To hell with Gen Z, here’s why I’m pleased to be British – Nigel Nelson

I cannot see how someone can be proud of something they had no part in. I am proud of my career in journalism. I am proud to work for GB News. Hell, I’m hugely proud of my kids because I had a hand in making them.

But I had no more choice about being British than I do over the colour of my eyes. In the past I’ve had compliments about how brown they are which was pleasing. But proud? No.

I did not choose my mum which is what makes me British because she was. Had she been Tasmanian I might have been pleased to hail from that chunk of land off the southern coast of Australia.

If she had come from Tehran I might be pleased to be Iranian, although given just how many Iranians seem displeased with their country I wouldn’t count on it.

I’m pleased that my mum served in MI6 because having a spy for a mother who hunted down Nazis gives me something interesting to talk about at dinner parties.

But I can hardly say I’m proud because it was her efforts not mine which made her a kind of real-life Jane Bond.

And if you wonder why I don’t mention my dad it’s because British nationality is handed down by the mother not the father, and even being born in Britain doesn’t make you British.

Had the three children of British-born Isis bride Shamima Begum lived they would have been British, too, even though they were born in Syria.

That means they would have been entitled to come to this country. And their mother would have had to come with them instead of rotting away in a grotty northern Syrian refugee camp where she is now doomed to remain.

So asking young people if they are proud of being British is the wrong question. But the Times also did it 20 years ago and 80 per cent said then that they were.

A focus group delving into this latest polling paints a depressing picture of the place young people call home.

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Nicole, a 22 year old dancer, is neither proud nor pleased to be British. “I don’t really like the UK,” she tells the newspaper as she looks longingly at two friends and her sister who have made new lives in Australia.

It gets worse. Whenever I go abroad I’m pleased to be recognised as a Brit. I like my very British blue passport, an improvement on the burgundy EU ones we had to carry before Brexit. Yet some Gen Zs would rather identify as something else.

Being British embarrasses Kate, a 22 year old student from Pontefract, West Yorkshire, when she visits other countries. She said: “I sort of try to be quiet because I don’t want people to know where I’m from.”

This is particularly sad. I cannot imagine how I would begin to pretend not to be British. By speaking in a fake ‘Allo ‘Allo accent perhaps? But even if that worked I’m not sure I’d want anyone to think I was French.

I have witnessed Brits intoxicated in Ibiza, arrogant in America, irritating in Italy, haughty in Hong Kong, gauche in Greece and armed to the eyeballs in Iraq and Afghanistan. But I have never felt the need to hide my nationality.

And I have also taken comfort that in nearly every country I have ever visited English is spoken. So, yes, I am pleased that I am fortunate enough to be British.

My eldest daughter was born in New York, has an Australian mother and has lived almost all her life in London. The three passports that gave her meant she had the choice of three continents in which to settle.

Perhaps that’s what Gen Zedders really hanker after. To be citizens of the world.