Here’s a good way to get a debate about nationality going: do the Citizenship Test posted on the Guardian website, and see how many you get right. Then try and convince all your friends that, although you didn’t get the full score, you’re still British. And there is no reason to assume that you’re not. You’ve probably listened to Terry Wogan at some point, you know who James Corden is (and probably don’t like him), you can name all eleven Doctors and his companions in chronological order, and you probably admire Professor Brian Cox and Sir Richard Attenborough. You know that Boots calls itself a pharmacy but really they’re a shop that happens to also sell prescription medicines, and you know how to play the system and get free tickets on Orange Wednesdays. You moan about Royal Mail and the weather, you love the NHS and you spend too many hours a week on iPlayer. You hate Nick Clegg and you make fun of the respective other countries within the UK. You’re British.

Yet you’ve probably failed the test, and try to argue that it’s not a valid way to decide if people can become British or not. There are a few things the Guardian test doesn’t tell you:
1) The test can be done in either English, Welsh or Scottish Gaelic;
2) It differs depending on what country you live in (so if you do it in Wales, you are required to know details, e.g., about the Welsh Assembly but not about the Scottish Parliament).

But why should you know when women got the right to vote or how many Muslims live in the UK? They are pieces of trivia. And just because a foreigner studies those answers for a test doesn’t make them British. Here’s the thing: if you grow up in Britain, you understand it intrinsically. Nobody would have to tell you about the Blue Books of 1847 in Wales, because, of course, you know your own culture. You don’t have to know how many young people there are or how many Pakistanis – you have an unconscious awareness of what your society is like and how it interacts with these foreign cultures. Maybe an outsider comes to understand it as well as you do – I’d like to think I know the Welsh quite well after all these years. But an outsider still has to prove that s/he does, and the only way that can be done is by testing them on theoretical knowledge – pieces of trivia. Not all of them are irrelevant; 14 out of the 24 mentioned above should be common knowledge. That’s not enough to pass the test, but they are the most vital to understanding the country politically, socially and culturally.
It is also about demonstrating a passion about the country. Anybody could live in the UK for years and never really care about it (I did that for over twenty years in the country I was born in). However, I want to know all these things about the country I have chosen to make my home. If you are not ready to feel that passionate about the country’s history – its “pieces of trivia” – then you may as well not do the test at all. After all, nobody is stopping you from staying in the country while keeping your own nationality, as long as you are an EU citizen or have the necessary visa documents.

What may seem weird to you as essential knowledge about your country really is just a mix of essential, common knowledge, and the proof that you care enough about being naturalised that you can sit down with a book for a few days and learn as much about your new home as you possibly can. Otherwise, why bother making it your home and your new national identity?