[toyg]

I disagree. There used to be a very distinctive British identity, mostly associated with English upper-class ideals. The lower classes were periodically coopted into this identity, either after the industrial revolution that triggered mass-education or during periodic conflicts, and their aspirations were then pushed outward to colonize “inferior” people. This is how the British empire was built, and it definitely was nationalistic in outlook.

Of course, the mechanism eventually broke, because of the slaughter of WW1 put the lie to the dream and the rise of continent-sized superpowers put it materially out of reach. Since then, coopting lower classes into upper-class ideals has been unfeasible. A replacement emerged in the heyday of socialist movements (everyone eating the same food, working in the same factories), but then died off, as that way of life also disappeared. What followed is not homogeneous, I agree on that, but I think you’re discounting the strength of what was there before.