Jack - To talk about British 'customs' and the 'British way of life' is all very well, but I would like to see some definitions of these concepts that most Brits could agree to. And more important, these would have to be different from those of other countries, in Europe for example, otherwise how could they be defined as 'British', as opposed to 'European' ?
I suspect that if a 'British way of life' or British 'customs' could be defined in ways that made them specifically British the definitions would be far narrower than most Brits' interpretation of these concepts.
BTW In this country, while the government is pushing more and more of the working population into poverty, the rich are getting richer. Yeah, Great British values. Sod 'em. We need new values.
Delon - If you have the skills and qualifications to back them then you can forget the UK and the EU for places to live with a high quality of life. You would do far better to go to Australia, New Zealand or Canada for where there are cities with far higher quality of life. The long term prospects for the UK and EU are poor due to ageing demographics combined with the world's lowest economic growth and ever rising unfunded liabilites that cannot be met.
King - I don't think Britishness is about everyone ascribing to a single culture but rather a wide range of cultures that exist as part of a certain narrative and have over many years achieved a degree of synergy without necessarily converging.
That is not to say that all cultures that come to these shores should become part of Britishness. Some will never be able to achieve that synergy and some will simply converge into existing practices.
Indeed many cultures that arose in this country did not persist, we had our own fascist movement you recall and before that Quakers and Brownists most of whom left for the USA as they did not fit in to Britain.
There is a long tradition of teetotal folk in the UK which is part of that synergy.