Patriot missive

Ah, patriotism. Lovely, warm, crumpety patriotism. Old maids cycling to communion, England winning the World Cup. Who could possibly being against patriotism?

I could, particularly when it's used in discussions about politics, as David Cameron did this morning.

Here's my problem: using patriotism in politics is at best a meaningless soundbite, and at worst leads down some very dark alleys.

Consider the word "god-fearing". No-one would think to use that as a political descriptor these days, but it has been a term of praise in the past. What does it mean? Someone who does what God wants them to do, you might say. But what is that? Depends on your personal opinion about what God wants, doesn't it? The little old lady baking the cakes for the Mickle Stretford church fete will have one idea, abortion clinic bombers will have another.

In a similar way, "patriotic" means "wanting what's best for the country" - but doesn't answer the question of what actually is best. Is it patriotic to want to join the euro, for instance, as Peter Mandelson apparently does? Well, it is the patriotic thing to do if that's a good thing for the British economy, but not if it isn't - so the whole argument reverts to whether it's a good idea or not, and we're back where we started.

Of course the Conservative press office aren't hyping the word "patriotic" because they want us to understand that Cameron intends carefully to consider the best interests of the country before adopting his policies - you would hope he would be doing that anyway. In fact, it's a quiet appeal to the people who rant away about national and racial betrayal on Internet messageboards - and that's the part that leads down a dark alley.

If you look at internet messageboards, people who self-describe as patriotic are often the obsessives who go on about leaving the EU, chucking out immigrants and publicly immolating single mothers. It's a word beloved of the anti-libertarian right wing - "patriotic" gets 8,500 hits on the Stormfront message board, 394 on Conservative Home, and only 5 on the Guardian's Comment is Free.

Leaving Stormfront aside, it's debatable whether even the right of the Tory party would think much patriotic about the Conservative platform, beyond the fact that they broadly agree with it. A fair few of them don't see it as patriotic to stay in the EU, to be signed up to the European Declaration on Human Rights, or to accept even a modest degree of immigration.

When it comes to non-nationalist issues such as social care or the economy, it's even less clear what patriotism might mean. The only explicitly patriotic economic policy is probably Gaullism, where the Government sets itself the task of picking British winners, and doing everything they can to block the entry of foreign firms into the market place. Somehow, I don't see any of the three main parties channelling the spirit of the General in their manifestos.

I would rather that politicians didn't feel the need to appeal to far right tropes in order to garner votes, but we are in an election campaign so I suppose we have to take what we get. However, I think Cameron may come to regret using patriotism as a soundbite, much as Brown probably regrets "British jobs for British workers". If he is elected, it will give the right wing of his party a stick to beat him with whenever they think he is insufficiently nationalist, and that can't be good for our country.