22 MEN KICK A BALL AROUND FOR 90 MINUTES AND THEN THE GERMANS WIN....

Today the rickety British state is showing its age. And a World Cup summer invariably reawakens a suppressed sense of English national self-consciousness, never appreciated in Scotland. "The imagined community of millions seems more real as a team of 11 named people," as Eric Hobsbawm wrote. The England football team embodies many of the contradictions of the English nation. For a start, during the pre-match formalities, the players sing not an English anthem but "God Save the Queen", which Scottish and Welsh sporting teams have long since ditched. The hauntedness of English football - this longing to recapture something lost - is not an isolated phenomenon but an expression of what it means to be English, which goes back to the Norman conquest and the Harrying of the North or even before. As Ferdinand Mount has written, the dominant tone of English discourse is "one of regret, of nostalgia rather than self-congratulation".

The forces of nostalgia contributed to the Brexit vote and they inform much of the rhetoric of the hard Brexiteers: this yearning for Britain, or Greater England, unchained from the EU, to renew its historic role as a buccaneering Anglosphere great power.

On the eve of England's plucky victory over Tunisia, coach Gareth Southgate, who leads a harmonious and likeable multiracial squad, spoke of his pride and patriotism. "My family are incredibly patriotic. My grandad was a marine. I've always been brought up with England being a core part of what we stood for and my life [sic]."

This is the authentic voice of the decent England fan. We have heard this language from Alex Salmond and other Scottish nationalists. But few people on the left in England speak in this way of patriotism and love of country, which is one reason why the working class is abandoning Labour.

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