The British Labour Party has been one of the key UK political institutions for the advancement of social change in the past century. Yet one critical aspect of its makeup has always been misunderstood, underplayed or misrepresented: its Britishness. Throughout the party’s history, its Britishness has been an integral part of how it has governed, and done politics.

Moreover, over the past decade or so, a new mobilising form of national identity has emerged, one that has become increasingly problematic for Labour: that of Englishness. Indeed, there is some evidence that ‘Englishness’ is now displacing working-class identity as the major pull of loyalty and allegiance.

The People’s Flag and the Union Jack argues that Labour’s Britishness and its ambiguous relationship with issues of national identity matter more today than ever before, and will continue to matter for the foreseeable future, when the UK is in fundamental crisis and its place in the world, and very existence, open to doubt.