What’s wrong with being proud to be English?

So the Lionesses were victorious in the UEFA Women’s Euros, holding the title they won in 2022. England forward Chloe Kelly, who scored the decisive penalty in the final against Spain, declared after the match: ‘I am so proud to be English.’

To hear a sports star make such a simple and patriotic statement was, for most of us, a pleasant breath of fresh air. Just as refreshing has been the muted response to her declaration of national pride. In the week or so since, there have been no online campaigns denouncing Kelly’s views as ‘problematic’. This raises the question: is it just the Lionesses who are allowed to be patriotic?

Compare the response to Kelly’s post-match comment with the recent treatment of Courtney Wright, a 12-year-old schoolgirl from the West Midlands. A few weeks ago, she wore a Union Jack dress inspired by the Spice Girls to her school’s ‘Culture Day’, in which pupils were encouraged to ‘proudly represent their heritage’. Courtney, who had also prepared a speech celebrating Shakespeare and fish and chips, was put into isolation by her school and then sent home. Essentially, she was told it was unacceptable to express pride in being British.

What followed next gave us a fascinating, if depressing, insight into the online left. Aaron Bastani, co-founder of Novara Media, came out in defence of Courtney. ‘A white British person being proud of their country and its accomplishments does not make them racist’, Bastani said on X. ‘Either all groups get to celebrate identity and culture, or none.’ Yet for striking a fair-minded and consistent approach, he was attacked by his largely left-wing audience.

One notable assault came from Eleanora Folan, who runs the hugely popular ‘Stats for Lefties’ X account. Folan said celebrating British culture ‘literally does’ make someone racist because ‘the concept of white “identity” is inherently exclusionary and racist’, adding that ‘all of Britain’s “accomplishments” were built on racism and imperialism’.

Now, I suspect Eleanora and many on the left would never say that Nigerians should view their heritage as ‘evil’ because of the Biafran War and the anti-Igbo pogroms of the 1960s and 1970s. Does anyone on the left talk about King Ghezo’s determined efforts in the 19th century to maintain slavery, even as the British tried to stamp it out in his West African kingdom? Would they say that British people of Arab descent should be ashamed because of Arab slavery of Africans, which still persists to some extent today? Should British people of Rwandan Hutu descent be ashamed because of the Rwandan genocide? Of course not.

Admittedly, there is no shortage of right-wing whataboutery that uses the histories of other countries to avoid discussing the darker aspects of Britain’s past. But that is not what is going on here. Courtney’s treatment by her school, and those online leftists blasting her as racist, reveals that self-loathing oikophobia remains one of the dominant prejudices of the left.

One great irony is that this ostentatious loathing of British identity is, for the most part, not shared by ethnic-minority Britons – the very people the left thinks it’s speaking up for. A 2024 report from Policy Exchange found that a majority of minority groups agreed with the proposition that: ‘Throughout history, Britain has been a force for good in the world.’ Clear majorities also agreed that: ‘Children who are raised in Britain should be taught to be proud of Britain and its history.’ Of course, this should hardly be a surprise. After all, why would hundreds of thousands of people seek to move to the UK, every year, if they thought it a racist country that oppresses foreigners and ethnic minorities?

Those who buy into the black-armband view of British and Western history tend to be overwhelmingly white, well-educated and socially mobile. Which is hardly surprising. In holding white Westerners as uniquely responsible for the world’s evils, the left robs non-white peoples of any moral agency. It is, ironically, an entirely white-centric view.

The vehemently anti-patriotic left also ignores something else – namely, Britain’s proud history of radical thought and movements. Anyone who identifies with the left, or with the principles of freedom and democracy, should surely be proud of the Putney Debates and the Levellers, the Somerset case and abolitionists, the Chartists and the Suffragettes. They should also be proud of Britain being the home of Thomas Paine, William Morris and CLR James.

Yet new-left thinking, the kind typified by Eleanora of Stats for Lefties, does something even more pernicious than misrepresenting history. It argues, like the increasingly virulent and nasty online right, that nationhood can be viewed only through the prism of race. In a classic case of political opposites meeting at their extremes, both interpretations leave no room for ethnic-minority groups and patriotic immigrants to be English, or to be proud of their adopted home.

The sane and sound response is to reject both sides. Chloe Kelly’s comments should remind us where the sensible majority lies.

Obadiah Mbatang is a British writer. Follow him on X: @residentadviser.