We haven’t given up on each other. Maybe we’ve given up on the system.
Pride in our communities is growing while pride in Britain and its institutions falls. That should tell us something about where rebuilding begins.
New polling this week showed a sharp fall in the number of people who feel proud to be British.
National pride has fallen from 74% to 47% over the past 15 years.
Working for a democratic reform organisation, I can’t say I was wholly surprised by some of the other findings either. Pride in Parliament has fallen by 34%, while pride in the monarchy has almost halved.
It’s hard to feel pride in institutions you feel disconnected from. Trust in our politics has been falling for years, with too many people feeling ignored, shut out of decisions and unconvinced that the institutions governing them really work for them.
That trust needs to be rebuilt.
But there was one finding that genuinely encouraged me.
Pride in our local communities has actually risen, from 29% to 40%.
For all the talk of a country hopelessly divided, people feel a growing sense of connection to the places they live and the communities around them. That feels important.
The danger comes when uncertainty about national identity is spotted and exploited by people who see division as an opportunity. We have seen plenty of that recently.
Anti-migrant rhetoric, disinformation and hate spread rapidly online, encouraging communities to see one another as competitors for homes, public services and even the right to belong. In recent months, some of that anger has spilled from our screens onto our streets.
There are real consequences when division is allowed to flourish.
But perhaps our communities also show us part of the way forward.
If pride in our communities is growing while pride in our country and institutions is falling, the challenge is to reverse that trend - to build a bridge between the communities people increasingly value and the democracy and country they collectively make up.
That means listening to people rather than simply telling them what the country thinks.
It’s one reason the National Conversation exists - and why Open Britain has joined forces with it.
The National Conversation is asking people across the UK about the communities they value, what brings us together, what makes them feel they belong and what kind of country they want to become.
I’ve been filling in my own National Conversation this week, and some of the questions have made me think harder than I expected. Perhaps inevitably, some of my answers come back to Northern Ireland.
I grew up near the border, in a place where identity has never fitted neatly inside a single box. British, Irish and Northern Irish can overlap in ways that are deeply personal, cultural and political.
I’ve seen what can happen when flags, identity and even our sense of belonging are hijacked and turned into dividing lines.
In Northern Ireland, those divisions were never abstract. They shaped where people lived, where they went to school, the opportunities available to them and, at their worst, whether people felt safe.
But I’ve also seen that division doesn’t have to be permanent.
Northern Ireland has changed enormously during my lifetime. Not overnight, and certainly not through conversation alone. Political agreements, fairer laws, investment and people willing to cooperate across old divisions all played their part.
There is still a long way to go. Segregation remains stubbornly embedded and questions of identity can still pull people apart. But Northern Ireland is not the place many once assumed it was destined to remain.
The political settlement has endured. Fairer housing and employment have widened opportunity. Support for integrated education is growing. Investment has followed, while tourism, culture, music, food and the screen industry have flourished.
That experience makes me wary of anyone who tells us division is inevitable. It isn’t.
A conversation won’t rebuild trust, fix our democracy or make deeply held differences disappear.
But listening is how we start.
Right now, there is something worth listening to: people still believe in their communities.
If we can understand what holds those communities together, give them a greater voice and build a stronger bridge between them and our democracy, perhaps we can start rebuilding some of what has been lost.
If you have ten minutes, add your own experience to the National Conversation. What comes next shouldn’t be decided by the people shouting loudest about who belongs.
It should be shaped by all of us.
Take part in the National Conversation
