Could Scotland and England follow a similar course and become indistinguishable in a common Britishness?
Those who regard Britishness as important tend to be aged over 55, male and under-educated.
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But the Nationalists' Mr Wishart argued that Britishness was an "invention and a social construct".
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It is often thought to be the epitome of Britishness - "as British as fish and chips", the saying goes.
It's likely to be a ready-made training video to form the basis of a citizen test on Britishness.
Britishness cannot be imposed on communities, he said, but Britain did have the ability to lead by example.
But plenty of Britons agree with Mr Brown that Britishness stands for shared values rather than a shared heritage.
So how come English, or indeed Britishness because this is not only about England, is selling around the world?
The Olympics and Paralympics had captured an image of "modern Britishness", she added.
Before Gordon Brown left Downing Street, he tried to start a national discussion about what Britishness is, which included a national roadshow.
But, for Mr Blair, the attraction of recreating Britishness is largely political.
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But the best are informative and elegant, and manage to say something both about their chosen subject and about the nature of Britishness.
They are forced to defend their Britishness, their Frenchness or their Americaness -- even if they are third- or fourth-generation citizens of those countries.
"What Englishness can't do that Britishness can do is appeal unambiguously to people of different ethnic origins, " notes Janan Ganesh, political correspondent for The Economist.
They felt that there is a positive future for Britain, they felt that Britishness itself is not defined in wide terms but in moderation terms.
"(Wimbledon represents) only one of many types of Britishness, " he says.
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One abiding feature of Britishness is a reticence about overt demonstrations of patriotism: flags are seen on Remembrance Sunday, at sporting events and occasionally as bedspreads.
Barely half of the British themselves see Britishness as an important part of their identity about the same proportion who attach importance to being English, Scottish or Welsh.
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The ceremony too will "focus on the essentials of Britishness" with a procession marking some of the UK's notable achievements and achievers, featuring the aforementioned Beatles and Brunel.
Others say that the separate promotion of Scottishness, Welshness and Englishness, already achieved through sports such as rugby and soccer, offers better prospects than trying to reinvent Britishness.
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Every recent prime minister has struggled to overcome this sense of thwartedness and decline, and to come up with a notion of Britishness to replace the defunct imperial version.
At a time when the very concept of Britishness has been linked to prejudice, it is nice that this point is made by a naturalised Briton of Sri Lankan descent.
It's ironic that an American brand that made its fortune selling "Britishness" to a U.S. audience is now outfitting one of the very institutions it based its initial premise upon.
We believe in building a cohesive society, where Britishness means inspiring people with a love of country, not bullying them with instructions to integrate, or insulting them with cheap 'flags-on-the-lawn' gimmicks.
Many aspects of Britishness, especially in social and economic fields, such as the monarchy (provided people want it) or the British market in goods, labour and services, would remain in place after independence.
Gordon Brown has for many months called for a debate on Britishness, but he could not have anticipated the row the archbishop provoked when he questioned incorporating more religious law into our system.
It is mawkish and it attempts to resurrect an appeal in a type of Britishness that the 1960s laid to rest but which Bond has been giving moth-to-mouth ever since, never more so than here.
And although Gordon Brown, the prime minister, touts Britishness, Labour has seldom made a positive case for the union, telling Scottish voters at the May elections only that they faced public-service cuts without their English subsidy.
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Author and anthropologist Simon Kuper agrees, saying the political context may also explain why places like Gibraltar and the Falkland islands have more symbols of Britishness than many areas in the UK, where ostentatiously displaying union jacks might be seen as old-fashioned or embarrassing.
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