»  Opinion Columns: The National Question

 

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As an immigrant myself, married to another immigrant from another place, I think a lot, and so write a lot, about questions of immigration, citizenship, national identity, and national solidarity.

Until recently (this written in late 2007) this was uphill work. It was not so much that the "national question" was a taboo topic, though it was a taboo topic among most of our political and cultural elites, as that there was a peculiar and widespread kind of national insouciance about the issue. You just couldn't get people, elite or otherwise, to engage with it. It slid right off their consciousness. I was very struck by this phenomenon when I first came to live here, as an illegal immigrant, in the 1970s. I described my perplexity in a Straggler column.

That was until recently. The national psyche turned some sort of corner in 2006, and these issues are now at the front of everyone's mind. The "national question" looks set to be a major factor in the 2008 elections.