Local identities far outweigh our national loyalties

DURING my university sabbatical (thank you Northumbria), I have been working on a book about ethics and populism.

- Ron Beadle

So that it will represent populists’ arguments fairly, I am reading a lot of material, by the likes of Matt Goodwin, Patrick Deneen, Douglas Murray and others.

One of the things which is absent from their work is any sense of the importance of the region. For example, Danny Kruger, the former Tory Whip who joined Reform recently writes of a covenantal politics of ‘family, neighbourhood and nation} missing people's loyalty to their region altogether.

‘This is odd since there is significant polling evidence that shows county and city identities outweighing national loyalties in many people’s thinking. A recent survey showed that loyalty to the city was more pronounced in Newcastle than anywhere else in England (with Sunderland not far behind) and loyalty to the county most emphasized in Yorkshire. There are of course people in Cornwall campaigning for its independence from the rest of the country.