18 August, 2012

Demos | Blogs

Demos | Blogs: That sense of entitlement that used to annoy the Celts, and the rest of the world too, has largely gone. Britain is a smaller place in the world than it was, and devolution has loosened it, but it has found a story again suitable to its new circumstances. The left said there wasn't one, and the right said it was ineffable but it turns out that Britain has a core national identity after all.

In the Olympic fortnight we saw ourselves partly through the eyes of the watching world and liked what we saw. Cheering happy crowds, James Bond, the Beatles, Mr Bean, a monarch with a sense of humour, all those pop songs. We are quite something still but a normal country with an abnormal past. Danny Boyle reminded us that we invented much of the modern world, though he rather glossed over the fact that we went out and ruled over a large chunk of it too. But as the last imperial generation has grown old and died we have finally lost the sense of regret and nostalgia that coloured national feeling for much of the post-war period.