“Britannia” evokes a certain idea of Britain. The heroes are Churchill and Thatcher; and King George VI and Queen Elizabeth. “Rule Britannia” is a national song. “Britannia” is the name of the late Queen Elizabeth’s Royal Yacht. Ex-Prime Minister Boris Johnson wrote a biography of Churchill. Ex-Prime Minister Liz Truss contributed to the 2012, book Britannia Reawakened. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is a son of the Empire: India, Uganda, Britain.
Queen, monarchy, state, territory, war, nation, religion, empire … party.
When I was a boy in 1950, everybody was in Britannia’s pocket – and Britannia was in everybody’s pocket: my Saturday penny had her image, sitting in flowing robes, the helmet of war on her head, shield in one hand and trident in the other.
‘Britannia’ involves a preoccupation with the national self and an over-evaluation of the national self - and a neglect and an under-evaluation of the international other. ‘Britannia’ overlooks other ideas about the national self.
Hubris … Nemesis. ‘Britannia’ brought about Brexit and the political and economic crisis in the UK in the Summer and Autumn months of 2022:
May 8: Commemoration of VE Day
June 2: The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee
July 7: Boris Johnson resigns as party leader
September 6: Liz Truss is elected party leader …
… Boris Johnson resigns as UK prime minister
… Liz Truss is invited by the Queen to become prime minister
September 8: Death of Queen Elizabeth II
September 20: The Royal Funeral
October 20: Liz Truss resigns as party leader
October 25: Rishi Sunak is chosen as party leader
… Liz Truss resigns as prime minister
… Rishi Sunak is invited by King Charles III to become Prime Minister
This is a book about these events. It is a book about opinions of these events, about the opinions held by prime ministers, politicians, journalists and members of the public. And it is about the opinions these people have about the Queen and about the monarchy, about prime ministers, about party leadership candidates and about related issues. Sometimes it is about ‘meta-opinions’, about the opinions people have about other people’s opinions. In particular how do people’s opinions about public opinion correspond to actual public opinion?
It is about opinions expressed in prose and about opinions expressed in elections and in opinion surveys. It is about the analysis of these opinions. For example consider the prose opinion of The Times leader referring to “over a thousand years of national history” - how should we analyse that? – how well does it stand up to analysis? Particular attention is paid to the opinions expressed in elections and in opinion surveys. The results of these elections and surveys are widely reported, usually in terms of percentages. My view is that these percentages only represent the surface and that a deeper analysis is required.
How do people conceptualise Britannia? … and how might we conceptualise people’s conceptualisation of Britannia? Are the people united in support of Britannia? Are the people divided into two groups - those who support Britannia and those who are against? Are the people divided into several groups, just one of which supports Britannia? Emma Duncan suggests the following three ‘portraits’:
“If you had to paint a portrait … what would you go for?
The Victory of the Small Island Conservatives, with the British ship sailing away from Europe, Boris Johnson at the prow looking plump and pleased with himself while Liz Truss struggles with the sextant, bays at the sailors to go faster as the ship heads towards the rocks?
The Culture Wars Tear the Nation Apart, in which a vanguard of heavily armed and muscular trans women engage in hand-to-hand combat with a troupe of rather fetching Amazonians led by JK Rowling while on the sidelines the Liberal Elite and the Conservative Masses tweet angrily at one another and a modern Britannia preaches to a slightly baffled imperial version of herself about how she should be more inclusive?
The Triumph of Liberalism. In the foreground, a gay wedding would be under way. The congregation would be happy, harmonious Britons of all colours earnestly engaging each other in serious debate while the final guest, having just disembarked from a small boat, is welcomed and offered a front pew. There would be no politicians, social media influencers or drama. It would be quite a dull picture.”
[Emma Duncan: “We should celebrate the triumph of liberal Britain. Data shows we are one of the most tolerant nations on earth – let’s not ruin that delicate balance.”
The Times, April 28 2023: 26.]
United? Divided in two? Divided into several groups? I prefer a different conceptualisation. Rather than thinking in terms of distinct categories and groups, I prefer to think of a continuum, to think of a multidimensional space. I envisage people being distributed all over this space. It is a conceptualisation that is common in the social sciences, where scales are developed to measure the different dimensions quantitatively. In this book I shall locate leadership candidates on a Brexit Leave-Remain scale in Chapter 5; locate the public on a Royal Proximity scale in Chapter 6; and locate issues on a Policy Left-Right scale in Chapter 7.
The data I use comes from opinion surveys. Whereas people lining the streets are public expressions, opinion surveys give some information about private opinion. (as in Kuran’s Private Truths, Public Lies). See Chapter 3 on the Jubilee and Chapter 6 on the Royal Funeral.
Usually the results of opinion surveys are reported in terms of percentages. Sometimes these percentages are one-sided aggregate percentages which I feel are misleading. Also the percentages relate to the options offered which I regard as surface expressions of an underlying continuum. So I often use the percentages to estimate the mean and spread of the distribution on the underlying continuum.
The process of voting also uses data about opinions. Here too percentages are used. The data and the percentage sometimes give only a surface account of people’s opinions. This may be at variance with the underlying distribution of people’s opinions. Addressing all this is social choice theory. This theory is applied in Chapter 5 to analyse the votes in the leadership election.
So much for Britain. Do other countries have their own versions of Britannia? The year 2022 was when Putin’s Russia invaded Ukraine. Here too a certain idea about the nation was invoked: Putin appealed to the history of “Rus”. Britannia, Rus – in both cases there is an inspiration to make one’s country great again (MGA). Meanwhile in the USA, Trump and Biden are squaring up for the second time:
“It’s not assured that Trump will be republican candidate, which is why Biden didn’t mention the former president by name in his campaign launch, but referred instead to “MAGA [Make America Great Again] extremists”
[Gerard Baker: “Biden knows he can’t ask for four more years. The octogenarian’s campaign pitch is clear: you may not think much of me but remember what the other guy is like.” The Times, April 28 2023: 27.]
In opposition to what is seen as authoritarian MGA, is the notion of liberalism. Emma Duncan started her article not with Britain but with France, with Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People. (This celebrates the July revolution of 1830 which toppled King Charles X). Emma Duncan proceeds to discuss a King’s College London comparison of twenty-four countries. Following the title of the report, she notes that “Britain is fourth highest”. It comes as a bit of a shock though to look at the original report. Yes Britain is fourth - with a score of 84. Next below Britain is China, also with a score of 84.
The KCL report was written by “UK in the World Values Survey”. This is one of a number of international surveys of opinion. I have characterised the results of these surveys with the following phrase: “World opinion: surface divides and underlying gradients”. Two recent reports invoke the word “divided”:
A World Divided: Russia, China and the West. (Cambridge, 2022)
https://www.bennettinstitute.cam.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/A_World_Divided.pdf
“United West, divided from the rest: global public opinion one year into Russia’s war on Ukraine” (22 February 2023)
Timothy Garton Ash, Ivan Krastev and Mark Leonard for the European Council on Foreign Relations, ECFR.
My analyses of these two reports argue that what the data exhibits is distributions on an underlying continuous dimension with functional relationships involving gradients.
My analysis of the Cambridge report (2022):
World opinion: continuous distributions and categorical divides
My analysis of the ECFR report (2023) only looked at the first question in their survey. (My analysis of the other questions is in progress). See Section 4 in:
Positive Value 8: Principled negotiation … Ukraine 55: War options and social choice theory
Thus the notion of Britannia discussed in this book relates to similar notions in other countries. In Britain the notion of Britannia co-exists with other notions of Britain – just as there are different notions of national self within other countries.
Overviews of the Chapters
2 VE Day: Winston Churchill and George VI on the balcony
This short chapter introduces the notion of ‘Britannia’ as one of the ways in which Britain sees itself. One of the most powerful components of ‘Britannia’ is the idea that ‘Britain won the war’. VE Day, 8th May, is celebrated – it is the day in 1945 that Hitler’s Germany conceded defeat.
‘Britannia’ is an example of a particular type of national self-concept. There is over-estimation of the self and under-estimation of the other. The national self is great in terms of both power and virtue … it is greater than others … it is great now or in the past or in the future (Make Our Nation Great Again). Nations compete rather than cooperate. The focus is on nations rather than international institutions.
Britain is not alone in thinking like this - and this way of thinking about the national self is not the only way of thinking about the national self. See Wertsch’s How nations remember. A narrative approach.
Empire, monarchy, church and party are all powerful components of Britannia. As prime minister in the 1930s, Stanley Baldwin characterised the Conservative party as an alliance of throne, church and empire.
3 The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee; the two Elizabeths (1558-2022)
This is the first of two chapters devoted to the Queen and to royalty in general. This chapter is prompted by the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee and in Chapter 6 we consider the death of the Queen. In Chapter 2 we noted that royalty was one of the institutions invoked by the notion of ‘Britannia’ and in this chapter we shall consider how royalty relates to these other institutions.
On 6th February 1952 King George VI died and Elizabeth immediately became Queen. On 6th February 2022, Elizabeth had been Queen for 70 years. The Platinum Jubilee Central Weekend took place on Thursday 2nd June to 5th June 2022.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platinum_Jubilee_of_Elizabeth_II
There were great public celebrations. However, as discussed in more detail in Chapter 6, there was a more diverse distribution of private opinions. Note too that the celebrations involved the promotion of opinions about the Queen and about royalty.
The first part of the chapter presents musings about the monarchy, about Queen, territory, nation, religion, democracy and empire. The next part picks up on the common reference to the two Elizabeths, the first inaugurating empire and the second forfeiting empire. In 1952 there had been an excited anticipation of a new Elizabethan Age.
The chapter ends with a more general reflection of monarchy and empire.
4 The downfall of Boris Johnson: social relations
This is the first of four chapters about the political turmoil in the UK in 2022 which brought about three prime ministers in quick succession: Boris Johnson, then Liz Truss and then Rishi Sunak.
This chapter is about the downfall of Boris Johnson and focuses on events in 2022 but briefly notes the antecedents. There are three time periods:
The Brexit referendum in 2016 and the general election of 2017
Party leadership, general election, Brexit and COVID: 2019-2020
Decline and fall, January to July 2022
It had been Boris Johnson in 2016 who had led the Leave campaign to victory in the UK’s Brexit referendum. Having lost the referendum, Prime Minister David Cameron resigned as leader of the Conservative Party and was succeeded as party leader by Theresa May, who thereby also succeeded Cameron as prime minister. The succession took place without a general election. However May did then win the 2017 election.
In the Spring of 2019, May was unable to gain the support of Parliament for her Brexit proposals and was forced to stand down as leader of the Conservative Party. Conservative MPs and Conservative party members alike voted for Boris Johnson to be party leader - and hence prime minister. Johnson won the general election in December 2019 for the Conservatives with a promise to “Get Brexit Done”.
Brexit ‘got done’ in January 2020 but in February/March 2020 the world succumbed to COVID …
Decline and fall, January to July 2022
Always controversial Boris Johnson became embroiled in Partygate: the question of whether he had broken COVID rules by attending an office party and whether he had subsequently misled parliament. Social relations within his own inner circle, within the Cabinet and amongst his own MPs were increasingly negative. With a divided party, only narrowly winning a vote of confidence from his own MPs, losing by-elections, losing the support of key cabinet colleagues and MPs and with falling opinion polls (covering personal support from all voters, from Conservative voters and from Conservative Party members; and party support at a three-year low), Johnson like May was forced to stand down as leader of the Conservative Party on 7th July 2022.
Newspapers were divided. The Sun, Daily Express and Daily Mail deplored the fact that Johnson had been forced to quit and thanked him for what he had achieved. The Daily Telegraph, The Times, the Financial Times and The Guardian, Daily Mirror and Morning Star noted demands that he should resign as Prime Minister immediately. The Daily Star mocked: “Bozo: that legacy in full … got a cute dog … good party organiser … nice wallpaper”.
The Times had many articles highly critical of Johnson, including Anthony Seldon’s: “Johnson taught us one valuable lesson: how not to be prime minister.” Unsurprisingly also critical was The Observer with Andrews Rawnsley offering: “Boris Johnson plumbed the depths of degeneracy in his shabby carnival of misrule”.
The chapter ends with a discussion of some general issues. Breaking of rules … separation of powers … indecisiveness. Johnson was criticised for twisting truth and breaking rules. In order to prevent a monopoly of power and the breaking of rules, the constitution may provide for a separation of powers. However the separation of power may create a situation where there is indecisiveness. President Biden is hampered because Senate and House of Representatives are indecisive. President Macron is hampered because his party does not enjoy a majority in the legislature. In the UK in 2019 Prime Minister May was hampered because the House of Commons would not pass her proposal for Brexit – or indeed any alternative proposal.
5 Johnson to Truss in eight weeks; social choice
This is the second of the four chapters about the political turmoil in the UK in 2022. In Chapter 4 we discussed the events which led to the downfall of Boris Johnson. His resignation as leader of the Conservative party on July 7th prompted the start of a process of choosing the next prime minister.
In general, the process of choosing a prime minister is not straightforward. What happened in this case is that Boris Johnson continued to be prime minister while the Conservative party engaged in the process of choosing a new leader of the party. Some had wanted a different process. Some wanted Boris Johnson to stand down immediately as prime minister and to be immediately replaced by a temporary caretaker prime minister. Some wanted the next prime minister to be determined by the outcome of a general election.
The selection of a new party leader involves three stages. The first stage is the nomination of candidates and the acceptance of their nomination. If only one candidate is nominated then that candidate becomes leader – see Chapter 8. Otherwise there are then two further stages. There is a stage where Conservative MPs vote; and then there is a stage where Conservative party members vote.
Elsewhere I have discussed the process which selected Boris Johnson as party leader in 2019 (a link is provided). Links are also provided to two leadership elections for the Labour Party: Jeremy Corbyn in 2015 and Keir Starmers in 2020.
In 2022 there were many candidates nominated to succeed Boris Johnson. Some failed to obtain the requisite number of supporters. Conservative MPs then voted over five rounds, gradually eliminating candidates until just two were left: Sunak with 137 votes and Truss with 113 votes – Mordaunt being eliminated with 105 votes; and the other five candidates having been eliminated in the four previous rounds.
Through the summer there were several debates between the two candidates. Then the results of the votes of Conservative party members were announced. As anticipated, Liz Truss defeated Rishi Sunak and was elected leader of the
Conservative party on Monday 6th September 2022. Party members voted 57% for Truss and 43% for Sunak.
6 A royal funeral: social networks and collective action
This is the second chapter about the Queen. In Chapter 3 we used the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee to prompt wide-ranging reflections on the monarchy. Here we consider the death of the Queen on 8th September 2022.
The events illustrate death in a social network and the consequent opinions and actions - including public actions and private inaction, truths and lies.
The subsequent ten days of mourning provided something of an interlude for the UK government. The Queen had received Boris Johnson’s resignation and invited Liz Truss to be the new Prime Minister just a few days before she died. At that point national attention switched from the new government to the ten days of mourning. In the streets, there were great public displays relating to the Queen’s death. And by the end of that ten days The Times had produced 504 pages of print devoted to the Queen and the Royalty.
There is a distinction between the Queen as a human being and the Queen as an occupant of a role. There is a contrast between private truths and public displays. Opinion polls and election results can provide some insight into private truths about public opinion about the Queen and royalty. The net pro-monarchy percentage for various social groups in the UK are given. USA opinion about British politicians and royalty is given. Scotland, Australia and New Zealand, and USA and Canada opinions are given.
“The nation in grief”. Many such phrases were used to portray the national response to the Queen’s death. It is an example of the issue of how to represent the response of a collective of individuals. It is helpful to think of various hypotheses. We can think of a united collective … of a divided collective … or of the distribution of the collective along a continuum. Results for ‘impact’ in North America and ‘upset’ in the UK are given. The upset score depends on the pro-monarchy score. You are invited to calculate your ‘upset percentile score’; and your percentile multi-dimensional distance from the Queen.
Media coverage: TV viewing figures are compared for the Queen, COVID and football.
Clare Martin of St Ethelburga’s asks “what do collective rituals mean?”.
7 Liz Truss’s seven weeks: the economy
Chapter 4 charted the downfall of Boris Johnson and Chapter 5 looked at the long process of choosing his successor. This chapter picks up the story.
Liz Truss was prime minister for just seven weeks. The first two weeks were overshadowed by the death of the Queen and the funeral (Chapter 6). Attention then turned to the economy. Commenting on the world economy the Annual Report of the IMF in September was entitled Crisis upon Crisis.
Truss had appointed Kwasi Kwarteng as Chancellor. Both had contributed to the book Britannia Unchained (2012). Following Truss’ s campaign promises, both made economic growth the key and Kwarteng’s mini-budget of September 23rd was its expression. During the leadership campaign Rishi Sunak had challenged Truss’s economic statements and there had been criticism from many in anticipation of the budget, particularly the notion of unfunded tax cuts. The market reacted badly and strongly to the budget, and there was some backtracking of the policy (12th October), but Truss felt forced to sack Kwarteng (14th October). The new Chancellor was Jeremy Hunt who acted to somewhat reassure the markets. (Hunt had been the main leadership challenger to Boris Johnson in 2019 but was a quickly eliminated candidate in the summer of 2022). Hunt’s measures were insufficient to redeem the identification of Truss with the crisis her policies had created and she herself was persuaded to resign on 20th October.
Opinion polls had moved strongly against Liz Truss – she and the Conservatives were far behind Keir Starmer and the Labour Party.
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt on taking office “There were mistakes.” 15 October,
https://nation.cymru/news/new-chancellor-admits-mistakes-have-been-made-by-truss-administration/
8 Truss to Sunak in six days
Prime Minister Sunak on coming into office “Mistakes were made.” 25 oct
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/uk-news/prime-minister-rishi-sunak-says-25349682
This short chapter charts the events of the six days which started with Liz Truss’s resignation as leader of the Conservative Party. This was followed by a high-speed four-day leadership contest. The sole candidate, Rishi Sunak, won the leadership, became prime minister, formed a cabinet and experienced his first Prime Minister’s Question Time.
It had not been clear that Sunak would be the only candidate. It had looked as if Johnson might try to come back as prime minister. Also Penny Mordaunt withdrew at the very last minute. The process had been designed to make sure that there would be a result very quickly.
So the man who had lost to Truss just seven weeks previously was now Prime Minister. The man who had lost to Johnson in 2019 was now Chancellor. Of the new occupants of No. 10 and No. 11, one was of Asian origin and one was white British – and one spouse was born in India and the other spouse was born in China.
Truss’s seven weeks in office is compared with the length in office of previous prime ministers since Neville Chamberlain in 1937.
The opinion polls showed the Labour lead at around 30%. Keir Starmer’s ratings continued to be higher than Conservative leaders’- although the poll at the end of the week suggested Sunak had slightly reduced the gap.
It seemed possible that a tempestuous period in British politics might be at an end.
…
Notes
.(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubris ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemesis
.(2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Britannia
.(3) “Rule Britannia!” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule,_Britannia! …
… The Last Night of the Proms
2020, Boris Johnson: https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/boris-johnson-rule-britannia-black-lives-matter-protests-last-night-of-the-proms-609390
.(4) The style and titles of his Britannic Majesty. “George V by the Grace of God of Great Britain, Ireland and the British Dominions beyond the Seas, King, Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India.” 1927.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2188979
.(5) “As prime minister in the 1930s, Stanley Baldwin characterised the Conservative party as an alliance of throne, church and empire.” 25, 29.
…
Books
Bales, Tim. The Conservative Party After Brexit: Turmoil and Transformation. Polity/ Wiley, 2023.
[Review: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/mar/26/the-conservative-party-after-brexit-by-tim-bale-review-why-conservatism-turned-into-chaos. Obs. New Rev. 26, 38.]
Dorling, Danny and Sally Tomlinson. Rule Britannia. Brexit and the End of Empire. Biteback. 2020.
https://www.bitebackpublishing.com/books/rule-britannia
[https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2019/02/20/misrule-britannia-brexit-is-the-last-gasp-of-empire/]
Goodwin, Matthew. Values, Voice and Virtue. The New British Politics. Penguin. 2023.
[https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/320891/values-voice-and-virtue-by-goodwin-matthew/9780141999098
Review: “Liberal elite have captured the conversation – expect a revolt.” Sat. Rev. 1, 28-29.]
Johnson, Boris. The Churchill Factor. How One Man Made History. Hodder and Stoughton. 2014.
https://www.hachette.co.uk/titles/boris-johnson/the-churchill-factor/9781444783049/
Kwarteng, Kwasi, Priti Patel, Dominic Raab, Chris Skidmore and Elizabeth Truss.
Britannia Unchained. Global Lessons for Growth and Prosperity. Palgrave Macmillan. 2012.
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1057/9781137032249
[https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2012/aug/22/britannia-unchained-rise-of-new-tory-right]
Pepinster, Catherine. Defenders of the Faith – the British Monarchy, Religion and the Next Coronation. Hodder and Stoughton. 2022.
https://www.hachette.co.uk/titles/catherine-pepinster/defenders-of-the-faith/9781399800082/
Seldon, Anthony and Raymond Newell. Johnson at 10. The Inside Story. Atlantic. 2023.
https://atlantic-books.co.uk/book/johnson-at-10/
Sobolewska, Maria and Robert Ford. Brexitland. Identity, Diversity and the Reshaping of British Politics. Cambridge University Press. 2020.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/brexitland/667A60CB4C315A755792074E79B20FBA
Wertsch, James V. How nations remember. A narrative approach.
Reviews of Seldon and Newell:
Daily Mail
Observer
“Ducking and diving with the PM who would be king. An impressive account of Boris Johnson’s chaotic reign lays bare a man utterly unfit to hold the highest office.” Andrew Rawnsley. Obs. New Rev. 30, 41.
“ ‘There has never been a PM who has been so weak’. … a devastating – and dispiriting – account of Johnson’s chaotic reign.” Tim Adams. Obs. New Rev. 30: 19-21.
Daily Telegraph
“Anthony Seldon’s book on Boris Johnson doesn’t tell the full story.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/what-to-read/boris-johnson-number-10-anthony-seldon-review/
Times
“The lord of misrule: a great Tory tragicomedy. This eye-opening account will shock even his biggest critics. … He ping-ponged between Carrie in the flat and Cummings in the office.” Daniel Finkelstein. The Times, Saturday Review, April 29 2023, 16-17.
…
THE END