This is the kind of Britain we must now strive to become | Letters
Martin Kettle is right to highlight the need for “great” Britain to establish a more nuanced and inclusive place in the world. (Let’s stop talking about ‘great’ Britain – and rebrand ourselves a different sort of country, 11 April). The rebrand must include a rejection of our ridiculous and continuing national claims of exclusiveness and superiority, a recognition that money isn’t quite so important as health and happiness, and that kindness, tolerance and togetherness are ingrained in the collective British blood.
I would further insist that no politician is allowed to mention or exemplar the second world war ever again on penalty of long-term exclusion from the House. Britain needs to look out and up, and stride towards its future, not wallow in its past.
Jasper Dorgan
Edington, Wiltshire
The first three articles that I read in the Guardian on 11 March reflected different facets of the same problem. Aditya Chakrabortty (on Shildon), Martin Kettle (on “great” Britain and realism) and your editorial (on Labour and the tax gap) in different ways ask what sort of Britain do we want to live in? I think for the overwhelming majority, the answer is clear: one that supports deindustrialised communities and all those suffering the negative consequences of globalisation. One that recognises the importance of reasonable tax levels on the wealthy and large corporations in restoring the public realm and public sector. And a Britain that no longer trades on delusions of grandeur, but seeks to play a positive role in world affairs.
These are not mutually exclusive but together frame a better future for a “modest” Britain.
Geoff Skinner
London
When William Hague made the speech referred to by Martin Kettle, the then Financial Times Deutschland reported it sardonically under the headline “Hague will neues Britisches Reich” (Hague wants a new British empire). The rot leading to Brexit fantasies had begun, and the problem with the idea of Great Britain is far worse than Kettle describes, because consent for the political and cultural construct of Britain exists only in England.
Scots overwhelmingly identify as Scottish, not British. The constitutional mechanism already exists for Northern Ireland to quit the UK via a border poll, and without Scotland, Britain is England and Wales, with decreasing certainty the Welsh will continue to accept an English veto indefinitely. The realism that Martin Kettle rightly calls for probably has to go further in recognising that it is England that has to be truthful and realistic about its identity and its place in Europe and the world.
Tom Brown
London
Surely, as is made explicit by the French Grande Bretagne (and equivalents in Polish, Romanian etc), the name Great Britain is nothing more than a description of its size compared to Bretagne (Brittany) – two regions at the oceanic fringe of Europe. Thus the name means nothing more than those of two villages near me – Great and Little Gransden. No one in our area would imply that these referred to anything more than size. The misuse of Great Britain is thus no more than ignorance or, as is all too common, wilful misinterpretation.
Owen Mountford
St Neots, Cambridgeshire
It was inevitable that Britain would suffer from post-imperial decline, exacerbated by the idiocy of Brexit, which ironically was largely supported by people embracing the delusional thought that Britain was still “great”. Most nations, I suppose, indulge in some self-aggrandisement, and those wishing to temper such excesses will be accused by rabid rightwingers of national self-hatred. These people cling to a dangerously self-important past. Without it, there is no excuse for their jingoism. Countries where national self-hatred is not tolerated are not better behaved. They are not hard to spot.
Jerry Stuart
London
“Occasionally I flirt with the fantasy of a new statute to rename the country as simply Britain.” Isn’t the country correctly named The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland? So what is wrong with calling it what it is, the UK? Not great, but united.
Granville Heptonstall
York
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