New Statesman: Don't phone the identity man yet: as Heisenberg's uncertainty principle reminds us, t

It was a slow afternoon at the new Department of Corporate Identity. Although the civil servants had voted to move from stuffy Whitehall to a site next door to Oddbins in Upper Street, Islington, many of the old guard regretted the change. It was all very well the Secretary of State for Brand Values arguing that it was essential to be near the department's high-profile consultant, Wally Pantone - they just thought it didn't feel like government in N1. And the compulsory Burberry-patterned baseball caps with Wally Pantone's Anne Hathaway mascot and the legend "I'm backing West Mercia" made them cringe.

Suddenly, anticipated by clouds of Floris lavender scent, the Junior Minister for Emblematic Constructs rushed in, waving position statements. "Bugger!" he screamed. "I've just had a meeting with Wally Pantone and the Minister for Cognitive Dissonance. They've insisted on putting the new Welsh flag out to focus groups. Seventy-four per cent of A1/B1s in Carmarthen won't accept a coypu as a mascot and are insisting on reinstating the leek. And this is just ten days before Dyfed's relaunch as The Geoffrey of Monmouth Centre!"

Science provides marvellous metaphors for human frailty and foibles. Who does not know a sluggish individual whose intellectual limitations are not best described by saying he has Read Only Memory (Rom)? How many once-promising but fatally stalled careers are described by that chilling term from aerospace: CFIT, or Controlled Flight into Terrain, the accident investigator's emotionally neutral term for a crash that occurred when the flight crew were, apparently, fully alert and functioning.

But best of all is that expression from particle physics which provides a metaphor for all the spiritual paradoxes and ironies of our age: the uncertainty principle. This was Heisenberg's expression for that perverse phenomenon which occurs when you attempt to investigate the precise behaviour of capricious subatomic matter. The very act of investigation itself alters the behaviour the investigator is seeking to understand. Merely thinking about neutrinos makes them stamp their feet, look the other way and scream, "Shan't! Won't!" Nothing can be certain.

It's the same with the vexatious matter of national identity, a delicate and precarious mixture of shared symbols, happy accidents, evolutionary chaos, historical inheritance, genetic roulette, political interference, cultural hand-me-downs, the history of art, palaeoanthropology, economics, the weather, geology, sun spots, Iron Age migration patterns, religion, bus routes, taste, sex, the Gulf Stream and investment decisions made in Delaware or Zurich.

The essence of nationhood and its visual expression are an unknowably complicated and subtle amalgam of fact, fiction, perception and prejudice. T S Eliot said culture was everything from cathedrals to a preference for boiled cabbage.

Whatever, national identity is always easier to detect than to define. The French say that the British are cent ans de retard et dix ans d'avance. Quite. Our own national identity is pleasingly contradictory. We maintain in fastidious order some of Europe's oldest institutions, but cultivate the most energetic, innovative and disrespectful youth culture the while. We support world-class research and development facilities in medicine, engineering and pharmaceuticals, but do not possess the means to manufacture a five-ton truck without foreign investment. Despite a reputation for being a nation of resolute philistines, we excel in all creative activities, from music to advertising to art and design.

These are all part of our national identity but, as the uncertainty principle dictates, as soon as you develop a sense of self-consciousness about something so delicate, you distort it. If you try to interfere, you break it. But in an age when brand values are the chief point of difference between manufactured goods, there is a well-argued, if ill-considered, argument for creating a brand for Britain.

Coming from the world of margarine and soap powder, a brand is what accountants used to call "goodwill" with a trademark attached. Except that when we speak brands we have to speak logos, a logo being a trademark that went to art school. Anybody can make a carbonated beverage with herbal extracts, but only one company can make Coca-Cola, whose success is at least as much associated with its rich iconography as its "delicious and refreshing" taste. The argument goes that New Britain needs a new brand.

Comparisons from industry do not offer much comfort for those who would re-brand Britain. While it is inevitable that at a time when information is the chief commodity of economic exchange, the intangibles of the brand become paramount; at the same time it's indisputable that the most successful brands have been those that have evolved rather than been invented.

Coca-Cola, Ford, Mercedes-Benz and Sony are examples. Coke uses its bookkeeper's copperplate signature. The Ford story is similar. Sony was a Japanese misunderstanding of English phonetics mixed with a careless use of a classic Clarendon face. Mercedes-Benz will never, ever change its three-pointed star. The ones that have been invented are a sorry bunch of fragile neophytes.

Whenever countries have attempted to reinvent identities the results tend to be sinister. The best corporate identity scheme of all time was the one so eagerly adopted by the Wehrmacht, Luftwaffe, Kriegsmarine, Schutzstaffel and Gestapo. The Red Army did well, too, but was hindered by a comparative lack of resources.

And, of course, the countries with the strongest identities are those that are least self-conscious about it: the mere suggestion of red, white and green immediately evokes Italy. A corporate identity consultant would have charged a few hundred thousand to attain that perception. No developed nation is less fussed than Italy about the maintenance of its past or present image; none has a stronger identity.

There are some attractive parts to the new Demos pamphlet, a mite too cutely called Britain[TM] - renewing our identity. It certainly would be a good idea if the country had better gateways, everybody's first and last encounters with our culture. This side of a Romanian mental hospital, Heathrow Airport must be one of the nastiest places on earth. While what everybody really, really wants in an airport is absolutely clear: they want calm, beauty, convenience and a comforting atmosphere of confident expectation appropriate to the great technological adventure of flight. What BAA plc provides is altogether different.

It provides garish factory outlets over a large part of Middlesex. BAA plc thinks travellers want nothing other than to buy a litre of single malt, a pair of cashmere socks, sunglasses, a Danielle Steel, a burger, a cappuccino and a Japanese camera. To provide the sort of aerial gateway a civilised culture deserves, however, will be achieved only by government strategy: left to BAA plc, the nation's biggest gateway will remain a crass and gaudy souk.

There are some less attractive parts to the Demos pamphlet, too. At its worst, Britain[TM] reads like a transcript of a 1983 dinner party where the guests included the Design Council, the identity consultant Wally Pantone, and Professor Michael Porter, at the time working on the first draft of his 1990 toe-breaking volume, The Competitive Advantage of Nations.

It is full of familiar, even rather tired stuff. The citation of the troubled white-goods manufacturer AEG as an exemplar does not give confidence of the author's command of his subject. Of course Dixons calls its own brand consumer electronics by a hokey Japanese name: Britain has no credentials in this area. Who would even want a VCR called a Parker-Bowles 1066? Besides, the wretched Matsui range is manufactured in the Orient, so what on earth do you expect? These things are fugitive, like the essence of national identity itself. The substance is far more substantial.

But more disturbing than the odd half-baked or out-of-date reference is the pervasive aroma of something so antiquated that it's decomposing: corporatism. No sooner had Mobil decided, circa 1966, that in the interests of good design management every single filling station on the planet should look exactly the same, than someone else discovered that maybe New Zealanders liked their filling stations to look somewhat different to the ones they had in Finland.

There have been very, very few successful world brands and, so far, no examples whatsoever of a successfully contrived national identity. Doubters may wish to inspect the ruins of Mussolini's ideal towns of Latina and Sabaudia, just south of Rome, to confirm this opinion.

Heathrow may be an ugly and chaotic zoo, but it's a free and vigorous one. I'm not sure I'd actually prefer it if the Secretary of State for Brand Values had called in his Ministers for Emblematic Constructs and Cognitive Dissonance and had convened focus groups and an opinion poll and drawn up guidelines for its role in the branding of Britain. I think, curiously, it's rather effective as it is. Sure, it would be great if BAA plc behaved with better taste, more consideration and discretion, but that's another issue altogether.

The writer was founding director of the Design Museum and is currently creative director of the Millennium Experience. "Britain[TM]: renewing our identity" is available from Demos, 9 Bridewell Place, London EC4V 6AP, [pounds]5.35