Here's an original but to me plausible polemic from Douglas Murray in the current Spectator that might explain this."A poll out this week found that only 41 per cent of those aged 18 to 27 are proud to be British.Frankly I’m surprised the figure is that high. After all, if you add together the immigration of recent decades and the concerted effort to demoralise the population that has gone on, that is exactly the sort of result you would expect.It was achieved in a remarkably short space of time. In 2004, some 80 per cent of young people in the same age cohort said that they felt proud to be British. So within 20 years we have managed to halve our sense of national self-worth.One of the great pretences of the UK and Europe for a couple of generations has been that once someone has the paperwork and becomes a citizen, they are as British as anyone else. It is a nicety partly borrowed from America, but a nicety nonetheless. If my parents had chosen to emigrate to Pakistan in the 1970s and I had been born in Pakistan, would I really feel Pakistani? Would I take pride in my identity? Would I feel the same pride as people whose families had lived in the country all their lives? I would have thought not, and I think most Pakistanis would agree with me.When someone whose family has been here for generations says ‘we’, you know that they are speaking not just on their own behalf or on behalf of everyone else in the country, but on behalf of their forebears. If I refer to the time when ‘we’ defeated Hitler, saw off the Kaiser or beat Napoleon, I am not saying so because I had any role in these battles, but because my ancestors did and I feel deep pride in, and gratitude for, that fact. Can someone whose ancestors do not come from this country feel the same pride? If their forebears were Commonwealth soldiers, very possibly, but otherwise I don’t believe it is common. Not least because the country they might have integrated into has taught them that Britain is both a destination for the world and a pretty wretched sort of place.The fear that people would not integrate into the culture is one of the reasons why, during the age of mass migration, there has been a concerted effort to do down our history, to change it and lie about it".Interesting point of view what ?
John Hawkes ● 81d