The Patriotic Curriculum

It began, as these things often do, with a flag.

Not an actual flag, mind you. A metaphorical one. Waved vigorously from a television studio by someone in a well cut suit explaining that British children must be taught to love their country again. This, apparently, requires a "patriotic curriculum", which sounds marvellous until you realise it has very little to do with teaching children how the country actually works.

Because if you were serious about patriotism, you would start with tax. Not waving flags. Paying for them. You would explain that the NHS is not powered by bunting, it is powered by PAYE, and that aircraft carriers are not floated by national pride but by Treasury gilts and a lot of invoices. The rule of law is not maintained by stern looks and talk of sovereignty either, it is maintained by salaried judges, heated courtrooms, and someone remembering to keep the roof watertight.

Instead, the proposed curriculum seems to focus heavily on how Britain stopped the slave trade, while jogging briskly past the awkward detail that Britain spent a long time enthusiastically running it first. It then abolished slavery and compensated the slave owners, not the enslaved, and sent the bill to the taxpayers, who only finished paying it off in 2015. It is a curious form of patriotism that celebrates writing the apology letter but omits the burglary, then asks you to chip in for the postage.

There is also the promise to remove "woke ideology", which is a wonderfully elastic term. It can mean anything from teaching that slavery happened, to teaching that it was not just a bit of regrettable admin, to teaching that people can be treated decently even if you do not like the label they use for themselves. The beauty of the word is that it has no fixed definition, which makes it ideal for being against. It is the political equivalent of saying you oppose "bad things" and expect a round of applause.

All this is from Suella Braverman, the 'Shadow Education Secretary'. Last time I looked, the Shadow Education Secretary was the education spokesperson from the largest opposition party, not a minority party. Maths, obviously, isn't their strong point.

Meanwhile, the same lot want to withdraw from the ECHR so they can deport more people, as if the only thing standing between Britain and tidy borders is an international treaty and not the small practical matter of other countries agreeing to take people back. They also oppose closer cooperation with the EU to reduce Brexit friction, because nothing says "taking back control" quite like choosing paperwork over prosperity. It is sovereignty as a hobby, pursued at everyone elses expense, like a man insisting on walking to Cornwall to prove he does not need trains.

Then we get to energy, where they want to stop net zero and lean back into oil and gas, locking the UK into expensive fuel priced on global markets. Renewables are treated like a suspicious foreign influence, despite having the awkward habit of being cheap once built, with no fuel cost and far less price volatility. If you are trying to improve competitiveness, cheap and stable electricity is not a culture war issue, it is an industrial strategy issue. But industrial strategy is dull, and you cannot wave it at football matches.

And then comes the tax bit, which is always marketed as help for ordinary people, right up until you read the small print and notice it mainly helps people with large incomes and large assets. Abolishing inheritance tax is a lovely gesture if you have an estate large enough to pay it, and a touching tribute if you do not. Raising higher rate thresholds is splendid for those already above them, and entirely irrelevant if you are not. The average taxpayer is invited to enjoy the warm glow of someone elses tax cut, like being told you should feel personally richer because a hedge fund manager has bought a second kitchen.

The arithmetic, inevitably, does not cooperate. The state cannot collect less money, sell off assets, isolate the economy, keep services running, and lower everyones bills simultaneously. That is not a political opinion, it is a mathematical constraint, and mathematics is famously unimpressed by slogans. But perhaps this is where the patriotic curriculum really comes into its own, because if you teach enough children that wishing makes it true, you can eventually replace the Treasury with positive thinking.

So yes, you can call it patriotism if you like. But it looks less like love of country and more like branding, where pride is the product and reality is the inconvenient small print. And if it all goes wrong, do not worry, they will still have the flag. For now.