For a certain type of Englishman or woman, our national self-identity is one of stoicism, moderation, and being ‘good in a crisis’. You know the script – we withstood the blitz and beat the Nazis, possibly with a flashback to the band playing on as the Titanic sank.
The ‘good in a crisis’ version of our identity needs a history update and a geography lesson, if we’re to understand why Britain is seeing COVID rates soar once more whilst our western European neighbours look on in dismay.
I arrived back from a holiday in Portugal this week reflecting on our national character, and that of another small maritime nation, one with the longest-standing national borders in Europe. One that, like England, for a time controlled the most expansive empire in the world, but now merely shares the language of an economically mighty former colony across the Atlantic.
