The Day We Remember Who We Are

Today is VE Day. Eighty-one years ago crowds spilled into the streets, bunting festooned the streets, the young Princess Elizabeth slipped into the jubilant crowds on the Mall and was carried anonymously on the tide of a nation’s relief. The country had endured six years of war, rationing, destruction, blackouts and grief, and emerged victorious.

What they won, beyond the obvious, was a particular idea of Britain. A country that could disagree within itself and still act as one when it mattered. A country with shared institutions, obligations, culture, language and a shared vision of the future.

I sat at lunch a couple of weeks ago with some journalist friends, listening intently to a debate about whether the era of two-party politics was over. The answer, even as they argued, was obvious to me.

Today, on the anniversary of VE Day, the results are in. If we do still have two party politics, they are not the same parties any more. The ballot box has fractured along lines that would have been unrecognisable to the generation who queued to use it in 1945.

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