Cast your mind back to May. Red, white and blue bunting lined streets from Leeds to London. People flocked to the Mall, camping outside for days in the grey spring weather just to catch a glimpse of the new monarch. Heinz released a limited run of bottles of ‘Tomato Kingchup’. Aldi released ‘King and Queen’ editions of their iconic Kevin the Carrot soft toy. A vape company released vapes shaped like the king’s paunchy fingers in a range of flavours including ‘Coronation Chicken’ and ‘Victoria Sponge’.

More conservative Brits might say that the jolly – if slightly manic – atmosphere that surrounded King Charles III’s coronation epitomised what makes Britain great: respect for and deference to the monarchy, community spirit, and an absurd, irreverent sense of humour (but one which ultimately affirms rather than challenges the status quo, à la Aldi’s royal carrots). But I think all the mania proved the opposite: the only reason we get so stirred up about coronations and jubilees is because when it comes to our national identity, we don’t have anything else to cling on to. The excitement over 1000-year-spoons and plastic flags and Scotch eggs and Kingchup obscures the reality – which is that Britain doesn’t really have an identity anymore.

Sure, Britishness – and, really, Englishness – has been in crisis for a long time now. Perhaps it has been since 2016, the year of the Brexit referendum, or 1947, the turning point for when the empire began to splinter apart after World War Two. Or maybe it’s always been in crisis, really. In his 1985 book On Living in an Old Country, Patrick Wright wrote that “we turn to the past when the future seems unattainable or utopian.” So what does it say about us if the nation’s favourite hymn, ‘Jerusalem’, written in 1808, is actually a lament for Britain’s purer, pre-industrial days? Or if nearly a quarter of the plays written by our most revered playwright, 400 years ago, are retellings of British history?

But 2023 can certainly stake a claim as a turning point of a year, as a period where Britain’s shaky sense of self was thrown into piercingly sharp relief. It was a particularly jarring year for a coronation which cost around £100 million, when more than one in five people are currently living in poverty in the UK. Equally, though, it tracks that the powers that be would want to do something to make people feel as though their country, in spite of it all, is still great. In an essay on the invention of traditions, historian David Cannadine wrote: “In a period of change, conflict or crisis, [unchanging rituals] might be deliberately unaltered so as to give an impression of continuity, community and comfort, despite overwhelming contextual evidence to the contrary.” Cannadine was writing in 1983, but his words ring truer than ever in 2023.

Other icons of ‘Britishness’ were also brought crashing back down to earth this year, like former ‘national treasures’ Philip Schofield and Holly Willoughby, who both left ITV after details of Schofield’s affair with a younger male colleague were revealed. Or there was the scandal surrounding Hannah Ingram-Moore, daughter of Sir Captain Tom Moore. Back in 2020, the public went mad for the story of Captain Tom; it had everything: a decorated war veteran with ‘Blitz spirit’ and a stiff upper lip, determinedly hauling himself round his garden to raise money for a respected British institution in a time of national crisis. Then, following Captain Tom’s death, it came to light that the Captain Tom Foundation – set up in his honour – was possibly being mismanaged.

Most startling was the news that a building erected in the Ingram-Moore’s garden initially intended to be used “in connection with The Captain Tom Foundation and its charitable objectives” was in reality a spa complete with an indoor pool. The final, humiliating nail in the coffin came in November this year, when it was revealed that the family would have to demolish the building. Hannah Ingram-Moore, in a wildly misjudged attempt at crisis management, did an interview with Piers Morgan in an attempt to clear her family’s name. It spectacularly backfired, and she even ended up admitting that she had pocketed £800,000 from sales of her father’s books, despite the prologue of one of them saying the money would go to charity.

It’s tempting to just throw your hands up in the face of the total disintegration of British identity and say: who cares about any of this? Is Britishness even worth attempting to resuscitate or reinvent? Do we really lose anything if we lose British identity? Would it be so bad if we just let tribalism take over? But Britain’s fragmentation is infecting our politics with alarming consequences. Keir Starmer’s Labour appears totally in the thrall of socially conservative, patriotic, Leave-voting, working-class ‘Red Wall’ voters, who appear in actuality to be a largely imagined segment of the electorate. Still, the mythical idea of these ‘typically British voters’ is so strong that it’s influencing policy: a leaked internal Labour presentation suggested that the party make “use of the [Union] flag, veterans [and] dressing smartly” to woo back this imaginary group. 

Meanwhile, the Tories have lurched even further right in an attempt to pander to this idea of British people. Former immigration minister Robert Jenrick said in December that some pro-Palestine protestors don’t have “British values”. He said in April that “excessive uncontrolled migration threatens to cannibalise the compassion that marks out the British people.” Elsewhere, former Home Secretary Suella Braverman, the child of immigrants herself, delivered a speech warning of the “misguided dogma of multiculturalism” in Britain. If it sounds like all of these statements don’t make any sense and are wildly contradictory – how can ‘compassion’ be a British value if expressing compassion for victims of the violence in Gaza is un-British? – that’s because they are. British identity isn’t coherent or logical. It’s amorphous and emotions-led, rather than being grounded in anything concrete.

There are real, immediate consequences to this rhetoric which fuels a narrow idea of Britishness. On November 12 this year, egged on by Braverman, an estimated 2,000 far-right activists, many of whom were members of the English Defence League (EDL), descended on London to counter-protest a pro-Palestinian march organised on Armistice Day. A few hundred broke through police lines to “defend the Cenotaph”, supposedly from pro-Palestine protestors – the vast majority of whom were protesting peacefully and, in any case, nowhere near the Cenotaph. Many chanted “you’re not English, you’re not English anymore”, “England til I die”, and “we want our country back” at police officers.

‘Back’ from who? The subtext is, of course, ‘back’ from immigrants, foreigners, anyone who isn’t white. But while racist fears of miscegenation are indefensible, the far-right mobs on Armistice Day did hit on the fact British identity is irrefutably in crisis. It goes without saying their idea of ‘Britishness’ – monocultural, jingoistic, racist, violent – isn’t worth preserving (if such a form of Britishness ever really existed in the first place). But it is true that there is a vacuum where British identity should be, and the existence of groups like the EDL are rushing to fill it. But ultimately, we can’t let groups like the EDL dictate what it means to be part of this country – and thankfully, we’re not.

As aforementioned, 2,000 far-right counter-protestors took to London’s streets on Armistice Day, but this was a mere drop in the ocean compared to the hundreds of thousands who marched for an end to Palestinian suffering; the Met Police estimated 300,000 people took part in the march, while organisers believe the number was closer to 800,000. It was a reassuring reminder that the nationalistic, racist section of British society is merely a minority, and that in reality the public are engaged, driven, progessive, joyfully multicultural. And compassionate too, as Jenrick said – only not selectively compassionate, but inexhaustibly, unconditionally compassionate.

And while it’s often tempting for Brits – especially those on the left – to look to our European neighbours and envy their ways of life, it’s also worth acknowledging that the grass isn’t necessarily greener. Populist, far-right governments have recently been elected in Italy, Sweden, the Netherlands, Marine Le Pen and her extreme right-wing views remain popular in France, and, of course, Donald Trump remains baffingly popular among US Republicans. By contrast, in the UK, populist Braverman has a dire net approval rating of -26. It looks as though we’re essentially guaranteed to vote in a centrist government helmed by Keir Starmer at the next election, and although this is hardly something to celebrate, nevertheless it’s a reassuring sign that the majority of us refuse to be taken in by far-right populism.

There’s a lot to love and celebrate about Britain: in football, the men’s England team comprises young men from a diverse range of backgrounds who inspire national pride across all of society, like Marcus Rashford and his campaign to end child food poverty. It’s telling that when Black footballers who missed penalties in 2021’s Euros final received vile racist abuse online, the ‘Memory Lane UK’ Facebook page – usually a hotbed of nationalistic fervour – stood in solidarity with the men: “I am proud these men represent my country!” one post read. The Lionesses have also offered the country an alternative vision of nationhood: one which is inclusive, collaborative, and modern. Britain’s boundless creativity remains unrivalled too, with designers and musicians such as Aaron Esh, Len, and Ceechynaa blazing a trail in the arts and culture.

So, although ‘Britishness’ is in crisis, maybe that’s a cause for hope rather than despair. For years, we’ve latched onto imagined visions of a rosier past for a sense of identity. But now that the fallacy of these visions have been exposed, perhaps, at last, we can start to look to the future, and remake Britain into whatever we want it to be.