FIRST it was John Major’s vision of a Britain of “long shadows on county grounds, warm beer and invincible green suburbs”. Then new Labour tried to rebrand the country as cool Britannia, promoting the merits of Blur and Britart.

Now the government is funding a list of national icons that some hope could save England from the “white van man” image of a St George’s flag stuck to the inside of a vehicle window.

The Icons Online project, which will choose items after votes from the public, will be launched tomorrow by David Lammy, the culture minister.

The symbols will focus on England rather than Britain because of a belief that the country has lost out in terms of identity in recent years to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Lammy will say at the launch of the £1m website-based project, funded by the culture department, that his own favourite symbol of England is the red telephone box.

However, his choice is not on the first list of top 10 English icons, chosen by a panel of advisers from the arts and academia.

They range from Stonehenge and the London Routemaster bus to the SS Empire Windrush, Hans Holbein’s portrait of Henry VIII and Punch and Judy.

The public will be asked over the next few years to submit their own ideas for icons — which cannot be human — on the website. It is also intended to use the list as a resource for schools.

The list will then be changed every three months according to online votes received for each item. Once in the top 10, a symbol will become an official English icon.

“The intention is to encourage interest in culture in its broadest sense in England,” said Jerry Doyle, managing director of Icons Online. “The thing is that England is not often looked at. It’s more usually Britain.”

Some of the English may be troubled by the omission of such symbols as St George, the country’s patron saint, and his flag, waved by football, cricket and rugby fans at international games.

The initial list — mainly traditional but with a nod to multiethnic society in the shape of the Empire Windrush, which brought nearly 500 immigrants from the Caribbean in 1948 — has been attacked by critics.

“What a quaint and banal list,” said David Starkey, the historian and broadcaster. “It seems like a desperate attempt to invent something that’s not there. Let’s be blunt — the reinvention of England is very difficult.

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