The essence of Britishness

I found it really surprising that the conference struggled with the definition of our national identify and kept straying back into the territory of immigration, spending far too long laying out why people from various territories and - in particular - religions couldn't really be British. Don't get me wrong: this was not a far-right gathering. In fact, if anything, the group are somewhat left-leaning, but I guess they fell prey to the old problem of it being easier to define what something might not be, rather than what it actually is. Coming from Birmingham, I felt extremely proud to tell them about the many initiatives and organisations involved in inter-culturalism in our city. We could teach London a thing or too.

Anyway, all this talk of national identity has been swirling around my head for a wee while now and I've been trying to think what the single defining characteristic of Britishness might be. According to a recent survey by YouGovStone, a sense of fairness is the key attribute we Brits like to feel we bring to the world. Hmmm. I think there are a fair few people and countries around the world who might beg to differ with received wisdom in Blighty.

And then on Saturday night I had a 'EUREKA!' moment.

As ever with such thoughts, it occurred in the most inconvenient of places; this time it was Lichfield Cathedral, in the middle of a concert given by the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain as part of the Lichfield Festival.

I sat listening to the Ukes play 'God Gave Rock and Roll to Me' and 'Anarchy in the UK' (yes, that's the one which includes the line 'I am an antichrist'...) and thought that surely the Brit's great gift to the world was a splendid sense of irony.

But no.

With great dismay, I have come to the conclusion that the single defining thing that binds (nearly) all Brits together is their overwhelming desire to clap along with music. 1,000 people in Lichfield can't be wrong, can they?