International and domestic pressures are bearing down upon the British elite and these include both the ever more important sphere of the European Union and the growing doubts about the character of institutional mechanisms of governance within the United Kingdom. In the past elite-sponsored calls for all citizens to rally to the common national identity might have carried weight but they do not and cannot do so today. Elite-sponsored celebrations of "Britain" are futile for the denizens of these islands already have much subtler identities and these tie them not just to the United Kingdom but to networks and communities both wider and narrower than "Britain". But none of this should worry us, for diversity and multiple identities are surely one characteristic of not merely our present but of our increasingly European future.