As the UK Labour Party under Keir Starmer continues its “inclusive” upcycling of Thatcherism, many leftists have decided to throw in their lot with the Green Party. But this shift has not come without its share of ideological debate. Are the Greens a party of ecologically aware socialism, some have wondered, or more timid liberal environmentalism? Are they a ‘none-of-the-above’ option in a broken two-party system? Do they have a coherent political vision at all?
Mindful of the radicalism of its current leadership, many on the left were willing to give the Greens the benefit of the doubt at the ballot box in 2024. But a feeling of uncertainty about the party’s identity remains. Some of this sense of ambiguity is at the heart of Another England: How to Reclaim Our National Story by Caroline Lucas (until recently the sole Green MP, and surely its best-known and best-regarded public figure). A substantial book from a major publisher, Another England has the feel of a popular manifesto: its state-of-the-nation premise an organic product of Lucas’s Westminster milieu, where minority-party discussion tends to centre on nationalism and the undead British constitution.
Emerging from this context is an essay on “Englishness”. In Lucas’s telling, while the right have seized on various baleful forms of English nationalism in recent years, “the left have failed to offer their own, alternative vision of what Englishness means.” Especially in the wake of Brexit, which Lucas argues was partly the result of a frustrated English identity: “The UK’s political leaders have been too cowardly to return the compliment and put England itself on the agenda.” In light of all this, Lucas suggests, her book is an attempt to “start a conversation about what it means to be English”.
Before addressing this central thesis, I should make clear that there is a huge amount of worthwhile cultural and political material in Another England. A former student of English Literature, Lucas is a subtle reader of canonical texts, from the medieval Robin Hood mythos to the 19th-century realist novel, through to contemporary(ish) authors like P.D. James and Zadie Smith. On more overtly political ground, she makes a series of valuable points about British constitutional reform, about the potential for federal government of England’s regions, and about the need for a radical overhaul of the crumbling United Kingdom as a precondition for tackling inequality in post-Thatcher Britain.
But while God is in the details of Another England, the overall picture is less clear. The problem with claiming to be starting a conversation about what it means to be English (putting aside echoes of the famous Stewart Lee routine about a bogus embattled patriotism) is that the conversation started over 20 years ago and hasn’t got us very far. Since at least as far back as Peter Ackroyd’s Albion and Robert Colls’ Identity of England (both published in 2002), the mainstream of political discourse – and indeed trade publishing – has been dominated by the so-called English question to a point of near terminal exhaustion.
Bearing in mind the numerous attempts to conjure a progressive Englishness over the last quarter century – many of which have seemingly failed to catch the attention of Lucas herself, let alone inspire the wider public and point the way to a new nation-state – might we be tempted to think that it is not the left, but England itself, that is the problem?
For all its erudite digressions, the idea that we might need an imaginative sequel to England, not an atavistic recovery of a “distinctly English belief in the value of rules and traditions in preventing exploitation and tyranny”, is not one that features in Another England. In its main arguments – and despite the likeability of its author – this is mostly a book for the New Labour years, not the 2020s.
Another England: How to Reclaim Our National Story by Caroline Lucas. Hutchinson Heinemann, 2024. ISBN: 9781529153064.
This review was written before Labour won the 2024 General Election.
