The good citizen

Jon Bright (London, OK): Thomas Hobbes' definition of life without the state, the Leviathan, was published in 1651 - but it was based on a document written eleven years previously, during the English Civil War. Hobbes was a royalist - or, at least, he kept company with many exiled royalists in Paris - and it's unsurprising that his theory of the state, needed to keep humans from tearing each other apart, provides somewhat of a foundation for royal (autocratic) rule.

Tom Griffin (London, The Green Ribbon): As the tenth anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement approaches, there is growing evidence that the inclusive vision of 1998 is being undermined by the Government's more recent obsession with a narrower and more prescriptive identity politics.

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): A great story in yesterday's Mail on Sunday: QUEEN FURY OVER BROWN OATH filled its front page. The palace had gone to the extraordinary step of giving the paper an on-the-record-statement: "The Palace was not consulted with regard to the Goldsmith review". Wow, was the Palace showing good judgement? Had it at least understood that being British meant not asking everyone to go on their knees and swear fealty to the monarch? That this would politicise the institution and drag it into disrepute?

Bethan Jenkins (Neath, Plaid AM): The headline of Lord Goldsmith's proposals on British citizenship and Constitutional reform is inevitably that of calling on young people to swear an oath of allegiance to the Queen.  The reason - to foster a sense of ‘shared understanding,' and a sense of National pride (though in fact it will be more of a punishment for children, I suspect!)

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): The row over citizenship raises some big issues which I'll write about tomorrow, but one of them seems only to have been picked up on in the Daily Mail report and it is a grave indicator of the disgusting corruption of political life that it seems to have gone unremarked elsewhere, even in Tim Garton Ash's interesting and intelligent article today. In two places Goldsmith's report suggests monetarising citizenship:

Mike Small (Fife, Bella Caledonia): Peter Preston's "Malaga to Manchester" in Tuesday's Guardian contained the usual parody of analysis and a predictable panoply of anglocentric mismeasurement of our constitutional log-jam. It's only in this sort of cultural environment that Lord Goldsmith can come up with such Dead Parrot Policy as the Pythonesque pledge to the Queen as a fillip to citizenship (sic).

Catherine Fieschi (London, DEMOS): It's a well kept secret, but apparently Britons know exactly what it means to be British. They don't need to be taught, they don't need to be told, they, in fact, don't even need to think about it. Or so the Today programme's take on Lord Golsmith's Citizenship report would have led you to believe. Folks, we really need to put this globalization malarkey in perspective because, apparently, all this stuff about our reconfigured and multiple identities, migration flows, security measures, possible threats, the deep transformation of our everyday lives and the institutions that regulate it - all this according to some of the participants on the Today programme doesn't even warrant a quick refresher course on our understanding of what citizenship might cover as a concept or what it might legally entail. As a non-Brit who's lived here for the better part of a decade and half, as a witness to the political and rhetorical contortions to which the debate around Britishness has (almost legitimately) given rise and as a member of the Goldsmith citizenship review, I hate to break it to Helena Kennedy but the fact is that despite her assertion that citizenship oaths are ‘risible' and her intimation that this all a bit over the top, the fact is that the Citizenship review was long overdue and the report covers necessary and refreshing ground.

Billy Bragg (Dorset, musician): The Government are constantly talking about the idea of Britishness yet seem unable to come up with a clear definition of exactly what that means.

I'm proud of our diversity but I admit there is a hole at the centre of our multicultural society - what we need is something to bind us together as citizens.

While it's right there should be recognition when you become a full member of society at 18, asking teenagers to take a pledge of allegiance is little more than a sticking plaster for a larger problem. I support giving young people incentives to volunteer and get involved in communities - by paying tuition fees, for instance. That's a practical way to express your membership of society. It would earn you respect as an individual, and everyone needs that kind of recognition.

Rick Muir (London, ippr): A huge furore has greeted the publication today of Lord Goldsmith's review of citizenship. This is largely due to the idea (floated as an option rather than a recommendation) that young people should be asked to swear an oath of allegiance to the Queen. Like most people on the liberal-left such a proposal fills me with horror: the idea of repeating those awful occasions at Scouts when you had to salute the flag and affirm your loyalty to the monarch makes me cringe. As a life-long republican, this would mean asking me to say something that I didn't mean.

Simon Barrow (London, Ekklesia): Encouraging people to commit to social justice, human dignity, equality, civic participation and peace-building is the way to create good citizens, not attempts to impose symbols of state allegiance and inflated rhetoric about "national pride" which we can see manifest in Lord Goldsmith's publication on British Citizenship. Education for civic participation and reform of the constitutional system to encourage democratic accountability would be a much more meaningful way of encouraging common purpose than questionable nationalistic gestures. And making loyalty to the nation state our primary identity also raises deep questions for those who belong to communities shaped by global ethical commitments that go well beyond national or geographical attachments. Good citizens have a wider vision than flag-waving.

Peter Facey (London, Unlock Democracy): We welcome this review insofar as we hope it will kickstart a national debate about what it means to be a British citizen. But despite a few positive suggestions, overall Lord Goldsmith's conclusions are a backwards step.

Lord Goldsmith seems to have a one-size-fits-all 'IKEA' view of nationalism. It is a passive view of citizenship concerned primarily with good behaviour and respecting authority. The emphasis is on deference to rather than ownership of the state. He isn't really championing citizenship at all but rather the notion that we should all be regarded as subjects of the Crown.

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): Listen to Helena Kennedy and Lord Goldsmith discuss Britishness and citizenship ceremonies here. What do you think?

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): The following is in today's Mail. We've carried quite a lot about Lord Goldsmith who has as many jobs as Tony Blair, questioning whether anyone would want to buy citizenship from such a man back in October. The comments on the Mail article are interesting. Some say 'quite right' and 'about time' others, "I wouldn't mind swearing allegiance to the Queen, but to King Charles? No thanks." or "I would NEVER swear any oath of allegiance to ANY member of the royal family. They are a bunch of parasites sponging off the taxpayer. I would NEVER allow my children to swear such an oath either before they reached the age of majority." The point is, are we to become a modern democracy - or how long do we have to suffer this attempt to modernise feudalism?