Photo by Ashes Sitoula

There is a curious fashion in British politics. People who have spent years telling the rest of us to toughen up seem remarkably keen to take offence themselves.

Britain, we are told, has become too weak, too woke, too apologetic and too liberal. It is too dependent on foreigners, too hostile to its own history and, depending on the diplomatic weather, insufficiently enthusiastic about somebody else’s war. The accusations come from the British right, corners of the American political establishment, Israel and commentators who regard Britain as a former great power suffering from an embarrassing psychological disorder.

Britain certainly has plenty to answer for. Its economy remains anaemic, immigration policy is frequently confused, the armed forces have suffered years of neglect, and its political class often seems remote from the lives it represents.

But there is a difference between criticism and contempt.

The political right has rediscovered the virtues of toughness. No more snowflakes, we are told; no more victimhood or hiding behind hurt feelings. Yet the people most eager to lecture others about resilience are often the first to take offence. Every instance of migrant crime becomes evidence of national collapse. A British government declines to follow Washington and is questioned about whether Britain remains a serious country. A politician criticises Israeli policy and finds himself judged not merely mistaken but morally suspect.

For people who insist that everyone else needs a thicker skin, there is an extraordinary amount of wounded pride on display.

The same contradiction runs through the argument about Englishness.

Englishness can mean ancestry and historical inheritance, but it can also mean the place where someone was born or raised, the culture in which they have made a life, or the familiar landscapes, institutions, songs, humour and traditions that make a place feel like home. For many, these things overlap; for others, they do not.

The nationalist right is wrong to make ancestry the ultimate test of belonging. But the progressive left makes its own mistake when it dismisses historical continuity and inherited culture as little more than comforting fictions.

History matters. So does inheritance. But neither is a racial purity test, and a nation is not a spreadsheet in which everyone must be assigned a permanent category.

We inherit things, then change them. In Middlemarch, George Eliot explores how people are shaped by their surroundings, their inherited circumstances and their obligations to others. Identity is neither a possession passed down intact nor a blank cheque on which every generation can write whatever it pleases. Traditions have boundaries, but those boundaries need not remain fixed for ever.

Shakespeare understood, too, that patriotism does not require obedience to those who govern. In Richard II, England’s celebrated beauty and promise are inseparable from the tragedy of its misrule. The country is worth mourning precisely because it is worth loving.

So chill, brother and sister.

There is nothing unpatriotic about recognising when a country has fallen short of its ideals. Sometimes that is the more patriotic response. It’s just the contempt we don’t like. We are not burning like France. Perhaps the most English response to the argument over Englishness would be to admit that the matter is complicated, accept that nobody owns its meaning and carry on arguing over a cup of tea.

Instead, every ambiguity becomes an existential emergency. Unless we agree on precisely what Englishness means, we are apparently in danger of losing the country altogether.

The same emotional logic has surfaced in the lingering controversy over RAF Fairford. Five men were arrested near the Gloucestershire airbase on 27 September on suspicion of terrorism and explosives offences. The incident prompted a major security response, and the United States subsequently withdrew its B-1 bombers amid concerns about a possible Iranian-linked drone attack. On 12 October, the Prime Minister told Parliament that a suspected plot was highly likely to have been coordinated in Iran and almost certainly directed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Iran denies involvement. The suspects were released on police bail without charge, no viable explosive was found in the vans, and the investigation continues.

These are serious allegations, and a potential threat to a military installation must be taken seriously. But an investigation is not proof of national humiliation. Security vulnerabilities deserve scrutiny; they do not automatically establish that Britain is incapable of defending itself. Nor does an American decision to relocate aircraft amount, on its own, to a verdict on Britain’s competence or the health of the alliance.

Britain and the United States are allies, not a commanding officer and a subordinate. An alliance between sovereign democracies cannot mean that one partner issues instructions while the other salutes. Friendship does not require Britain to pretend that every American decision is wise.

Mature alliances must accommodate disagreement. Countries have different interests, domestic pressures and assessments of risk. The question is whether they can manage those differences without turning every refusal into a test of loyalty.

The stakes are particularly clear in Ukraine, where British support depends in part on American military and intelligence capabilities. Yet that dependence cannot oblige London to endorse every decision made in Washington. Disruption to Ukraine’s Starlink access has illustrated the risks of relying on a system controlled by a private provider whose decisions can have profound strategic consequences. Allies can be indispensable without being infallible.

There is something unhealthy about a political culture in which disagreement so quickly becomes disloyalty. We are confusing solidarity with submission.

Britain is hardly immune to this habit. Our own politicians frequently mistake outrage for argument, treating every rebuke as an insult, every compromise as surrender and every refusal as a wound to national pride.

What Britain needs is neither indiscriminate self-criticism nor relentless self-congratulation, but grown-up politics.

That means acknowledging that immigration can bring economic and cultural benefits while also creating genuine practical and political difficulties. It means recognising Israel’s legitimate security concerns while allowing serious criticism of its government’s policies. It means valuing America as an ally without treating Washington as infallible. And it means loving English history without turning English ancestry into a membership card.

People can be proudly English, British, Scottish, Welsh, Northern Irish, Asian, African, Jewish or Muslim, or identify in none of those ways, without requiring everyone else to share their understanding of identity.

Above all, being offended is not necessarily the same as being wronged.

Montaigne understood how easily self-confidence becomes vanity. Someone unable to entertain the possibility of being mistaken may not be displaying strength at all, but an attachment to certainty that makes honest reflection impossible. There is a particular kind of courage in saying: I may be wrong.

That quality seems increasingly rare in public life. Hurt is treated as evidence, indignation as argument, and the intensity of one’s feelings as proof that one’s cause must be just. Everyone has supposedly lost something: their country, culture, dignity, history or voice. The grievances are rehearsed, the injuries displayed and the culprits identified.

Of course, some grievances are real. People have good reason to feel economically insecure, politically neglected or alienated from the institutions that govern them. But when every setback becomes a national catastrophe, genuine problems become harder to distinguish from political theatre. We behave as though everything has been taken from us while overlooking how wealthy and free our societies remain by historical standards.

There is something almost Orwellian about this politics of perpetual grievance. Those most anxious to advertise their strength seem least able to tolerate disagreement, uncertainty or compromise. Every criticism becomes an insult; every difference of opinion, an injury.

This new political machismo looks less like strength than panic dressed for the gym.

Britain has plenty to answer for. It should be able to confront its shortcomings without self-loathing, love its history without policing ancestry, and maintain its alliances without surrendering its judgement. It does not need to prove its virtue to every foreign critic or its toughness to every domestic bully.

Britain has real problems. Taking offence at every criticism will not solve them.

It needs to become harder to bully. And the first step may be to stop bullying ourselves.