British identity?

In a stirring paean of praise redolent of Back to Empire Mark 2 for the failing state of Britain (Letters, 3 August) Andrew H N Gray says: “We are Britain.”

I’m afraid fewer and fewer people here and indeed in England are still thirled to this antiquated concept. Evidence for this can be found in the UK census of 2011, which found that only 29 per cent of the census participants in England identified themselves as feeling any sense of British national identity at all.

In this context it’s ironic and a little sad that Scots like Mr Gray cling to an outdated concept which is being largely abandoned in England. As for the Scots, perhaps the words of the newspaper editor John Douglas Pringle, in an astute observation, go some way to explain our ambivalence to the concept of Britishness when he said: “Some of us still cling to a Scottish culture which has lost its virtue. Some of us have adopted an English culture which we do not truly share or understand. The rest have created a composite ‘British’ culture which even now is phoney and fictitious.”

There can be no doubting Mr Gray’s faith. He says the UK is the fastest growing economy in Europe the day after the governor

of the Bank of England downgraded its growth forecast to 1.3 per cent. He says we have the most diverse Cabinet in Europe. Perhaps in terms of ethnicity and gender, but singular in its composition of the hard to alt-right.

Mr Gray also says that the falling pound means it will be cheaper than ever to sell exports to the European Union.

However, there is one tiny flaw in this argument. It is that the UK has a balance of trade deficit with the EU of £67 billion.

GILL TURNER Derby Street, Edinburgh