

Child poverty rose from one in seven in 1979 to one in three in 1998. The Labour government’s commitment to eradicate child poverty by 2020, halving it by 2010, is its most important commitment to making Britain a society where life chances are more equal. Child poverty is 61% among children of Pakistani and Bangladeshi origin, making growing up in poverty the majority experience.

Well, yes. Can’t really disagree with the idea of tackling child poverty and ok, so it seems that Pakistani and Bangladeshi kids are particular piss-poor at the moment, although why that should be specifically relevant to the general concept of Britishness escapes me for the moment.

Am I sensing a bit of Trojan Horse in all this, a few vested interests creeping into the ideas here all of a sudden?

Teach Britain’s global history

Anxiety about teaching British history has been one factor in shaping a school history curriculum which has had an excessive focus on European fascism and the second world war - and where British history is too little covered. It is vital to teach our global history without which, whatever its positive and negative aspects, we cannot understand how we became the nation we are today. Teaching European languages in every primary school by 2010 would be a major step forward too: we need to ensure schools have the skills and resources to meet this goal.

Yep, good idea. Not much more to say about that.

Tackle the ‘ethnic penalty’ in employment

The greatest weakness of the French model is its insistence that collecting data by ethnic or religious group would somehow offend Republican principles. Without this, a focused effort to make universal citizenship a reality is impossible. In Britain, an equality agenda must recognise the complex pattern of outcomes across class and ethnic groups in education and employment. Many minority communities now outperform the norm in education and are statistically over-represented in higher education yet a clear “ethnic penalty” in employment and income remains. A similar approach can address the underachievement of white working-class boys in schools and areas where poor white communities risk being left behind.

You know, there’s rather more to economic inequality than just the ‘ethnic penalty’ although its big of you remember that ‘white working-class boys’ can be poor and disadvantaged as well.

I’ve got a better idea. How about we try recognising that equality includes gender, disability, sexual orientation and a how load of other stuff besides and remember that ethnic minorities don’t ‘own’ the equality agenda any more than they ‘own’ the concept of Britishness.

Make immigration statistics independent

An important step towards creating a more rational and informed immigration debate would be to remove responsibility for producing immigration statistics from the Home Office with a new independent migration commission, which would produce an annual migration report to parliament. As with the role of the electoral commission on democratic issues, this would provide accurate independent information to inform debate among citizens, business, trade unions, campaigning groups and the media about how we manage immigration.

Yeah, great contribution to Britishness that is – let’s have another Quango, shall we?

Investigate the impact of education on integration

Education is probably the best site of integration we have. Yet Commission for Racial Equality research shows that schools are slightly more segregated than their surrounding areas. Since it is politically inconceivable that current CofE, Catholic and Jewish state schools could be abolished, no principled argument can be made against funding Muslim and Hindu state schools on the same basis. The focus should shift to the content of the national curriculum in all schools, to links between different types of school and the thorny issue of admissions. It is a legitimate public policy objective to want a social and ethnic mix in school intakes. Parental choice cannot always be the trump card where it creates mono-ethnic schools in multi-ethnic towns.

Let me see if I can follow your logic here.

Education is the key to integration which is why we should have more state-funded single faith schools where kids from communities don’t integrate – but that’s ok because we’ll stick something in the National Curriculum to cover it.

It takes a very special kind of fucking stupidity to come with an asinine argument like that. For fucks sake, not even Polly Toynbee would swallow this pile of crap!

There is a perfectly principled argument for not funding Muslim and Hindu state schools – it’s called not funding faith schools at all.

You want state funding for religious instruction? Fine, have a bit of money to run faith-based out of school clubs in churches, mosques, synagogues, etc and while we’re on we’ll have secular state schools where kids from different cultures and communities can be ‘integrated’ through their first-hand experiences of growing up in multi-cultural communities without having religious rammed down their throats or having to learn about the kids who live down the road by reading about them in fucking text book.

Invest in British Muslims

Billions of overseas dollars have been invested in promoting a narrow extremist politics in Muslim communities in recent years. We need to do more than simply hope this fails. An intelligent integration agenda would take advice from those seeking to create a confident British Muslim identity about what outsiders can do to help, or cease to hinder, their efforts which, if successful, would have the potential to lead and influence debates about Islam and integration across Europe and beyond. Above all, we should recognise the diversity of these debates and tune into the many different voices urgently contesting major political and social debates within Britain’s Muslim communities. With a couple of exceptions, major media organisations seem to have lacked the interest or knowledge to capture this. Nobody can accurately claim to speak for all 1.6 million British Muslims and much more needs to be done.

Why does it appear that promoting Britishness has suddenly become a matter of giving money and other perks to Muslim communities?

Not being funny, but I’m sensing a bit of an agenda here that seems to have fuck all to do with Britishness and everything to do with a particular set of vested interests?

There’s a rather odd semantic subtext emerging here.

Remember ‘multiculturalism’? The word that’s fallen into disfavour because it got to be interpreted in terms of minority communities living in Britain on what was perceived (wrongly, I think) to be exclusively on their own terms, which got to be a problem when it started to lead to a few tensions and a bit of social disorder.

Well not it’s out with ‘multiculturalism’ and in with ‘integration’ which sounds more like the idea that minority communities will make adjustments to living in Britain but actually seems here to be being redefined in terms of them still living on their own terms, just not making it quite so obvious – oh, and we’d like everyone else to pay for it as well.

Use the run-up to 2012 to build a new British story

The global spotlight of hosting the 2012 Olympics should be used to host new festivals of Britishness across the nation. But we must learn the lessons of what went wrong with the Millennium Dome. We don’t need another major extravaganza with corporate sponsorship of content-free zones but a community-led and local approach that uses the next few years to discuss amongst ourselves the stories we want to tell the rest of the world in 2012.

And of course, no attempt to redefine Britishness would be complete without a good old party at the end of it all at public expense.

What a pile of crap!

Britishness, if it can be said such a thing genuinely exists, is something that’s evolved and developed over time as the country has evolved and developed. It’s really an organic, consensual thing, not something that has ever been defined, nor even something that anyone has really ever tried to define.

It’s not a thing, it’s a state of mind, a feeling and a sense of belonging.

And that’s the whole problem with this whole idea of defining what it is to be British, it’s not something that can be defined. It’s not even something that people necessarily feel or think they are all the time, or even most of time.

We’re all of us British… but only when we need to be or when it suits or of there’s a reason to be British. The rest of the time – most of the time - we’re whatever ever other identity we need or want to be. That could be a national identity (English, Scottish, Welsh, etc), it could a regional identity, a cultural identity or a religious identity – whatever suits the situation.

British is something you are as well as being something else but not something which takes precedence over other identities.

Defining precisely what it is to be British seems to me to be a fool’s errand and if this is the best the Fabian’s can come up with then its also an errand being undertaken by a bunch of fools.

And that’s the irony here.

They can debate and discuss what it is to be British until they’re blue in the face but I can guarantee you one thing – whatever it is they come up with, the majority of people won’t see it as being British at all.