We want our country back.
Its our country. (see here)
But its not your country – and not your country to have back.
You never had it.
You only ever shared it. And you continue to share it. With the 70 million people around you.
And you live in a land, like in every land, where people have different opinions, views and beliefs and ways of looking at things.
And that is never going to change.
In the country which you share – and never had – your rights and responsibilities for sharing the country are defined by the great British values: British democracy, rule of law, equality of opportunity, freedom of speech and the rights of all men and women to live free from persecution of any kind.
And the way that people resolve their differences and get on is through democratic politics, freedom of speech, rule of law and the rights of all men and women to live free from persecution of any kind.
And it is through that process that people are empowered to think, become and be who they want to be. So long as they do not infringe on the basic rights that people have.
British values give people the freedom to be and chose who they want to be. Nothing is fixed, nothing is certain, everything can change.
British values gave Britain the choice to join the European Union. And the choice to pull back out from it.
British values give you the choice to be Christian or Muslim or nothing.
But in recent years a discourse has developed around the idea that somehow someone somewhere – non-British – has invaded the country – and is taking away some sovereign right.
William Hague who first started all this rhetoric about people having their country back – based on a lie that somehow someone had taken it away from them by putting Britain into the European Union (see here).
Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson continued this lie.
Or that there is some kind of British way of life – that is being transformed and more violent (for which there is no evidence). For example, several politicians during the August 2024 riots have used the violence to amplify and platform the idea that people have a right to society remaining recognisable. Nadhim Zahawi, former Conservative MP and Chancellor, reflecting on the violence said that, ‘The Government needs to realise that there is legitimate frustration and pain felt in communities across the country, with recent murders and other violence becoming emblematic of people feeling that their society is becoming unrecognisable’. But British values and democracy does not ordain that a certain way of living must prevail, or be sustained or be recognised.
These discourses are lies in the first instance, but in the second instance they are anti-British, anti-democratic discourses that insinuate that Britain will only be Britain once certain groups are removed from British society or certain norms and behaviours either imposed or people or promoted, and others banned. Hague and Johnson’s discourse suggested liberals, pro-EU supporters, EU bureaucrats and European immigrants. Farage suggests immigrants, people with certain types of view and asylum seekers. People who voted Brexit wanted to get rid of Eastern European workers, because they were doing better than they were, or because they were providing them with competition in whatever market they were working in. People on protest marches and riots want to get rid of people’s right to follow Islam and asylum seekers.
Its our way of life that’s at stake! (see here). What? The only aspects of your life that you have a right to, are with regards to British values.
People think being British means following a ‘way of life’ (see here). But being British does not commit you or force you to live life in any particular way.
People seem to think that Britain ought to be a Christian country. Recently Richard Tice, of Reform Party said there had to be “respect for who we are as a nation, that our foundation is Christianity, and we have to have a political class that respects that.’ But it doesn’t. Christianity, under British democracy and values system, has always been a choice.
Using the slogan we want our country back people, in August 2024, started attacking asylum seekers hostels, terrorising asylum seekers, attacking the police and people’s property.
Getting our country back can only ever really mean something in one kind of situation – when there is a threat to the democratic process that we have in place – or to the rule of law, equality of opportunity, freedom of speech and the right to live free from persecution.
Perversely, the people who are using the slogan we want our country back to terrorise asylum seekers and attack the police – and Mosques to stop people from exercising their right to chose what to believe in – are creating the very situations – in which one can reasonably argue – we need to get our country back.
