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This is the second part of a two-part series of blogs from John Denham using More in Common data. Part One, about how English identities were reflected in the General Election results is available here.
Professor John Denham is the Director of the Centre for English Identity and Politics at the University of Southampton. Formerly, he was the Member of Parliament for Southampton Itchen and minister in the last Labour government for 10 years.
The persistence of alignment between voting intentions and self-identified national identity on the Moreno scale, as explored in Part One of this blog, warrants further exploration. It is important to understand whether national identities carry meaning of social, economic and political values beyond the ideas of nation and national interest identified in other studies. If national identities do carry such values, it may help explain why national identities are mobilised in different ways by different political parties and forces.
More in Common’s British Seven identifies 7 values-based segments amongst England’s population. By cross-referencing the views of voters in those segments against their position on the Moreno identity scale we explored whether different segments aligned with different national identities. We were also able to analyse the original More in Common data on the intensity and pride (‘patriotism’) in English and British national identity shown by different segments. We also examined how national identity groups responded to the key moral foundation issues that shaped More in Common’s segmentation.
The chart above summarises how each segment is divided by different Moreno national identities.
Some segments do lean more to one identity than another, but there is no segment which is overwhelmingly composed of a particular English identity group. Progressive Activists and, to a lesser extent, Civic Pragmatists and Established Liberals are more British than the average while Loyal Nationals, Disengaged Traditionalists and Disengaged Battlers tend to be more English. The segments most polarised with regards to each other – being both more British and less English or vice versa – are the British leaning Progressive Activists and the English leaning Loyal Nationals.
At the same time all identity groups, including the equally English and British, are represented in all segments. The extent to which ideas of either Englishness and Britishness on the Moreno scale represent a broader set of political, social and economic values would seem quite limited.
On the other hand, the differences are sufficient to influence the make-up of each identity group. If political, social, or economic choices appeal more to one segment than another, it will be reflected in differences in the behaviour of each identity group without necessarily being a direct reflection of national identity per se.
The chart below illustrates how two of the national identity groups are composed by segments.
The Backbone Conservative group contributes equally to both, reflecting how this group is not defined by a specific English identity. The distinctive difference between these two illustrative segments is the greater weight of the Loyal Nationalists and the Disengaged Traditionalists amongst the English not British and the greater contribution of the Established Liberals, Civic Pragmatists and Progressive Activists to the More British than English.
An important measure of national identity is the intensity and pride – ‘patriotism’ – with which it is held. The original Britain’s Choice study asked about both the importance attached to national identity and pride in it.
The chart above shows wide differences in the importance each segment attaches to both their English and British identities. On average, Loyal Nationals, Disengaged Battlers and Disengaged Traditionalists lean slightly more towards their English identity, whereas the others emphasise their British identity more. Loyal Nationals and Backbone Conservatives have attached the highest importance to both their English and their British identity, while the Progressive Activists are outliers from all other groups in attaching less importance to either identity.
The scattergrams in here show the distribution of pride in British and English identities within each segment. In all the segments voters cluster around equal levels of pride ranging from the ‘unpatriotic’ Progressive Activists to the intensely patriotic Backbone Conservatives and Loyal Nationals. This data on intensity and pride cannot be compared directly with data from the more recent Moreno questions but these scattergrams suggest a broad congruence between the two.
Progressive Activists have more members with greater pride in British identity than English identity while those Loyal Nationals and Disengaged Traditionalists who are not equally proud of both identities are more likely to favour English. Those segments that are more likely to lean towards British identity are also least likely to feel patriotic about either identity.
In other words, the divergence that is observed between the electoral behaviour of English emphasising and British emphasising groups may be less a reflection of the extent to which those groups are actually English or British and more to do with the strength of those identities. A political appeal to ideas of patriotism will have the greatest appeal to the segments of the population that hold both British and English identities most intensely (and who tend to emphasise their Englishness when asked) and least appeal to those groups who feel neither identity intensely (and who lead towards a British identity).
These close relationships between both identities and degrees of patriotism tentatively suggest that the apparent political impact of English identity should more properly be described as the influence of ‘Englishness with Britishness’, while the apparent politics of British identity might be described as ‘Britishness without Englishness’.
The most stark divergence between the national identity groups is in relation to questions about immigration and diversity. The British identifiers are markedly more positive and the English identifiers the least. This finding is in line with previous studies of national identity and of the motivations of predominantly English identifying Leave voters.
On the other two baskets of questions, it is less clear that the identity groups align with distinct values sets. There are significant areas of congruence: ‘one law for the rich, one for the poor’, ‘hard work and effort got me where I am’, ‘equality under the law’ and ‘compassion as a virtue in policy making’. Where there are differences, English emphasisers tend to hold the more socially conservative positions. The tendency of English identifiers towards more socially conservative values has been frequently described previously.
One possible outcome of this study was that Englishness and Britishness on the Moreno scale would be found to align markedly with different segments of the population. If this was the case, then for a vote to emphasise English or British identity would be a reflection of distinct worldviews.
This evidence does not suggest an alignment of identity with separate world views. All the identity groups on the Moreno scale are represented- from the ‘more English’ to the ‘more British’ and including the ‘equally English and British’ - in all segments. Some segments do lean sufficiently more towards one identity than another to make one appear more ‘English’ or ‘British’ than another, but not to the extent that we could say any segment reflects a distinct view of national identity.
By contrast, the data strongly suggests that a greater focus should be placed in the changing relationship between Englishness and Britishness in each segment, rather than the extent to which they are ‘English’ or ‘British’. Those segments that are most strongly and patriotically English turn out to be strongly and patriotically British also. The Loyal Nationals, for example, are much more likely to emphasise their English identity on the Moreno scale but are shown here to be as intensely British. Their ideas of Englishness appear to be strongly tied up with their ideas of Britishness.
Englishness is less likely to be found amongst those who are least patriotic about any identity, hence the Progressive Activists are both more likely to emphasise their British identity but also to feel less proud of either identity.
Nor did we find a strong correlation between Moreno scale national identities and basic moral foundation questions. Beyond the well-established relationship between emphasising English identity and scepticism about immigration and diversity, and a tendency towards socially conservative values, there are also many points of congruence between the identity groups.
In exploring the politics of national identity, the Moreno scale proves only a limited proxy for these complex relationships between identity, patriotism and political and social values. By highlighting the extent to which a voter emphasises one identity or another it can disguise the intensity or pride (or lack of it) with which both identities are held.
When we explore the relationship between national identity and voting behaviour, as we have for 2024, it might be more accurate to describe the support for Reform UK as drawing on a strongly patriotic ‘Englishness with Britishness’, while Labour’s 2019 support leant more towards a weakly patriotic ‘Britishness without Englishness’. Keir Starmer’s success in extending Labour’s support across ‘English identifiers’ may reflect the emphasis placed on a British patriotism, though perhaps at the expense of losing some Progressive Activists voters – relatively unpatriotic and leaning towards a British identity.
We find a complex relationship between expressed national identity, the pride and intensity with which national identities are held, and the extent to which different national identities are held and emphasised by voter segments who hold different values and worldviews.
We find that those who emphasise their English identity on the Moreno scale are actually also more likely to be intensely British. These voters are more heavily concentrated amongst the more socially conservative segments of the population. By contrast, those who emphasise their Britishness on the Moreno scale are actually less patriotic about being British than those groups who identify as more English than British, and were also less likely to identify as English.
The equally English and British form the largest part of each segment identified in the More in Common study, but the segments vary in the extent to which voters emphasis their English and British identity. A few segments lean notably towards emphasising either their English or British identity. These differences are reflected in the extent to which identities on the Moreno scale are composed of a different mix of segments.
The response of different Moreno groups to moral foundation questions shows both convergence and divergence. There is broad convergence around key questions of economic fairness, equal treatment and compassion, but a stark divergence on attitudes towards immigration and divergence. The English emphasises tend towards the more socially conservative responses throughout.
In this study Englishness and Britishness do not appear as distinct and discrete world views. The values that voters associate with them and the relationship between the two identities varies from segment to segment as does the intensity and pride with which they are held. These variations do not mean that national identity does not matter for individual voters: it is simply that different voters may carry different ideas of national identity.
In making political choices, England’s voters may respond to ideas they associate with English or British identity, or both. They may respond to signals that play to feelings of patriotism or liberal cosmopolitanism, to issues of social conservatism or social liberalism, or to their views of immigration and diversity. Each is likely show different Moreno groups making different political choices, but this needs to be recognised for the complex relationships involved.
