Rafael Behr argues that Brexit created a politics poisoned by nationalism and that the real challenge facing Labour is “a battle to reclaim patriotism” (Keir Starmer couldn’t beat the curse of Brexit – a politics poisoned by nationalism, 24 June). Yet this framework risks reducing Britain’s political crisis to a dispute over competing versions of national identity.
Let us be clear: the social and economic conditions that produced Brexit were not created by nationalism. Regional inequality, economic insecurity and declining trust in political institutions long predated the referendum. Nationalist rhetoric provided a language through which these grievances were expressed, but it did not generate them.
The same problem appears in Behr’s assessment of Keir Starmer. We are told that Starmer failed because he didn’t see it as a competition between modes of national identity and that Andy Burnham may succeed because he possesses “a more natural storytelling manner”. This transforms a structural crisis into a question of narrative and political communication.
We’ve had six prime ministers in a decade, and it is difficult to believe that the explanation lies primarily in failures of rhetoric. Political instability may instead reflect deeper contradictions that no leader, however gifted, can resolve through a more compelling account of patriotism.
Most revealing is that, after diagnosing a profound crisis, Behr’s proposed remedy remains within the same framework: a better story about the nation. The possibility that the roots of Britain’s discontent lie in economic and institutional structures rather than competing patriotic narratives barely enters the discussion.
In the end, Behr asks us to believe that Britain’s troubles stem from the wrong idea of the nation and can be solved by a better one. That is less an explanation of the crisis than an illustration of it.
David Eaton
Sunderland
Rafael Behr writes correctly that Keir Starmer “provoked fury and despair in his own party, sounding like Enoch Powell when warning that Britain risked becoming an ‘island of strangers’.” Earlier in 2022 Starmer told the Labour Movement for Europe at a reception in the Irish embassy that his policy was “to make Brexit work”. These are precisely the same words used by Theresa May to define her Brexit policy when she began her unhappy premiership.
One can’t blame Sir Keir for not knowing what Powell or May had said, but one can reasonably ask why there was no one in Downing Street with some knowledge of recent political history to remove such unhappy Tory language from his public utterances.
Sir Keir was a lifelong lawyer. Andy Burnham will not only be the first PM to be a Cambridge graduate since Stanley Baldwin but the first ever to have read English. No disrespect to my KC friends, but I think a study of the words and passions of our history as told though a study of its literature may be a better preparation to understand and better govern our complex, messy four-nation UK.
I remember Andy regularly attending political bilateral meetings with parliamentarians from other EU nations together with Frankie, his multilingual wife. He had a genuine curiosity, interest and knowledge about Europe that since the Brexit vote has disappeared from British politics.
Denis MacShane
Former Europe minister
Rafael Behr suggests that Brexit caused the resignation of Keir Starmer. The electoral system may also deserve credit. The Labour party received 33.7% of the votes at the 2024 general election, electing 411 MPs – 63.2% of the total. To then govern as if you have the full backing of the electorate has helped create the current mess.
That Starmer was unpopular on the doorstep should not have been a surprise given that two-thirds of voters chose another party.
In a few months, Andy Burnham may find himself as unpopular as Starmer. A proportional system would allow whichever grouping emerged to at least have a majority of the electorate’s support behind them.
Stephen Walkley
Swinford, Leicestershire