The corporation’s claims to the public and to neutrality are crucial for the British state and its power across the globe. 

The desire to see neoliberalism as the ’70s ruination of an earlier public consensus, is a desire to which state-backed capital is all too willing to direct us.

The nostalgic appeal to ‘the spirit of 45’ is embedded in a long myth of ‘public services’ propagated by the culture of Britain’s unwritten constitution.

The British media's sidelining of Scotland and its referendum is part of a history in which questions of nationality are smothered by the UK establishment. Today, it is increasingly clear that popular sovereignty is incompatible with the UK state. Yet avoidance is still the name of the 'British' game.

Throughout its history, the stature of the BBC has depended upon an active suppression of nationality - silencing popular sovereignty through the transmission of British state ideology. Only by nationalisation can the deep changes be made that would enable the institution to provide a truly public service. 

The desperate construction of cultural Britishness observable in this summer's Jubilee and Olympics is just another attempt to conflate British identity with an idealised vision of England. The motivation for those in power is clear: to disguise the gaping constitutional issues that threaten the UK's political authority.