Lord Goldsmith, the former attorney-general, released a report called “Citizenship: Our Common Bond” this week that seeks to redefine what it means to be a British citizen. It is the sort of effort at which journalists predictably snigger. Certain recommendations really set them off: a national holiday celebrating citizenship, a revival of the Treason Act of 1351 and the idea – mentioned only in passing – of ceremonies in which British youths would recite an oath of allegiance to the Queen.

Lord Goldsmith’s suggestions are neither as nostalgic nor as irrational as they look. Citizenship is bound up with identity. National identities traditionally arose out of people’s sense of themselves as a “people”, in an ethnic or a historical sense. But in a world of globalisation and mass migration, promoting that kind of identity sounds bigoted. Old republics like the US and France seem to have an easier time of it. Their self-understanding is “creedal” – it is built not on belonging to a people but on holding certain core philosophical beliefs. Why cannot Britain package its own core beliefs – assuming it can figure out what they are – in a way that unites all classes and ethnicities? Lord Goldsmith has been intrigued by this prospect. “Older generations tend to view Britishness as shared history,” he wrote last autumn, “younger as shared values.”