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It\\u2019s that time every two (or three) years when St George\\u2019s flags flap out of car windows and red cross bunting festoons the front of the houses of England football fans. At any other time, such behaviour might be greeted with suspicion, even concern, such is the pejorative perception of patriotism expressed by the English. Why does English patriotism have such bad PR? Patriots see their cause as unifying; a positive sense of the nation as something which holds us all together in our different tribes. Others reject being coerced to love their country, whether they like it or not, just because that\\u2019s where they happened to be born. Patriotism can\\u2019t escape the past. For those on the right of politics it\\u2019s often about celebrating one\\u2019s national story; for those on the left it\\u2019s about reckoning with it. Patriotism has always been inescapably political, but there is a sense on both sides that it has now been co-opted into the \\u2018culture wars\\u2019. Calls for schoolchildren to sing a \\u2018One Britain, One Nation\\u2019 song is seen as a disingenuous dog whistle for right-wing nationalists and racists, while criticism of the inclusion of \\u2018Rule Britannia\\u2019 during the Last Night of the Proms is, for others, a sign of \\u2018wokery gone too far\\u2019. Is English patriotism now intrinsically divisive and threatening, incapable of disentangling itself from authoritarian nationalism? Or can it be reclaimed and redeemed from what it has become in many people\\u2019s eyes? With Dia Chakravarty, Robert Beckford, Billy Bragg and Gavin Esler.

Producer: Dan Tierney.