Driving north with an indomitable determination to allow neither floods nor Railtrack to cut me off from civilisation, I listened to a radio programme in which Michael Wills MP admitted that the prime minister had given him a special task. He is to encourage other members of the government to pay special respect to our national identity - always in their speeches and whenever possible in their policy decisions. People who know Mr Wills tell me that he is among the brightest and best of the new political generation. He will need all his talents if he is to discharge his new responsibilities successfully. For he has to begin by deciding which nation he is going to identify. Then - having chosen between Great Britain, the United Kingdom and the countries which make up the still heterogeneous union - provide a working definition of what the appropriate national identity is. All the easy answers to his questions have more to do with fascism than philosophy.  Let me, in order to avoid the accusation of loving every country better than my own, describe my attitude towards England. It is the only place in which I want to live. Indeed, with the exception of Scotland - in which I spend a couple of happy weeks each summer - it is the only place in which I want to be for any length of time. English is the only language I speak and the only literature I know well. I enjoy England's unpredictable weather and its ever changing landscape. I still hope that the New Jerusalem can be builded here.  So I can answer the question about which national identity matters to me easily enough. I am British only by the legal definition of my citizenship. But I am English by instinct and emotion. However, Mr Wills cannot base his work on any such dichotomy. The national identity which our Scottish prime minister wishes to promote must at least embrace Great Britain. John Major's notion of a people bound together by village cricket, warm beer and old ladies cycling to church will not do for Tony Blair. It will not do for me either. Despite my sentimental attraction to the reigns of Elizabeth I and Queen Victoria (when the idea of England was established) the country in which I want to live is multiracial and more concerned with facing the hard challenges of the future than dwelling on the glories of the past.  There is a ready definition of British nationality which Mr Wills could use as the basis of his work. Quite rightly he has rejected it. It is usually illustrated by a description of territorial acquisitions and claims of military success. Both illustrations lead to the conclusion that there is something superior about this sceptred isle. We can argue about whether of not Rudyard Kipling's reference to "lesser breeds without the law" was a statement of his true opinion or an ironic criticism of a chauvinism which he had come to hate. Either way, it an eloquent illustration of what British identity meant at the end of the 19th century.  I fear that Mr Wills's definition, when he hits upon it, will have many of the same shortcomings. If what he said on radio is to be believed, he means to encourage a view of our national identity which is based on characteristic values - love of fair play, belief in justice, devotion to liberty. We can only define Britain by those admirable qualities if we assert or imply that they are absent, or less pronounced, in other nationalities. Are the French less compassionate and the Swedes more intolerant than we are? I am too insular to know the answer. But to suggest that we are superior to them in these respects is not   very different from regarding them as lesser breeds without the law.  In truth Mr Wills's task is no more about encouraging respect for our national identity than it is about deciding whether Shakespeare belongs to England or to the world. His job is to make sure that ministers sound as if they are "standing up for Britain". That is an attitude which I wholeheartedly support on those occasions when Britain is right. But that is quite different from defending every element of "Britishness" - from outdated monarchy to antiquated independent nuclear deterrent - that the Tory party claim tests the government's love of country.  I feared that before I finished this there would be a reference to "love of country" - a phrase which, being properly English, I find embarrassing. So I cover my shame by describing how mine came about. Chickens are irrevocably attached to the first hen they see after they burst from the egg. For all of my formative years all I knew was England. Irrational affection has its advantages. Even when the old bird begins to moult, it remains an object of irrational devotion. But the irrationality should only go so far. Claims to superiority are both demeaning and dangerous.