Best Of

An odd little vignette: my daughter has a singing exam so I have come into Manchester with her. On the tram in, a toothless crone engaged us in conversation in a wet rasping, spluttering Mancunian. At first I silently lamented my choice of seats - then felt glad to have sat where we did because we were clearly doing the woman good by giving someone to talk to - then felt glad to have sat where we did because we were being treated to a genuinely enjoyable semi-comic monologue, touching on the improbable medical histories of at least three people (including the time when she swelled up like the Michelin man and nearly died because of, if I understood correctly, a leaking boiler) - and concluding with telling us that this was all true, she never fibs, she'd never lie except to keep her husband from getting in trouble with the police.
I wished her a happy rest-of-her-day and told her it had been nice to talk to her, and genuinely meant it.
I'm now waiting, improbably, in a surprisingly opulent piano salesroom on an otherwise slightly disreputable street in the Northern Quarter. Nice to get out of your comfort zone.

Good article. I have had similar musings on Citizens of Nowhere and the effect of the Internet and Social Media on the national question.

Benedict Anderson in his influential book "Imagined Communities" linked the rise of the nation state to the rise of a national press, and increased literacy. Communication as the spark to nationalism.

That is now history. On this board I can argue politics with people on different continents, while my neighbours watch either Al Jazeera or satellite TV from India. I can read the Rand Daily Mail as easily as the British one.

On my travels, I note that middle class and professional people are increasingly alike and internationalisd. We have common interests and aspirations and similar lifestyles. It's not just deluxe hotels serving gin and tonics to ageing roues that have become homogeneous.

Is this the end of the Westphalian nation state? Or simply a return to what existed before? A return to polyglot multicultural empires, where loyalty was to class and individual, where French, German, Italian and British nobles felt more in common with each other than with the peasants that they ruled.

In other words are we back under the Hapsburgs, Ottomans, Aztecs and Manchus?