Britishness: what does it now mean?

Written by Vincent Cable MP and published in Informer on Fri 16th Jun 2006

I debated this week with two of the government's ethnic minority MPs, David Lammy and Sadiq Khan, on Britishness: what does it now mean? When many people now fly the flag of St George, rather than the Union Jack, the question is topical.

I believe that British citizenship involves a limited, but important, set of rights and duties, notably respect for our law. It provides protection but also requires obedience. There is no role for competing systems in the UK (like Sharia) though, of course, the Scottish legal system has happily co-existed with England's for 300 years.

Attempts to broaden out the obligations of British citizenship, let alone impose them, are doomed, I think, to disappointment. It would be highly desirable if everyone spoke good English but in parts of Britain, like rural Wales, English is not the language of choice.

In the USA everyone is required to respect for the national flag but the UK has several national flags and in part of it - Northern Ireland or, even, Glasgow - the Irish tri-colour is the flag of choice. The French define common values - liberty, fraternity and equality - but widely disregard them.

We are therefore left with my legal basis of citizenship as the common core of Britishness. That is why I am so alarmed that the popular press and some irresponsible politicians have taken to attacking judges. Of course, judges make mistakes. There is incompetence, as in any profession, though usually the facts are not fully printed in the press. In most cases mistakes arise because parliamentary laws or sentencing guidelines are unsatisfactory. Judges are also not to blame because there are too few prison spaces to accommodate serious criminals.

The law should be treated with respect, since there is very little else holding society together.