Great Britain needs to rediscover its confidence

We created the modern world, but misplaced guilt and a culture of victimhood are now holding us back

For centuries, Great Britain has guided the globe. Now, the world needs us to do so again. We must stop apologising for the past, and start advancing again as a free nation at home and abroad. The self-flagellation over Brexit and begging for European acceptance is unbecoming of this great country. Britishness is about values, ideas, history and an attitude, not skin colour. It is time to be proud of Britain again. Together.

In recent months, I have visited the US, India, Singapore, Australia, Israel, Turkey, the Arabian Gulf, France and Spain. Without fail, people perceived me as representing Britain and asked me questions of this great nation. What I saw was a world crying out for clarity and leadership. In March, we will become an independent country, and to provide that leadership we must again project confidence rather than be needy of European technocrats. The English-speaking world, and the wider Commonwealth, almost three billion people, are our natural allies. Europeans are our trading partners, not our rulers.

Aside from Brexit, two other factors impede the assertion of British confidence. First, an abiding sense of imperial guilt gnaws away at our national conscience. Yes, Britain built an empire, but so did Turkey. Turkey has no misgivings about a single act of imperial conquest of the entire Middle East and Balkans, and national pride is strong in that country. Why not Britain? We ended slavery and obliterated Nazism, and the children of our empire now serve at the highest levels of government, including the Home Secretary Sajid Javid.

Second, based on this narrative of historical grievances, an entire culture of competing victimhood is taking over university campuses in Britain. I speak at universities regularly, and hear talk of “safe spaces” and “no offence”. We run the risk of losing the liberties we protected.

Rather than feeling British, we’ve begun to hobble separately as new tribes of gay, Muslim, transsexual, female, or black, with the white, middle-class male an eternal enemy in some imagined war. Groups do not have rights. In Britain, individuals have rights and responsibilities, because individuals can be held accountable. This collectivism of victimhood must end.

We have forgotten who we are: election cycles are limiting the thinking of our political leaders to four-year cycles. We have forgotten that the world now runs on the laws, liberties and language spread from this blessed island.

In India, the rule of law, as in the United States, is derived from English common law and the Magna Carta principles of 1215. It is the language of Chaucer and Shakespeare that is now the only language of power and technology. It was John Locke’s influence on the American founding fathers that led to the declaration of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. In the 17th century, it was Isaac Newton who helped Locke consolidate natural law and human rights theories by drawing on the Bible and modern science.

Combining moral responsibility for minimising poverty and helping create wealth, Adam Smith wrote his Theory of Moral Sentiments and then The Wealth of Nations in the 18th century. This is the island that gave the world modern commerce.

While the French unleashed violence and revolutions, Edmund Burke coined the term “terrorism” and opposed populist uprisings for abstract ideals, and balanced the British constitutional monarchy with the merchants, clerics and commons. For all its flaws, we still have a model of government here in Britain that works.

As fascist parties rise across Europe, it falls on us in Britain to show the way toward strengthening a Western civilisation of openness and confidence. Almost every European country fell under the control of extremist political ideologies in the last century. Britain and her allies upheld the rule of law and human dignity then, and we need to be prepared to do so again.

Confidence in our history and values invites migrants to integrate and become British. Together, we can defeat the forces of darkness on the rise across the world. But without a confident Britain, rooted in history and philosophy, we cannot lead. Patriotism, pride in our past and future, should be the clarion call of 2019 and beyond.

Ed Husain is author of ‘The House of Islam’ (Bloomsbury), Senior Fellow at Civitas, and Global Fellow at Woodrow Wilson Centre in Washington DC READ MORE at telegraph.co.uk/opinion