We all aspired to be "British" once: it was something deeper than ethnicity

Some of us still do. Just another example of why David Warren is this Kingdom's greatest columnist:My secular creed is drawn from Rudyard Kipling, and is succinctly reviewed in his “If” poem, wherein the applicable text reads: “If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster / And treat those two impostors just the same.” It is a creed in which, plainly, wailing and gnashing of teeth is for savages. As likewise, hysteria at funerals, chauvinist displays, and expressions of hatred in the public square. Ladies and gentlemen don’t do that sort of thing, and don’t even need a religion to know better. Unmanly behaviour is “not British”, if I might use an expression our Canadian ancestors understood, whether French, English, or whatever. For we all aspired to be “British” once, in the sense just given: it was something deeper than ethnicity.

One's religious creed strikes deeper, still. This is true for everybody, even those whose religion is (for instance) environmentalism. And what one holds sacred, whether it is God or (for instance) "the science of climate change", ultimately determines one's secular creed -- the attitude one brings to politics and public life. For it goes beyond politics. That Kiplingesque outlook (for instance), is not specifically Christian, yet like democracy and rule of law and many other things we also used to call "British", it could only be the product of an essentially Christian mindset, deeply rooted in what is not British at all, because long prior to it. Lent is such a thing, lying much deeper. Deeper, ultimately, than wailing and gnashing.

Postscript: And now look at it. As F.J. Sarto laments, look at the "assault on British nationhood being conducted by its ruling elites, who use ethnic minorities as a wedge to “divide and rule” the populace through bureaucratic diktats..." The ones who aspire to be "British" now run the risk of being smeared as fascists and nutjobs by today's Orwellians.