We can’t have fairness without the nation-state

Jack Jeffrey argues that we need to revitalise a ‘politics of national preference’

British politics is preoccupied with lots of tangential and asinine issues that no one seems to know how to talk about, but perhaps the most infuriating is the strained topic of what it means to be patriotic. That is, what it means to have some kind of attachment to a country. The discourse follows a predictable route. Right-wingers advertise their love for Britain by doing or saying something ostentatious like putting up Union Jack and St George’s flags everywhere. Left-wingers then react by accusing them of being nativists or racists, but stop short of rejecting patriotism or national feeling entirely, and instead tie themselves in mental knots by coming up with completely meaningless buzzwords like progressive patriotism, and talking about so-called British values. Rinse and repeat.

These arguments and confrontations never go anywhere because they misunderstand the purpose of national attachment, and why the conditions that informed that bond have mostly disappeared. As I’ve written elsewhere, national attachment addresses fundamental political questions: most importantly, where are we going, and to whom are we bound? Whereas once that feeling corresponded with institutions capable of command and control, Britain now finds itself in the unenviable but not unique position of having very little control over its future direction. This is in large part a consequence of embracing an economic model characterised by what David Edgerton in The Rise and Fall of the British Nation (2018) calls denationalisation. In the 1980s, under a Thatcher government that cynically embraced nationalist rhetoric, British firms were sold off to foreign owners at a scale unmatched in comparable economies; international ownership of UK listed companies increased from less than 5% in the early 1980s to more than 50% in 2022.

As this vassalisation continues (brilliantly outlined in Angus Hanton’s Vassal State, 2024), and the post-war decades are forgotten or misremembered, Britain, as a result, is more unstable, angry and unequal because its institutions have been made subordinate. And whilst the right performatively wave their plastic flags, the left, as Jonny Ball recently pointed out, conveniently forget that it was emphatically not a coincidence that the period that saw the biggest contraction in wealth inequality in modern British history was the same period in which the British state pursued a clear politics of national preference. The contemporary debate about taxing wealth does not always recognise that the post-war period was one of capital controls, very high taxes on capital gains and high incomes, and significant public ownership of key industries, even if there was no standalone ‘wealth tax’ on unrealised gains.

As Wolfgang Streeck argued in Taking Back Control? States and State Systems After Globalism (2024), “the nation-state is the only institution capable of asserting the primacy of politics over the economy, or, indeed, the political primacy of society over capitalism in the face of hyperglobalization” (p324). The postwar settlement worked because firms and money were largely trapped within national jurisdictions. The sooner both sides of the political spectrum accept this, the sooner we can start the difficult and arduous task of rebuilding what was carelessly destroyed, namely a nationalist social democracy with comparatively low levels of inequality, high levels of cohesion and fellow-feeling, and a genuine sense that we are bound together by a common fate.

Such an agenda is not without its obstacles and adversaries. Despite it being increasingly clear that market liberalism is in retreat, British political elites, with some honourable exceptions, are still mostly committed to a failed orthodoxy of openness. Some put this down to intransigence. To embrace what Philip Cunliffe calls the national interest would contradict liberal cosmopolitan assumptions that operate less as a coherent governing philosophy and more as a status good. Admittedly though, the problem is more complicated. Streeck and others have been accused of nostalgia for a world that no longer exists, underestimating just how difficult it would be to disentangle transnational production chains and global financial markets, and reestablish a more bordered political economy.

This applies even more so in Britain, which went further than almost any other country in opening itself up to globalisation. This historic misstep has produced a vicious circle wherein our national institutions feel more aloof and impotent, and in turn people feel less and less attached to them. A recent poll by The Times found that as well as pride in Britain dropping from 74% in 2011 to 45%, British citizens are the least emotionally attached to their country in the OECD.

Despite the precarious situation in which Britian now finds itself, there is every opportunity to begin to develop a better politics capable of action and allegiance. But only if we acknowledge that, as Jonathan Hinder MP put it, “the nation state is the only means through which we can actually have a fairer society”.

This article is by Jack Jeffrey, Head of Research and Policy at the Fairness Foundation.