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Who Are We Now? Stories of Modern England
In this compelling and essential book, Jason Cowley, editor-in-chief of the New Statesman, examines contemporary England through a handful of the key news stories from recent times to reveal what they tell us about the state of the nation and to answer the question Who Are We Now?
Spanning the years since the election of Tony Blair’s New Labour government to the aftermath of the Covid pandemic, the book investigates how England has changed and how those changes have affected us. Cowley weaves together the seemingly disparate stories of the Chinese cockle-pickers who drowned in Morecambe Bay, the East End Imam who was tested during a summer of terror, the pensioner who campaigned against the closure of her GP’s surgery and Gareth Southgate’s transformation of English football culture. And in doing so, Cowley shows the common threads that unite them, whether it is attitudes to class, nation, identity, belonging, immigration, or religion.
He also examines the so-called Brexit murder in Harlow, the haunting repatriation of the fallen in the Iraq and Afghan wars through Wootton Bassett, the Lancashire woman who took on Gordon Brown, and the flight of the Bethnal Green girls to Islamic State, fleshing out the headlines with the very human stories behind them.
Through these vivid and often moving stories, Cowley offers a clear and compassionate analysis of how and why England became so divided and the United Kingdom so fragmented, and how we got to this cultural and political crossroads. Most importantly, he also shows us the many ways in which there is genuine hope for the future.
Spanning the years since the election of Tony Blair’s New Labour government to the aftermath of the Covid pandemic, the book investigates how England has changed and how those changes have affected us. Cowley weaves together the seemingly disparate stories of the Chinese cockle-pickers who drowned in Morecambe Bay, the East End Imam who was tested during a summer of terror, the pensioner who campaigned against the closure of her GP’s surgery and Gareth Southgate’s transformation of English football culture. And in doing so, Cowley shows the common threads that unite them, whether it is attitudes to class, nation, identity, belonging, immigration, or religion.
He also examines the so-called Brexit murder in Harlow, the haunting repatriation of the fallen in the Iraq and Afghan wars through Wootton Bassett, the Lancashire woman who took on Gordon Brown, and the flight of the Bethnal Green girls to Islamic State, fleshing out the headlines with the very human stories behind them.
Through these vivid and often moving stories, Cowley offers a clear and compassionate analysis of how and why England became so divided and the United Kingdom so fragmented, and how we got to this cultural and political crossroads. Most importantly, he also shows us the many ways in which there is genuine hope for the future.
304 pages, Hardcover
Published March 31, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
April 22, 2022
When I think back to the 1997 election when the inept Tory government was thrown out by the voters and the future seemed bright under the new Labour government we have come a long way. Since then we have had all manner of things to contend with; domestic terrorism, the Olympics, unnecessary wars, the financial crash of 2008, Brexit and most recently the pandemic.
How has this changed us as a country though?
This is the question that Jason Cowley is hoping to answer in this book. He starts though with his aunt who has lived in the same house in Harlow for fifty years. They talk about various things, but he is there to hear about her protest of the closure of a doctor’s surgery. It was a shock announcement and there was no consultation or explanation given, other than it was no longer financially viable. This had been decided by an American Insurance and healthcare provider and no one in the area knew that this company was running an essential medical service. She became a bit of a media star in her protest against the closure.
Brexit is a big theme throughout the book. It was sold to the electorate on the grounds that we would be taking back control. I am not sure we have, but this polarization of our country has not been helped by the lurch to the political right and how we have become much less tolerant of other people and their views. But in amongst this conflict, he shows that people are still working to make our society a much better place.
He visits the Finsbury Park mosque where Imam Mohammed Mahmoud, protected a white terrorist from an angry crowd of worshippers. His quick thinking saved a man’s life that night and more than that diffused a situation that was getting more and more heated. There are stories of hope in here too, people came together to support the vulnerable during the first phase of the pandemic and he notes how the England football team under Gareth Southgate show how a diverse Britain could work if we wanted it to.
I thought this was a well-written book. Cowley is not setting an agenda in this book, rather he is holding a mirror up to the various elements of our society and reporting on them. There are moments of doom and gloom in here as some of what he shows is where society is fracturing, but there are happier stories too. Stories where people are making sure that this diverse and multicultural country that we live in works for them and everyone else. Well worth reading for a view on where our country is at this moment
How has this changed us as a country though?
This is the question that Jason Cowley is hoping to answer in this book. He starts though with his aunt who has lived in the same house in Harlow for fifty years. They talk about various things, but he is there to hear about her protest of the closure of a doctor’s surgery. It was a shock announcement and there was no consultation or explanation given, other than it was no longer financially viable. This had been decided by an American Insurance and healthcare provider and no one in the area knew that this company was running an essential medical service. She became a bit of a media star in her protest against the closure.
Brexit is a big theme throughout the book. It was sold to the electorate on the grounds that we would be taking back control. I am not sure we have, but this polarization of our country has not been helped by the lurch to the political right and how we have become much less tolerant of other people and their views. But in amongst this conflict, he shows that people are still working to make our society a much better place.
He visits the Finsbury Park mosque where Imam Mohammed Mahmoud, protected a white terrorist from an angry crowd of worshippers. His quick thinking saved a man’s life that night and more than that diffused a situation that was getting more and more heated. There are stories of hope in here too, people came together to support the vulnerable during the first phase of the pandemic and he notes how the England football team under Gareth Southgate show how a diverse Britain could work if we wanted it to.
I thought this was a well-written book. Cowley is not setting an agenda in this book, rather he is holding a mirror up to the various elements of our society and reporting on them. There are moments of doom and gloom in here as some of what he shows is where society is fracturing, but there are happier stories too. Stories where people are making sure that this diverse and multicultural country that we live in works for them and everyone else. Well worth reading for a view on where our country is at this moment
February 21, 2023
Enjoyable and thoughtful. Cowley's musings on the state of the nation frame political debates in new, revealing ways. His perspectives on how different groups in our part-crumbling society breathe new life into arguments on issues from Shemima Begum's decision to travel to Iraq to the north's rejection of Labour and Corbyn in 2019. The book lacks an overall structure and knowingly poses no answers to the questions it raises, but is definitely one I'll go back to on the topics Cowley discusses and the way he frames our biggest problems.
June 4, 2022
I was born in Swindon in 1978, and I joke that this is why I don’t support a club football team. But perhaps this has more to do with the timing than the location, for as Cowley points out, the 1980s was a “desolate era” for English football, reaching its nadir at the Heysel disaster of 1985, following which English clubs were banned from European competition. My impression of football in the news was mostly the unattractive proposition of hooliganism, racism, and violence. However, the sport started rehabilitating its image after Italia 90, with the Premier League created in 1992 and the successful hosting of Euro 96 in England. This book is a collection of seemingly-unrelated stories about events of the last couple of decades and what they say about modern English (as contrasted with British) identity. One of the chapters, titled “Stretching the Flag”, covers the new era of the English team under Gareth Southgate, a multiracial team confidently taking the knee in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, its high-profile players using their public platforms to embarrass the government and effect political change. Without beating us over the head with it, we realise that this is an answer to the question posed by the book: Who are we now?
But there are other chapters, with other answers. For example, Gillian Duffy, a Labour voter who felt represented neither by Brown nor Corbyn; Stormzy, who headlined Glastonbury and describes himself as “Black British”; and the people of Wootton Bassett, my home town as I grew up, who lined the streets to memorialise British servicemen killed in the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan, while staunchly rejecting attempts by Tommy Robinson and Islam4UK to politically hijack their commemorations.
The most striking examples come from the description of four terror attacks in 2017, all carried out by English people killing other English people, whether in the name of Islam or as an attack on Muslims. (There is an interesting link between the Finsbury Park attacker, Darren Osborne, who had watched Three Girls, a documentary about the Rochdale grooming gang, and Gillian Duffy, who also saw this episode as demonstrating the failure of the state to help white girls for fear of being accused of racism.) However, the man we are drawn to as the example of “who we are now” is the Imam of Finsbury Park mosque, Mohammed Mahmoud, who made sure Darren Osborne was handed to the police unscathed, to be dealt with by the law rather than subject to a revenge killing. His surprising statement that “Britain is more Islamic than most Muslim countries” reminds us that any concept of Englishness which excludes him is destined to fail.
Cowley has put a lot of himself into this book, one of the chapters reproducing his essay “New Town Blues” from his earlier book “Reaching for Utopia”, retitled as “The Brexit Murder” (which turned out to be essentially unrelated to Brexit). This charts the decline of Harlow, Cowley’s home town, from its optimistic beginnings to a state of urban decay and hollowed-out public services. One feels his sense of sadness at what the town has become, mirrored in his reporting of the similar jaded state of the Northern towns of Oldham and Rochdale. But in spite of some of the rougher and darker edges, which he does not shy away from, this is an optimistic book. Even by making an attempt to re-define and rehabilitate Englishness, he takes space away from those who would define it by “resentful nationalism, or preoccupied by loss and nostalgia, or even by banal optimism”. And although not confident that the Union will survive after Brexit, he quotes Seneca that “every new beginning comes from some beginning’s end”. It may seem distant, but some of the stories in the book give us hope that just maybe, the process of renewal is underway.
But there are other chapters, with other answers. For example, Gillian Duffy, a Labour voter who felt represented neither by Brown nor Corbyn; Stormzy, who headlined Glastonbury and describes himself as “Black British”; and the people of Wootton Bassett, my home town as I grew up, who lined the streets to memorialise British servicemen killed in the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan, while staunchly rejecting attempts by Tommy Robinson and Islam4UK to politically hijack their commemorations.
The most striking examples come from the description of four terror attacks in 2017, all carried out by English people killing other English people, whether in the name of Islam or as an attack on Muslims. (There is an interesting link between the Finsbury Park attacker, Darren Osborne, who had watched Three Girls, a documentary about the Rochdale grooming gang, and Gillian Duffy, who also saw this episode as demonstrating the failure of the state to help white girls for fear of being accused of racism.) However, the man we are drawn to as the example of “who we are now” is the Imam of Finsbury Park mosque, Mohammed Mahmoud, who made sure Darren Osborne was handed to the police unscathed, to be dealt with by the law rather than subject to a revenge killing. His surprising statement that “Britain is more Islamic than most Muslim countries” reminds us that any concept of Englishness which excludes him is destined to fail.
Cowley has put a lot of himself into this book, one of the chapters reproducing his essay “New Town Blues” from his earlier book “Reaching for Utopia”, retitled as “The Brexit Murder” (which turned out to be essentially unrelated to Brexit). This charts the decline of Harlow, Cowley’s home town, from its optimistic beginnings to a state of urban decay and hollowed-out public services. One feels his sense of sadness at what the town has become, mirrored in his reporting of the similar jaded state of the Northern towns of Oldham and Rochdale. But in spite of some of the rougher and darker edges, which he does not shy away from, this is an optimistic book. Even by making an attempt to re-define and rehabilitate Englishness, he takes space away from those who would define it by “resentful nationalism, or preoccupied by loss and nostalgia, or even by banal optimism”. And although not confident that the Union will survive after Brexit, he quotes Seneca that “every new beginning comes from some beginning’s end”. It may seem distant, but some of the stories in the book give us hope that just maybe, the process of renewal is underway.
January 13, 2023
A more fitting subtitle may have been 'Stories of Male England'. This book would like to be a cathartic, pathos driven intervention into the question of English national identity, on behalf of the level headed pragmatists amongst us. And for scant passages it achieves just that. Editor of the Newstatesman Jason Cowley uses various disconnected stories of contemporary England, hoping to extrapolate key learnings from individual experiences, from Chinese migrant workers being forced to pick cockles in treacherous conditions in Morcambe Bay, to Gareth Southgate, to Mohammed Mahmoud, the imam of Finsbury Park Muslim Welfare House where a far right terrorist carried out a deadly attack in 2017.
As a narrative device this proves to be quite effective. A comprehensive account of Englishness in the 2020s is impossible for any one individual to undertake. But an open ended series of vignettes provides a vehicle for some tentative generalisations. The problem is that Cowley is not only too selective in his learnings and the stories he chooses, but also far too partisan a writer to weave an account with macro resonance.
The introduction is perhaps the strongest section of the book. Part literary review of other thinkers on Englishness in a post Empire and post Thatcher decline era, part survey of recent history which hits all the usual beats, from New Labour and illegal wars, to recession, expenses scandals, austerity, and Brexit.
As the narratives unfold however, and Cowley’s voice replaces the thinkers he cites, it becomes clear that this is not really a book about Englishness, but rather an apologist piece on behalf of self-identified level headed centrists, addressed to areas of the largely male population that he believes are susceptible to far right thinking. In the majority of his accounts, women’s voices barely get a look in. Aside from some supporting roles (mothers, wives, translators) and scattered voices, the only female voice that gets a chapter’s worth of analysis is Gillian Duffy, and here she is only really used as a mouthpiece for those left behind communities that reporters like Cowley find so fascinating (more on that later). (Duffy was infamously labelled a bigot by Gordon Brown off camera following a tense exchange on the 2010 GE campaign trail).
From religious leaders, to migrant workers, to soldiers fighting in Afghanistan, his own lengthy account of his childhood in Harlow which is perhaps not as relevant or interesting as he hoped it would be, this is a book attempting to referee various wounded masculine identities within the framework of English identity. This is perhaps most apparent in the chapter on English football. Like everyone, Cowley found the tale of Gareth Southgate’s team both inspiring and instructive. But in all the lengthy prose dedicated to English football and its turbulent history and hopeful present, the Lionesses don’t once get a mention.
Instead, Cowley uses this opportunity to claim the narrative of Southgate’s team in the name of what he believes is the pragmatic middle ground. A middle ground that is able to chastise far right tendencies in football in the same breath as “extreme elements of the BLM movement” as if they are somehow equivalent. What exactly is meant by this phrase is never made clear. But the fact that commentators like Cowley choose to lump literal fascists in the same category as those fighting racism is telling, especially as Cowley uses Tony Blair’s tone deaf intervention on the matter in 2021 to support his case. Only a few pages before Cowley was quite rightly taking Blair to task over the Iraq war and creating the conditions for UKIP to flourish. It seems Blair is still considered an insightful and relevant commentator by sections of the media when it supports their case to do so.
This chapter’s preachy tone comes across as particularly abrasive following his account of the world cup in Germany in 2006. We are told in matter of fact language that he was sent to Berlin by the Observer on an all expenses paid trip to cover the tournament, he was given a spacious rented apartment in the city centre all to himself, a generous expenses account, a complementary first class rail pass which he used to travel widely across Germany, and only had to write one article a week allowing him plenty of leisure time to…study the zeitgeist. Cowley no doubt included this detail to give us an idea of how he spent his time there. But instead it only reminds us how reporters of his calibre actually live. What to him seems like a dispassionate description of a work trip comes across as a crass brag about a luxury free holiday the rest of us could only dream of.
This lack of contact with “real” people that Cowley is nevertheless all too keen to speak for is made all the more apparent in the chapter on Duffy, where he interviews Andy Haldane, a former chief economist at the Bank of England. They discuss “deep hanging out”, which is essentially a phrase the London based commentariat use to describe their excursions into…England. This is the approach John Harris takes in his series ‘Anywhere but Westminster’ for the Guardian, where hapless reporters are sent outside London to report their findings as if they were on safari. John Harris was no doubt selected for the task having been born in the nebulas North, but it never seems to occur to anyone to actually allow local voices to tell their own stories without contextualising them as bigoted, down trodden, left behind, struggling. The vibrancy, diversity, colour, culture, and life of England outside London’s commuter belt remains supressed by this lazy approach to journalism. Harris and Cowley tentatively travelling the land pose as doing us a great service by visiting towns geographically on their own doorstep, treating it as an excursion to some newly discovered remote tribe. The rest of us remain bemused that our literal home is situated as "all very fascianting" and "alien" in these reporters' accounts of England.
Cowley’s account of Labour’s decline leaves Corbyn surprisingly unscathed, leaving the antisemitism scandals well alone for the sake of brevity. But again, in documenting the collapse of support in Labour’s heartlands, with Duffy being the canary in the coalmine, whose vote Blair and Brown so arrogantly took for granted, the 2017 surge goes unanalysed for the sake of telling a linear narrative. Cowley’s focus on analysing post imperial Englishness through stories and narratives may look poetic, but it leaves out anomalous data nodes that don’t fit within the neat threads he is trying to tie together.
To take a break from the litany of criticisms, the account of covid is succinct, level headed, and well written. This history is so recent that it is hard to gain a sense of analytical distance toward it. But Cowley is writer enough to lay out the key events in chronological order in flowing prose, allowing us to tie our personal experiences into national events as they played out and contextualise a period where time moved differently for us all.
Despite my many problems with this book, it is still worth reading. It is well written, and many of the stories are powerful, funny, tragic, and inspiring. But when delving into it, one must be mindful of the omissions, both those that Cowley himself acknowledges and those he hopes the reader won't notice. It mistakes the crisis of modern masculinity as a crisis of Englishness itself. And whilst the two are linked, the fact that Cowley largely ignores female voices in his narrative leaves him unable to tell half the story of modern English identity. His needless equivocation between far right thugs and anti-racists also betrays his real agenda.
This is not an author attempting to sit outside the debate in order to organise various competing views for the sake of greater clarity. This is an author with skin in the game and a very specific idea of what modern Englishness is or should be, but – deliberately or otherwise – he has taken too limited and partisan a view to effectively achieve what he set out to do, and supressed or ignored those voices that don't fit into this neat box.
As a narrative device this proves to be quite effective. A comprehensive account of Englishness in the 2020s is impossible for any one individual to undertake. But an open ended series of vignettes provides a vehicle for some tentative generalisations. The problem is that Cowley is not only too selective in his learnings and the stories he chooses, but also far too partisan a writer to weave an account with macro resonance.
The introduction is perhaps the strongest section of the book. Part literary review of other thinkers on Englishness in a post Empire and post Thatcher decline era, part survey of recent history which hits all the usual beats, from New Labour and illegal wars, to recession, expenses scandals, austerity, and Brexit.
As the narratives unfold however, and Cowley’s voice replaces the thinkers he cites, it becomes clear that this is not really a book about Englishness, but rather an apologist piece on behalf of self-identified level headed centrists, addressed to areas of the largely male population that he believes are susceptible to far right thinking. In the majority of his accounts, women’s voices barely get a look in. Aside from some supporting roles (mothers, wives, translators) and scattered voices, the only female voice that gets a chapter’s worth of analysis is Gillian Duffy, and here she is only really used as a mouthpiece for those left behind communities that reporters like Cowley find so fascinating (more on that later). (Duffy was infamously labelled a bigot by Gordon Brown off camera following a tense exchange on the 2010 GE campaign trail).
From religious leaders, to migrant workers, to soldiers fighting in Afghanistan, his own lengthy account of his childhood in Harlow which is perhaps not as relevant or interesting as he hoped it would be, this is a book attempting to referee various wounded masculine identities within the framework of English identity. This is perhaps most apparent in the chapter on English football. Like everyone, Cowley found the tale of Gareth Southgate’s team both inspiring and instructive. But in all the lengthy prose dedicated to English football and its turbulent history and hopeful present, the Lionesses don’t once get a mention.
Instead, Cowley uses this opportunity to claim the narrative of Southgate’s team in the name of what he believes is the pragmatic middle ground. A middle ground that is able to chastise far right tendencies in football in the same breath as “extreme elements of the BLM movement” as if they are somehow equivalent. What exactly is meant by this phrase is never made clear. But the fact that commentators like Cowley choose to lump literal fascists in the same category as those fighting racism is telling, especially as Cowley uses Tony Blair’s tone deaf intervention on the matter in 2021 to support his case. Only a few pages before Cowley was quite rightly taking Blair to task over the Iraq war and creating the conditions for UKIP to flourish. It seems Blair is still considered an insightful and relevant commentator by sections of the media when it supports their case to do so.
This chapter’s preachy tone comes across as particularly abrasive following his account of the world cup in Germany in 2006. We are told in matter of fact language that he was sent to Berlin by the Observer on an all expenses paid trip to cover the tournament, he was given a spacious rented apartment in the city centre all to himself, a generous expenses account, a complementary first class rail pass which he used to travel widely across Germany, and only had to write one article a week allowing him plenty of leisure time to…study the zeitgeist. Cowley no doubt included this detail to give us an idea of how he spent his time there. But instead it only reminds us how reporters of his calibre actually live. What to him seems like a dispassionate description of a work trip comes across as a crass brag about a luxury free holiday the rest of us could only dream of.
This lack of contact with “real” people that Cowley is nevertheless all too keen to speak for is made all the more apparent in the chapter on Duffy, where he interviews Andy Haldane, a former chief economist at the Bank of England. They discuss “deep hanging out”, which is essentially a phrase the London based commentariat use to describe their excursions into…England. This is the approach John Harris takes in his series ‘Anywhere but Westminster’ for the Guardian, where hapless reporters are sent outside London to report their findings as if they were on safari. John Harris was no doubt selected for the task having been born in the nebulas North, but it never seems to occur to anyone to actually allow local voices to tell their own stories without contextualising them as bigoted, down trodden, left behind, struggling. The vibrancy, diversity, colour, culture, and life of England outside London’s commuter belt remains supressed by this lazy approach to journalism. Harris and Cowley tentatively travelling the land pose as doing us a great service by visiting towns geographically on their own doorstep, treating it as an excursion to some newly discovered remote tribe. The rest of us remain bemused that our literal home is situated as "all very fascianting" and "alien" in these reporters' accounts of England.
Cowley’s account of Labour’s decline leaves Corbyn surprisingly unscathed, leaving the antisemitism scandals well alone for the sake of brevity. But again, in documenting the collapse of support in Labour’s heartlands, with Duffy being the canary in the coalmine, whose vote Blair and Brown so arrogantly took for granted, the 2017 surge goes unanalysed for the sake of telling a linear narrative. Cowley’s focus on analysing post imperial Englishness through stories and narratives may look poetic, but it leaves out anomalous data nodes that don’t fit within the neat threads he is trying to tie together.
To take a break from the litany of criticisms, the account of covid is succinct, level headed, and well written. This history is so recent that it is hard to gain a sense of analytical distance toward it. But Cowley is writer enough to lay out the key events in chronological order in flowing prose, allowing us to tie our personal experiences into national events as they played out and contextualise a period where time moved differently for us all.
Despite my many problems with this book, it is still worth reading. It is well written, and many of the stories are powerful, funny, tragic, and inspiring. But when delving into it, one must be mindful of the omissions, both those that Cowley himself acknowledges and those he hopes the reader won't notice. It mistakes the crisis of modern masculinity as a crisis of Englishness itself. And whilst the two are linked, the fact that Cowley largely ignores female voices in his narrative leaves him unable to tell half the story of modern English identity. His needless equivocation between far right thugs and anti-racists also betrays his real agenda.
This is not an author attempting to sit outside the debate in order to organise various competing views for the sake of greater clarity. This is an author with skin in the game and a very specific idea of what modern Englishness is or should be, but – deliberately or otherwise – he has taken too limited and partisan a view to effectively achieve what he set out to do, and supressed or ignored those voices that don't fit into this neat box.
June 27, 2022
As the Union judders, 'Who Are we Now?' feels like exactly the question the English need to be asking themselves. Jason Cowley's book is an excellent guide after 10 years of turbulent times. Each of the stories he tells begins with an event, or events I've lived through, and thought I knew. In each case he gave me the opportunity to re-evaluate the narrative, and review my knowledge. As an English person who no longer has faith in that descriptor, I found this to be a hopeful book, precisely because there are hard truths and difficult questions set alongside an acknowledgement of the values we revere.
May 4, 2023
I rather liked this book. It provides a set of vignettes of modern England from which we can extrapolate a broader trend. In this sense, it is quite interesting. The accuracy of the trends being worked up could be called into question, but as a talking point it does warrant attention. Perhaps a more accurate title for the book could have been 'Postcards from modern England'?
The book is about identity, loss, and anger. The identity is the English, or, more specifically, the white male English. Despite having a sizeable non-English minority, England is still white dominated and in the identity fuelled politics of modern times, there is the potential for white Englishmen to fell a little left out of their country. In a democracy, where these people have a vote, that could prove to be a costly error. It was in the case of Brexit and it could well be again in the future.
The white, working class, English population are in the process of working up a grievance. The Barnett Formula is seen as unfair because the English taxpayer is called to supply additional funds to Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. The emphasis on minority communities is seen as unfair because the poorer white English communities suffer just as much deprivation as the minority communities. This all reaches a sharp point when it comes to immigration policy. This is where issues such as the Rwanda policy originate.
The book begins with a tale of a white, working class community in Essex. It tells of something as simple as a GP surgery being closed with very little local consultation. A decision that was made continents away. That was enforced by a remote and faceless bureaucracy that was far distanced from the community being affected. It then looks at the hopelessness of the community in trying to change that decision, or even to receive an explanation about the decision. This loss of agency and control underlies much of the discontent in England at the moment. It is largely unnoticed in the corridors of power because there is very little contact between metropolitan London and the country it runs.
And yet these people have a vote. Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson represent a developing trend in UK politicians attempting to tap the discontent of the English voters. As the decade unrolls, we can expect to hear more of 'Levelling Up' - raising public services in England to those of London. We can expect a more aggressive English Nationalism to counter that of Scotland. It wouldn't be at all unexpected to see a review of the Barnett Formula, especially if the SNP loses another referendum. It is reasonable to expect a degree of political turbulence ahead, and this book explains why.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. The author is a journalist and it shows in his writing. It is engaging, interesting, and easy to read. There isn't much in the way of jargon or obtuse argument. We can differ on some of the politics laid out, but at least we would know why we were disagreeing. I would certainly recommend this book for someone curious about why Brexit happened and why Boris Johnson won a landslide victory in 2019.
The book is about identity, loss, and anger. The identity is the English, or, more specifically, the white male English. Despite having a sizeable non-English minority, England is still white dominated and in the identity fuelled politics of modern times, there is the potential for white Englishmen to fell a little left out of their country. In a democracy, where these people have a vote, that could prove to be a costly error. It was in the case of Brexit and it could well be again in the future.
The white, working class, English population are in the process of working up a grievance. The Barnett Formula is seen as unfair because the English taxpayer is called to supply additional funds to Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. The emphasis on minority communities is seen as unfair because the poorer white English communities suffer just as much deprivation as the minority communities. This all reaches a sharp point when it comes to immigration policy. This is where issues such as the Rwanda policy originate.
The book begins with a tale of a white, working class community in Essex. It tells of something as simple as a GP surgery being closed with very little local consultation. A decision that was made continents away. That was enforced by a remote and faceless bureaucracy that was far distanced from the community being affected. It then looks at the hopelessness of the community in trying to change that decision, or even to receive an explanation about the decision. This loss of agency and control underlies much of the discontent in England at the moment. It is largely unnoticed in the corridors of power because there is very little contact between metropolitan London and the country it runs.
And yet these people have a vote. Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson represent a developing trend in UK politicians attempting to tap the discontent of the English voters. As the decade unrolls, we can expect to hear more of 'Levelling Up' - raising public services in England to those of London. We can expect a more aggressive English Nationalism to counter that of Scotland. It wouldn't be at all unexpected to see a review of the Barnett Formula, especially if the SNP loses another referendum. It is reasonable to expect a degree of political turbulence ahead, and this book explains why.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. The author is a journalist and it shows in his writing. It is engaging, interesting, and easy to read. There isn't much in the way of jargon or obtuse argument. We can differ on some of the politics laid out, but at least we would know why we were disagreeing. I would certainly recommend this book for someone curious about why Brexit happened and why Boris Johnson won a landslide victory in 2019.
November 18, 2023
Great book, stories of individuals interlaced with significant events in England and Britain. His great aunt Connie attempting to prevent her local GP surgery from closing, a Chinese cockle picker - the sole survivor of a group drowned at Morecambe bay, Marcus Rashford - breaking the stereotype of the materialistic footballer, Stormzi and the black British identity. Gillian Duffy, the woman who Gordon Brown called a bigot who complained about uncontrolled immigration.
Brexit, Blair years - Iraq war, Scottish nationalism, the pandemic - how these shifts change us. I think it's quite a balanced book and looks at things from different perspectives, it doesn't seek to demonise anyone or form strong opinions about who we are but rather acts as an observer, asking questions and following these events as they flow through our history, shaping the land around them.
Worth a second read, sometime later.
Brexit, Blair years - Iraq war, Scottish nationalism, the pandemic - how these shifts change us. I think it's quite a balanced book and looks at things from different perspectives, it doesn't seek to demonise anyone or form strong opinions about who we are but rather acts as an observer, asking questions and following these events as they flow through our history, shaping the land around them.
Worth a second read, sometime later.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 7, 2022
I recognised almost all of the events used in this book but had not stitched them together in the compelling way Cowley did in this journey through our recent history. I feel that we are in a bleak time in this country and found that this book helped me to put that in some perspective while giving it a rooted context. I wish I could say I did not leave it on my shelf feeling so bad about everything but I do...
October 29, 2022
Excellent book. My father is also from Forest Gate and then moved and grew up in Harlow, so it was lovely to read about Jason’s experience of that too.
It’s a really well written collection of short stories about England and brings up a lot that I have never considered about “Englishness” I’d also recommend to anyone who enjoys George Orwell’s writing on Englishness.
It’s a really well written collection of short stories about England and brings up a lot that I have never considered about “Englishness” I’d also recommend to anyone who enjoys George Orwell’s writing on Englishness.
September 3, 2023
A thoughtful and thought-provoking exploration of England and Englishness, post World War II. Jason Cowley uses events and developments, such as Covid, Brexit, the Morecambe Bay tragedy and the rise of English nationalism, to examine the lives and experiences of individuals living in the country and draw conclusions about the nation and its inhabitants' identity.
May 13, 2022
Written with a compelling mixture of narrative, memoir and highly researched sources, this eloquent book provides a series of fascinating snapshots and observations about the state of modern Britain. Humane and thought provoking, each story elicits a new perspective on our modern day to day.
July 8, 2022
An interesting read. Wasn’t in the country for a lot of the period covered by the book.
He asks questions, give some facts but does not present answers or have an agenda. Some of the facts surprised me, but they were accurate.
He asks questions, give some facts but does not present answers or have an agenda. Some of the facts surprised me, but they were accurate.
July 20, 2022
Thoroughly enjoyable read with vignettes telling the tale of modern Britain.
The more I read about the descent in our political vision, both by the governing political party and the electorate, the more I see us as an island of BNP mongrels, spinning 100 year old imperialist yarns.
The more I read about the descent in our political vision, both by the governing political party and the electorate, the more I see us as an island of BNP mongrels, spinning 100 year old imperialist yarns.
May 8, 2023
Part-memoir, part-sociological study, these are excellent essays with plenty of supporting material (Tennyson, Orwell, modern historians) about race, class, identity and immigration that sums up England (and Britain) in Cowley's life. Very good on the new town Harlow, where JC grew up.
June 7, 2022
As excellent and interesting as I expected. Lots to think about, especially as we'll be revisiting the turmoil of the 1970s over the next 10 years.
July 22, 2022
This book doesn’t answer the question but simply holds a mirror to us and while you can like some of what you see there are an awful lot of blemishes on show.
April 6, 2022
An urgent and timely historical review charting the years between the election of New Labour and the aftermath of the pandemic. In his latest novel, Cowley explores the evolution of ‘Englishness’ through a series of highly politicised stories that readers will recognise from the news, though perhaps never have considered as having a lasting impact on their idea of English nationality and culture.
From the Chinese cockle-pickers who drowned in Morecombe Bay and the Bethnal Green girls who fled to Islamic State, to Gareth Southgate’s transformative influence on British football and the Lancashire woman who publicly challenged Gordon Brown on his supposedly people-centric policies. Cowley powerfully demonstrates how these vivid, half-forgotten stories contributed to a fragmented England, and offers a vision for how we can embrace the lessons learnt as a means of building a bright new future.
*Reviewed on behalf of the Press Association
From the Chinese cockle-pickers who drowned in Morecombe Bay and the Bethnal Green girls who fled to Islamic State, to Gareth Southgate’s transformative influence on British football and the Lancashire woman who publicly challenged Gordon Brown on his supposedly people-centric policies. Cowley powerfully demonstrates how these vivid, half-forgotten stories contributed to a fragmented England, and offers a vision for how we can embrace the lessons learnt as a means of building a bright new future.
*Reviewed on behalf of the Press Association
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