The Lib Dems and the Question of National Identity

By Tim Heydon

Nick Clegg and Chris Huhne are Lib Dem because they don’t know who they are

‘I think I’m English, therefore  I am’ ?

Nick Clegg describes himself as the “Son of a Dutch mother and half-Russian father”.  He thinks he’s ‘English’ by virtue of having been born and having been raised in England. Is he?  Clegg is certainly British because he possesses a British passport.

But English? He isn’t simply by thinking that he is. Clegg’s confusion arises because he denies the natural rights of blood inheritance and asserts rights solely by virtue of environment.  The English are English, he is saying in effect, because of the purely contingent facts that they were born and raised in England.  Therefore he is English (he deduces) because he was born and raised there.

England was named after the English; not vice - versa

This of course begs the question as to why the strip of territory named England was called that in the first place.  In fact, rather than the English being so-called because they lived in England, England was so-called because it was the home of the English or the ‘Angles,’ ie an ethnicity. The country was named after its people, not vice- versa.  It follows that you do not become English simply by living in the country, any more than you are Welsh or Scots or Irish simply by living in the appropriate country.

To be a Member of an Ethnicity is a two-way Acceptance

So one is not English simply because one is born in England and thinks one is.  One is not a member of a family (and an ethnic nation like the English is an extended family) simply by saying that you are. You must be accepted by the bulk of other members of that ethnic family.  If the bulk of the ethnically English do accept you, it will be first and foremost on grounds of close ethnic affinity.

If Clegg is accepted as English by most it is because he looks and behaves English

Now it may be the case that most English people do accept Clegg as English because he looks  English, ie he conforms to the racial characteristics  of the English and appears to conduct himself like a certain type of Englishman.  But would all these people still accept him as English if they knew his background, which (I am guessing) they don’t?  I suggest not.  At the back of their minds of many  of them at least there would always lurk the knowledge of his foreign background which would to a greater or lesser degree colour their attitudes to him.

 

Clegg knows he is not English

Clegg surely knows this. While at one level he asserts his Englishness, and even though most English people accept him as such, at another level he is uncertain of it, because he understands  that the acceptance of the English depends to a certain degree at least on their ignorance of his foreign background and his ways of thinking which I suggest must derive  from it.  His mostly foreign background  must have  been a key  theme of his childhood, home life and his feelings about who he is;  one that is not on public display.  He might for example not even have spoken English as first language when with his family  and relations, or used other languages interchangeably.

This Knowledge is why he is a LIb Dem

That, fundamentally, is the reason why  Clegg is a Lib Dem who is at pains to try to deny and destroy the English people as an ethnicity. It is to rid himself of the insecurity of the uncertainty of truly belonging. Thus the English must suffer mass immigration; they must be made to feel like strangers in their own country, because the personal psychology of selfishness of Nick Clegg and his like  -  all the other  ethnically insecure people such as the Jewish Jack Straw and Mark Damazer, the Asian Mishal Husain, the Liverpool  Irish Cheri Blair; her Scottish husband, etc  etc  - demands that England  be drowned in non-English  like themselves so that they personally can feel more secure there.

 What about Chris Huhne?

The same remarks could very well be made of Chris Huhne,   Clegg's rival (if he survives the present scandal).  Huhne’s full name is actually Christopher Murray Paul - Huhne.  Now ‘Huhne’ is a very strange name. It certainly isn’t English. ‘Huhn’ mean’s ‘chicken’ in German. Is Huhne of German or Jewish descent?  It seems one or the other or both  is very likely.  ‘Paul’ certainly  certainly occurs among  Jews as a surname  but ‘Christopher’  comes from  the late Greek name Χριστοφορος (Christophoros) meaning "bearing Christ’’.   It seems unlikely that Jewish people would give this name to their son. (Unlikely but not impossible -many people are ignorant of its meaning).  And he doesn’t look Jewish.  But you never know.  Perhaps like David Cameron he has Jews among his forebears.

But in any case, he is probably not English in any sense acceptable to those who are.  He keeps very quiet about his antecedents. Whatever those who imagine that being English purely a matter of having been born and been brought up here  (as Huhne was) might think, clearly Huhne thinks his background matters.

And he’s right.