The State, the Nation, and Stewardship

Much political discussion becomes confused because it treats the state and the nation as the same thing.

They are not.

The state is an institution. Its legitimacy comes from the functions it performs. It exists to protect life, liberty and the conditions necessary for human flourishing. It maintains order, administers justice, secures borders and provides the framework within which people can live their lives.

The nation is something different. A nation is an historical community stretching across generations. It consists of shared memories, institutions, traditions, customs, stories and inherited ways of life. We inherit it rather than create it.

This distinction explains my political priorities.

First, a state must secure life, liberty and security.

Second, it must govern competently.

Only then do questions of national continuity arise.

My understanding of liberty is relatively narrow. Liberty is primarily a doctrine of toleration and non-interference. People should generally be free to speak, associate, worship, publish, read and maintain their traditions without arbitrary interference. The purpose of liberty is not to create a perfectly neutral society, but to allow people with profound disagreements to live together peacefully.

Liberty tells us what must be tolerated.

It does not tell us what should be promoted.

Public institutions inevitably make choices. Schools must decide what history to teach. Libraries must decide which books to buy. Museums must decide what to display. Broadcasters must decide what stories to tell. Civic ceremonies must decide what traditions to celebrate.

Cultural neutrality is therefore largely an illusion.

The real question is not whether institutions transmit culture, but which culture they transmit.

My own view is that publicly supported institutions should primarily preserve and transmit the historical culture of the nation. This does not imply suppressing other cultures or viewpoints. People should remain free to advocate alternative visions of society and maintain their own traditions and associations.

The distinction is simple: there is a right to cultural expression, but not a right to equal cultural patronage.

A tolerant society does not have to be culturally neutral.

This brings us to the modern culture war.

I do not believe this conflict is imaginary. Increasingly, many political questions appear to line up behind two competing visions of the country. One sees Britain primarily as an historical nation whose institutions should consciously maintain continuity with its inheritance. The other sees Britain primarily as a liberal framework within which individuals pursue their own goals and identities.

The disagreement is real because public institutions cannot simultaneously place every tradition, value system and historical narrative at the centre of national life.

Choices must be made.

Politics ultimately determines who makes those choices.

Nor do I subscribe to the comforting fiction that all political disagreements are minor or that all visions of society are equally benign. Ideas have consequences. Some ideas may be mistaken, reckless or even dangerous.

But fanatical opponents are not the only danger. Fanatical allies can be equally destructive.

The cultural conflict that runs through modern Britain does not divide neat tribes occupying separate territories. It runs through families, friendships and generations. The people on the other side of the argument are often not strangers but neighbours, parents, children and friends.

Without life there is no liberty.

Without liberty there is no cultural expression.

Peace, security, prosperity and the lives of our children are not bargaining counters in a cultural struggle.

No cultural victory is worth civil conflict.

The answer to dangerous ideas is persuasion, organisation, writing, elections and political action, not vigilantism, intimidation or fantasies of civil war. The culture war may be real, but it must remain a war of books, essays, speeches, elections, parties and peaceful demonstrations.

Charles Dickens captured a similar truth in Bleak House. The endless dispute of Jarndyce and Jarndyce ultimately consumes the inheritance over which the parties are fighting. Nations can suffer the same fate. A people who become so consumed by the struggle over their inheritance that they sacrifice liberty, prosperity, social trust or civil peace may discover that they have preserved nothing at all.

We see the same warning elsewhere in literature. The desire to preserve something can become possessiveness. Stewardship can become obsession. We may come to regard our values, traditions or political cause as “our precious”. Yet history is full of people who destroyed the thing they loved by trying to preserve it at any cost.

Ultimately, we are not owners of our national inheritance but its stewards.

We inherit a language, a history, a set of institutions and traditions, and we attempt to pass them on as faithfully as we can. Beyond that point, the future belongs to those who come after us. They may prove wise men or fools; we cannot know.

Our task is simply to be good custodians while we have our turn.

The argument over Britain’s future will continue, and it probably should. The stakes are real and the disagreement is genuine. Yet no vision of Britain is worth destroying the peace, liberty and prosperity that make Britain worth living in.

We contend because the stakes are high.

We tolerate because the cost of abandoning toleration is higher still