My Country

David Mitchell writes:

Patriotism is a confusing emotion. Most of us feel it – an affinity, a fondness, an enthusiasm for a place we took no part in creating, randomly happened to be born in and can never hope objectively to judge. But a lot of us also feel uncomfortable with it. Is patriotism at the top of a slippery slope that has nationalism a little bit further down, xenophobia a few self-loathing slides below that, and leads inexorably into a gunk tank of racism?

Or is it more like supporting a sports team, which, aside from the small minority who use that as a focus for violence, tends to be a friendly rivalry? Few fans consider their support to be a dispassionate assertion of their team's superiority: they don't always think it'll win, they just hope so.

Being a supporter brings the pleasure of belonging, which, by implication, acknowledges the pleasure others receive from belonging to something else. I reckon patriotism is OK when it's like that, when there's respect for the patriotism of foreigners. That's when it's safe and we can have a bit of fun with the likes of France.

When a Frenchman once tried to flatter Lord Palmerston (I should point out here that this anecdote may not be true. It's exactly the sort of thing I was brought up believing, specifically told by educational professionals, but turns out to be nonsense. All the fun stuff about the past, I'm slowly discovering, was invented later by charlatans too careless even to cover their tracks. I'm bracing myself for the news that Latin was just an in-joke at my school) by saying: "If I were not French, I would wish to be English", the imperialist prime minister replied: "If I were not English, I would wish to be English."

I think that's quite funny in a patronising way and he didn't have to nick it from an insurance advert. But it's also an acceptable bit of patriotic joshing because it's basically OK to be French. I know I'm breaking the laws of comedy by saying this, but the French are fine. It's a lovely country and they're relatively well-off, so we can take the piss out of them, and concede piss to them, in the knowledge that both nations have the self-confidence to cope.

Palmerston wouldn't have been on such safe comic ground making that quip to someone from, say, Somalia. I mean, I can imagine lots of worse jokes that someone of Palmerston's era and attitudes might make in the unlikely event of his meeting someone from whatever Somalia was then (which may well have been nicer than what it is now) but even friendly "My country's better than your country" banter only really works when the point is arguable either way. It's rude to do it to someone whose homeland is screwed. You can say to a German: "What's with all the sausages!?" but you can't say to a Bangladeshi: "What's with all the flooding!?"

When Palmerston said "English" he meant British; he was born in London but was an Irish peer. (The irritation we feel at Americans who confuse those terms is rather hypocritical since, until well into the 20th century, most Britons also used them interchangeably.) As my mother is Welsh and my father's family is Scottish, although he was born in Liverpool, I've always thought of myself as British, not English. Maybe that's something only someone fundamentally English would say. But I was sad to see the SNP win a majority in the Scottish Parliament.

I know it doesn't necessarily make Scottish independence likely, but it makes it more likely. Although polls suggest that most Scots have no appetite to secede from the union and many were voting SNP for other reasons, now that Alex Salmond can control the timing of a referendum his hand is greatly strengthened.

It means the people of Scotland, or, rather, a majority of the British citizens who happen currently to reside there and turn up to vote, only have to fancy independence for a political instant and, if the canny first minister spots it, it'll happen. If his timing's right, independence could be carried through on a wave of optimism created by something as flimsy as Scotland qualifying for a World Cup. And stranger things have happened. More pertinently, precisely that strange thing has happened nine times.

When I appeared on an episode of Question Time broadcast from Musselburgh, near Edinburgh, the issue of Scottish independence came up. One of my fellow panellists, the SNP deputy leader, Nicola Sturgeon, was at pains to make clear that her party had nothing against England and were admirers of that country.

What I didn't say in response, what I've kicked myself for not expressing ever since, was: "Yes but you've got it in for Britain. You may be happily in cahoots with the morris-dancing English and the Eisteddfod-organising Welsh, but my country, the Britain of London where I now live, of Swansea, my mother's home town where I spent a lot of time as a child, and of Galloway, where my paternal grandparents lived, is something you want to destroy. I'm British, I care about this and I've a hunch I'm not the only one."

I'm slightly embarrassed to admit to this British patriotism. The Scottish equivalent feels more politically correct, focused as it is on cultural distinctiveness and national self-determination. No Scottish state has existed for hundreds of years so, unlike Britain, its image is untainted by actions, by realpolitik and compromise, by the slave trade and colonialism. But a desire for Scottish independence is no more rational than a desire to preserve the union, so either both desires should be ignored or both taken into account.

I don't think I should get a vote in a referendum on Scottish independence – I understand why that's a decision that would have to be taken by those living in Scotland. Otherwise, it would be like calling a Europe-wide vote on whether the UK should adopt the euro. Scotland's fate mustn't be decided by people who consider themselves to be primarily English, Welsh or Northern Irish. But I'm sad that, as a result, most of those whose emotional investment is in the union, we children of this potential divorce, won't have a say.

If Scotland ever goes it alone, those buoyed up as their sense of nationality gains accompanying sovereignty might take note of, and even fleetingly mourn, the fact that there are losers in that arrangement, too, and I'm not talking about oil revenues. The British will have lost their country.