UK citizens reject ‘British’ label, Guardian survey finds
This article reveals
“A major survey and data-mapping exercise involving the Guardian’s readers has found well under half of UK citizens call themselves British.
Responses from more than 16,500 people showed that of the four countries of the UK only residents of England were the most likely to call themselves British when they were asked to “plant a flag” where they lived, with a large majority of Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish residents rejecting that label.
Overwhelmingly, they instead chose to identify themselves with their home nation: compared with 6,594 who said they were British, 2,874 said they were Scottish, 2,386 chose English, 1,355 Welsh, 895 Irish, with only 129 choosing Northern Irish.”
I have a number of interesting reflections – firstly that I think people are canny in choosing their nationality to fit their circumstances – I have often thought that in Scotland people vote SNP in Scottish Elections to get the best deal from Westminster but are reluctant to go down that route in general elections being mindful perhaps amongst other things of the terrible economic risk small nations (as witnessed by Ireland) face in tackling sovereign debt when things go wrong economically.
I have often also thought that the compartmentalisation of policy into separate nation approaches means that the different parts of the UK don’t learn enough from each other when it comes to issues like rural development. Not that this convinces me that devolution is wrong but it does make me reflect we could do more to share our experiences notwithstanding our different policy organs at the sub-UK level.
I got a real sense of this when trying to think through the application of the work RSN has done on mapping rural vulnerability to the Scottish example – with a bit of effort – hey presto we were able to apply the approach even taking account of the different Scottish approach to defining “rural”. We found this an interesting academic challenge – I wonder how often however people who are more pressed or less dedicated miss out on the chance to work across boundaries in the light of the current dessicated policy world we live in?
Perhaps I should be thinking on more of an EU level when it comes to this process of sharing insights and good practice however I have to say I find the broader work still of the OECD more compelling in this context.
I guess the ultimate answer to all this is that we should indeed choose our allegiance to suit our needs and have different nationalities for different things. I suspect this is better than relentlessly sticking to one strongly defining label – but perhaps I am entering dangerous territory here!