"For most of my political life, 'British identity' has been a no-go area for liberal and left discussion … We need an inclusive British identity that can meet our needs in the 21st century. This will have to be created not discovered. The question can not be 'who we are' but 'who we want to be"

—John Denham MP

"Our poll found that 50% of people believe that we run the real risk of a divided society if we don't define what being British means. Britons feel we are at a turning point: that building our positive identity matters more than it has done in the past, and that it will matter more still in the future. There is an appetite for change: a new national sense of purpose. Yet focus group members are emphatic that while political leadership will be vital, this new mood can not be imposed from on high"

—Deborah Mattinson, Opinion Leader Research

"Multiculturalists and the left in general have been too hesitant about embracing our national identity and allying it with progressive politics. The reaffirming of a plural, changing inclusive British identity which can be as emotionally and politically meaningful to British Muslims as the appeal of jihadi sentiments is critical to isolating and defeating extremism. We can not both ask new Britons to integrate and go around saying that being British is, thank goodness, a hollowed-out meaningless project whose time has come to an end. But this is not a minority problem. If too many white people do not feel the power of Britishness, it will only be a legal concept and other identities will prevail"

—Tariq Modood, Bristol University and leading British Muslim academic

"We need to acknowledge, and overcome, a certain wariness about teaching British history. Teaching a rounded history of the rise and fall of Britain's empire has often been regarded as too tricky, complex or divisive in our multi-ethnic classrooms – despite the important themes and links it offers. This is a reluctance we need to lose. This new British history will be quite different from the old national story of the imperial pink on the map. We can now see that history from all sides and see how it made us who we are today. This is the new global national story we need to share today"

—Gordon Marsden MP, Education Select Committee

"The Britishness debate is more urgent than ever before but is taking place within terms and parameters which make little sense. To lay claim to universal good values as particularly 'British' is absurd - many of our political actions tell a story that is far from benign. The challenge surely is to engage all citizens - black, Asian and white, to create a new British identity which has evolved from historical meanings but is not bound by history. This Britishness is a civic project, a response to devolution, globalisation, and the changing populations of this island. It is an ideal, an imagined constitution mapping up the best of what we are today and hopes for the future. The models would be postapartheid South Africa or the rapid and healthy transformations we have seen in Spain and Portugal"

—Yasmin Alibhai-Brown

"The debate about Britishness must not be used as a code to dictate the role of ethnic minorities in the UK. Defining Britishness is not a panacea. Addressing the social exclusion that many ethnic minorities and white working class face is vital - there is not a level playing field at the moment, and this is the root cause of much disillusionment with British society"

—Sadiq Khan MP

"Governments are usually quite poor at building national identity except when operating in extreme moments of crisis. Inter-ethnic ties do not exist in isolation: the facts about inequality impact directly on cohesion and trust across ethnic lines. There are several left-behind ethnic groups for whom social mobility and advancement ring hollow. The rise of religious extremism and political violence among some parts of British Muslim communities cannot be ignored. Better focused policies to address social exclusion are important. So is facing up to the longtail of tactical support that is often found surrounding men of violence."

—Shamit Saggar, University of Sussex

"Britishness matters because for democracy to work you need 'a community that experiences itself as such.' Liberal democracies run the risk of equating being liberal with making no value judgements. All things are not of equal value and tolerance does not mean everything goes."

—Gisela Stuart MP

"What are we trying to achieve and why? A progressive integration agenda should have two core tests of success or failure - an objective measure of social equality along with a more subjective account of the ties that bind a society together. First, how far are we from achieving equal life chances for all? Second, to what extent do we experience ourselves as a political community? This second test says that successful integration depends on individuals and groups feeling that they are indeed "integral" to a shared society, and seeks to identify and address the barriers to this too. We need to recognise that integration is a two-way street. It does require allegiance and commitment from all citizens to shape and observe the values and rules of a shared society, as well as action on the social and economic agenda to ensure that the promise of integration is met and experienced as a social reality"

—Sunder Katwala, Fabian General Secretary

"We need to have some notion of Britishness which is robust enough for native Brits with long British lineages to assent to and open enough for new immigrants to be part of, with some adaptation. Such a debate mustn't be inhibited. Especially on the left, debates on nationality and culture tend to genuflect to real or supposed sensitivites at the expense of frank talking"

—John Lloyd, Financial Times

"We need to move away from our obsession with ethnicity and see Britain as an interconnected, interdependent networks of communities. To begin with, we should assume that there is no single solution; no single proposal that will solve everything. Pluralism needs pluralistic approaches. The accent should be on multiple notions of Britishness, that may be different and diverse, but are united within an overall, coherent national narrative acceptable to all"

—Zia Sardar, writer and broadcaster.

"We can't have a situation where we school people to be strangers to each other. When you leave work you leave multi-ethnic Britain behind. We've just become too complacent. We're better at this than the US and most of the other European countries but that doesn't mean the we have got it all sorted. One of the great tricks, one of the fantastic things, about Britishness is that it is an identity that allows people to be very different but we all share a certain language, we all share certain kinds of manners and we share the way we care for our children. These are things we have in common."

—Trevor Phillips, Director, Commission for Racial Equality

"For the right, Britishness means an uncritical acceptance of tradition and hierarchy. On the left, we need to assert the democratic principle that we can shape what Britishness is seen to be for and how, through democratic means, it can be changed. Our sense of Britishness as civic identity needs to be seen as separate from identities based on nationality, religion or race - we can be British and Welsh or Scottish, British and English, British and Muslim or Christian, British and black or white."

—Leighton Andrews AM

"Citizens need a sense of belonging and identity and Britishness could help to provide that. But it would do so only if it were inclusive and if it were able to celebrate difference, and protect against harm. We need to be wary of assuming that a particular norm applies to all. Listening, interest in diversity and the will to change on all sides is crucial."

—Haleh Afshar

"This thousand-mile, multinational, multicultural turning can't begin without a single step: voting reform. Not The Answer; just the precondition of any answer at all"

—Tom Nairn