English Question

Jeremy Hunt, Secretary of State at the Department of Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport, has decided to merge Sport England and UK Sport to reduce costs. He is also looking at the status of Visit England and English Heritage. Arts Council England is to be spared but it will be required to take on the work of the MLA, who are presently in charge of the Museums, Libraries and Archives of England.

Jeremy Hunt has no power to axe the equivalent organisations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, though I expect that the governments of those countries will have to cut their cloth accordingly once the spending cuts in England impact upon their budgets. But importantly they will have a choice. The Scottish Government will decide whether Scotland requires a national stand alone Arts Council; Wales will decide whether Wales, as a nation in its own right, is best served by its own stand alone Sports Council; and Northern Ireland will decide whether its culture is unique and important enough to warrant a distinct Hertitage body (as a point of interest the Northern Irish Heritage body is less distinct than the equivalents in the rest of the UK because the Northern Irish choose to consider natural and built heritage together under the auspices of the Northern Ireland Environment Agency).

England doesn't get a choice. The UK Government can decide at a whim to abolish the non-departmental English bodies that - in the absence of English government - provide the only tangible institutional recognition of English nationhood. And because the England-only non-departmental bodies fall exclusively under the command of Jeremy Hunt at the DCMS, England at a governmental level exists only at the discretion of Jeremy Hunt. Hunt will take his decisions purely on the grounds of cost, the issues of nationhood and cultural distinctness do not come into play as they do in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. No account will be taken on what is best for the governance of England; our sense of place, nationhood and identity will play second fiddle to the need to drive down the administrative costs of UK PLC.

Under Blair and Brown it was no different, England was adminstered as the rump of the UK rather than governed as a national community with its own distinct needs and policies. Administrative functions were devolved within England to 'regions' that ignored any sense of community, so that regional quangos could deliver UK Government policy in England under the guise of localism or regionalism, dictated to by the centre but without the sort of devolved autonomy provided to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. England was administered under the 'constrained discretion' of the Treasury, with policy dictated on the basis of cost and best delivery of services. For England there is no populism or nationalism, purely marketisation in 'consultation with stakeholders'.

Labour went back on their 2004 decision to abolish the English Tourism Council, recreating Visit England as a stand-alone English body in 2009. There was no national discussion about how England might like to market itself domestically and internationally, nor any public discussion about how England might like to structure its tourism council, this was a purely top-down bureaucratic exercise. Under the Tories English Tourism will hopefully have its regional structure swept away, but I suspect that it may find itself being incorporated back into Visit Britain on the basis of cost rather than what is best for England. A nice option for the cost-cutters in the British Government, but less good for England, and extremely bad for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland who presumably do not have the option of consolidating with Visit Britain and must find savings elsewhere.

I thought about patriotism. I wished I had been born early enough to have been called a Little Englander. It was a term of sneering abuse, but I should be delighted to accept it as a description of myself. That little sounds the right note of affection. It is little England I love. And I considered how much I disliked Big Englanders, whom I saw as red-faced, staring, loud-voiced fellows, wanting to go and boss everybody about all over the world, and being surprised and pained and saying 'Bad show!' if some blighters refused to fag for them. They are patriots to a man. I wish their patriotism began at home... - J.B. Priestley

Wales Online carries some interesting comment from Alan Trench in an article titled Why Eurosceptics are not (always) Little Englanders. Trench argues that the Conservative's fresh commitment to the Union, in spite of their continued failure in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, stems from two Tory anxieties:

1. Dissolution of the Union would result in further integration of the Union's constituent parts into the EU
2. Dissolution of the UK would diminish England/Britain's international prestige and influence (no seat of the UN Security Council for England alone).

Mr Trench said the strategy of fighting seats in all parts of the UK had "bombed".

But he is adamant that Euroscepticism within Tory ranks is a key reason why the party remains determined to keep the UK together, despite the failure to advance in Scotland or win any seats in alliance with the Ulster Unionist Party in Northern Ireland.

He said: "It's one of the things people don't give enough attention to when they are trying to understand the Conservative party... All the evidence is Euroscepticism is one of the defining threads of the modern Conservative party."

During his lecture in Cardiff hosted by the Institute of Welsh Affairs, he said: "I think part of what's going on in this is if you are a serious Eurosceptic you are talking about Britain - the UK - being able to stand for itself on the world stage."

The United Kingdom has a population of more than 62 million, of which England accounts for just over 51 million - significantly less than Germany (81.8 million), France (65.4 million) and Italy (60.2 million), and only just ahead of Spain (46 million).

In other words, without the UK, England would be a midde-sized European nation which happened to have a few nuclear submarines. Would Japan (127.4 million people) see the UK as a peer or a pretender to be a great power?

It is essentially the contrary argument to that laid out by Robin Harris in The Rise of English Nationalism and the Balkanisation of Britain.

I tend to agree with Trench that Eurosceptic thinking is important in the debate over the British Question. The Tories are not 'Little Englanders' in the true sense of the phrase, they are anything but. I would say that the Tories want to keep Britain together because they are 'Big Englanders' or 'Greater Englanders' for whom Britain - or more correctly Westminster - is a device for projecting power and retaining sovereignty. They are what Chris Bryant refers to as the Anglo-British in his 2003 paper "These Englands, or where does devolution leave the English?":

I prefer to associate the Anglo-British not with an Anglocentrism whose epicentre is London, but rather with those in all regions and all classes in England for whom the difference between being English and being British, is, for the most part, unclear, unimportant and/or irrelevant. Many of them would see nothing amiss in the title of Clive Aslet’s Anyone for England? A Search for British Identity (1997). They inhabit an Anglo-British England.

The Anglo-British do not notice when an institution or person associated with England performs a British function. For example, it goes unremarked that the Bank of England is the central bank for all Britain, or that the Archbishop of Canterbury, the primate of the Church of England, crowns the sovereign of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Nor do countless references to ‘England’ which should have been to ‘Britain’ grate on the English ear. Walter Bagehot’s famous The English Constitution (1964 [1867]), for example, does not strike the Anglo-British as mistitled. Similarly, it is the 900-year continuity of the parliament at Westminster – originally English, later British – that enables Rebecca Langlands (1999) to speak of the English core of the British state.

The Anglo-Brits are also people who say 'British schools' or 'this country' - instead of 'English schools' or 'England' - when they are talking about Education policy in England; they are people who tolerate the fact that non-English MPs vote on English matters, even though they can see it is undemocratic. The Anglo-British are everywhere but I do think there is a class and age bias. The Anglo-Brits are particularly prevalent amongst the upper classes and the privately educated, and they're also more likely to be older (at least in my experience). However, they're not just confined to England or the upper echelons of society. Scots like Gordon Brown are Anglo-British in their understanding of Britain, which is why he uses an English narrative and English values to try and forment a sense of Britishness. But it's amongst Tories that you find the classic unreconstructed Anglo-Brit, Englishmen for whom the sun never sets, and for whom 1707 and 1801 marked the creation of a new Greater England, a colonial expansion. Yes it was a shame about the Empire, but chin up lads, stiff upper lip and all that...We still have Scotland and part of Ireland, ungrateful bastards though they are. Tally ho! What, what.

It's the Anglo-British 'Big Englanders' - rather than Little Englanders - who oppose an English parliament and a federal Britain. Robert Key is one such Tory:

One thing that is absolutely clear is that we should make every possible attempt to ensure that this House remains the Parliament of England. I do not wish to see any other Parliament established anywhere calling itself an English Parliament. That would be appalling and would go against 1,000 years of our history.

Mark Pritchard is another:

I am afraid I do not support your campaign as I feel it will play into the hands of European federalists by breaking up the United Kingdom, even more than Labour have done already. I think that there would be many in the European Commission and elsewhere on the Continent who would be delighted at seeing the United Kingdom become nothing more than a country of regions - a type of “divide and rule” concept.

I know that the CEP has the best interests of England at heart, but I don’t think that an English Parliament is the way to deliver these interests.

Liam Fox another:

I think our national identity is being stripped away in order to prepare us for being engulfed by those who wish to see Britain merely as a region in a European superstate. I believe our integration has already gone far enough and I will resist any moves to diminish British sovereignty in any way, shape or form.

The Tories prefer to avoid the issue of the EU, and so for this reason it is UKIP politicians who we turn to for an honest description of Eurosceptic Conservative thought on the subject of devolution. The following is taken from a letter from Jeffrey Titford, UKIP MEP and former Tory, again in opposition to an English parliament:

From our point of view, there is little point in establishing an English Parliament, while we remain members of the European Union. In fact, to do so would be to play into the hands of the EU, which is quite happy to see the United Kingdom broken up. We can only enter into sensible debate on this issue, after Britain has left the European Union.

This UKIP view of devolution is embellished by Derek Clark MEP, again in a letter opposing an English parliament:

We see the UK as a sovereign nation independent of the political construction known as the EU but otherwise co-operating with the countries of Europe. I believe that this view is shared by the majority of people in the UK. What is happening is a deliberate destabilizing process by the EU with the active support of both this government and previous ones. As a result all sorts of movements have sprung up in support of one view or another. Frankly the campaign for an English parliament can only help to assist the break up of the UK and further the cause of the EU agenda.

It's not only in the field of politics that the Anglo-British rear their ugly heads. Dave Richards of the English Football Association provides a classic example of Anglo-Brit thinking:

"It's time for a British boss, somebody who understands our passion, belief and commitment. There's no distinction between English and British."

Incredibly Richards made this statement in the context of advocating Martin O'Neill as the next England manager whilst opposing a foreign manager of the England team. For Anglo-Brits the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is simply - England writ large (at least to all English intents and purposes, they are rather more tactful when addressing a Scottish audience). It is the thinking of these people that is the greatest obstacle to English home rule - to them British sovereignty is English sovereignty.

David Cameron is another Anglo-Brit, as Trench notes:

Mr Trench was struck by Mr Cameron's commitment to the union in a December 2007 speech in Edinburgh in which he said in a "choice between constitutional perfection and the preservation of our nation, I choose our United Kingdom".

The academic said: "That was the first time I noticed a Conservative leader come up with a reason to support the union... What he said was the importance of the union was it was part of the UK's wider standing in the world."

The Anglo-Brits have a very whiggish interpretation of Britishness. Devolution is an asymmetry that can be tolerated and explained because sovereignty remains with the Imperial Parliament. In that way the unbroken continuity of English/Anglo-British sovereignty is preserved. Tradition, continuity and incremental progress are more important than democracy. For these Anglo-Brits it would almost be preferrable for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to be allowed to whither on the English vine and drop off rather than contemplate a federalism by which Westminster's sovereignty is diminished but an entity named Britain remains. They would internalise the managed decline of Empire by treating Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland as colonies - as peripheries to the English centre - rather than undergo a radical re-imagining of the centre that disturbs their narrative.

I don't hold out much hope for a federal Britain. I see the future of Britain as one of 'managed decline' in which Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland claim ever greater powers from Westminster. The only way this will be averted is by the decline of the Big Englander and the rise of the Little Englander. In this respect I think demographics are on England and Britain's side, the youth of Britain being far more comfortable with the multi-national nature of Britain than is the post-war baby-boomer generation.

We Little Englanders do not necessarily view Westminster as a benign force for civillisation and progress; we talk of the Norman Yoke in the same breath as mention of Westminster; we sing Jerusalem instead of God Save the Queen or Land of Hope and Glory; and we view our politicians as corrupt and elitist, and invariably British.

Philip Davies was hassling David Mundell over the West Lothian Question yesterday.

The biggest threat to the United Kingdom comes not from Scotland but from the resentment that people in England feel at the current constitutional settlement. My right hon. Friend and I both stood on a manifesto promise that we would stop Scottish MPs voting on matters in this House that related only to England. When will that happen?

Mundell informed Davies that "This coalition Government, unlike the previous Government, are determined to deal with the issue". It would be interesting to know what discussions on the West Lothian Question Philip Davies has had with his dad, Peter Davies, Mayor of Doncaster. Has the English Democrat mayor ever mentioned the West Lothian Question or made a case for an English parliament? He must be the most high profile English nationalist that doesn't do English nationalism ever.

Laurie Penny attracted a lot of indignant comment in June with her joyless feminist rant "Why I despise the World Cup" in which she argued that the British left should ignore the manufactured "English pride" of the World Cup for the sake of women and the cause of anti-fascism.

There is something suspect about a people's sport that violently excludes more than half the people, and boozy, borderline misogynist pseudo-nationalism is the last thing Britain needs to help foster a badly needed sense of community. George Orwell observed in 1941 that "in England all the boasting and flag-wagging, the 'Rule Britannia' stuff, is done by small minorities . . . The patriotism of the common people is not vocal or even conscious."

Of course, not everyone who displays an England flag is a fascist, but a few of the flags in circulation will undoubtedly be reused at the upcoming EDL rally in east London, which plans to process through the same streets where Oswald Mosley's Blackshirts marched in 1936.

This week she's back with "Britain’s summer of angst" in which she lazily, stupidly or possibly deliberately, conflates England and Britain.

Our culpability in the Deepwater oil disaster, our role in the financial crash of 2008, even our miserable performance at the world cup have disturbed the popular impression of Britain as a country which “punches above its weight”. If 2009 was the "summer of rage", then 2010 is surely the summer of angst. After the rash of "Will you be supporting Britain?" articles during a certain international kickball competition, Britain’s dismal result – being knocked out before the quarter-finals by Germany, of all humiliations – was an own goal for the weary mythology of "two world wars and one World Cup".

Garbage.

Is she deliberately conflating England and Britain to lend credence to the hypothesis behind a piss-poor article; or is she deliberately conflating England and Britain in a petty attempt to wind up those of us who identify ourselves as English, Scottish or Welsh, or; is she just a stupid girl?

It's a tough call. I doubt that she is stupid but I'd put her in the 'professional idiot' category along with the likes of Rod Liddle. Professional idiots deliberately write borderline offensive dribble in order to court controversy and push their readership figures up, they like to think they're being 'provocative' and 'edgy' when in fact they're just tedious and annoying.

The BBC report on David Cameron's launch of the 'Big Society' and his plans to use the funds in dormant bank accounts - estimated to be £400M - to pay for it all.

David Cameron has launched his "big society" drive to empower communities, describing it as his "great passion".

In a speech in Liverpool, he said groups should be able to run post offices, libraries, transport services and shape housing projects.

Also announcing plans to use dormant bank accounts to fund projects, Mr Cameron said the concept would be a "big advance for people power".

What the BBC don't mention is the fact that David Cameron only plans to plunder English bank accounts. Bank accounts registered in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales will remain un-plundered. There is some sense in this given the fact that his Big Society plans will mostly affect only England (see BritologyWatch), so please bear this in mind as you listen to the media report this as a plan to plunder British or UK bank accounts. They - the UK press and the Tory Party - will do all they can to avoid mention of England.

UPDATE

This is what the Conservative Party's Draft Manifesto told us:

A Conservative government will use dormant bank accounts to endow an independent Social Investment Bank, with a mission to stimulate more social investment financing to help voluntary sector organisations, social entrepreneurs and others take on and overcome the social challenges we face.

The actual Conservative Party Manifesto stated:

We will strengthen and support social enterprises to help deliver our public service reforms by creating a Big Society Bank, funded from unclaimed bank assets, to provide new finance for neighbourhood groups, charities, social enterprises and other nongovernmental bodies.

No mention of it being an England-only policy.

UPDATE II

Analysis from BritologyWatch

The new look BBC website predictably regionalises England into arbitrary and artificial regions.

But what's interesting is the fact that the BBC has ditched the Government and EU's arbitrary regions in favour of it's own arbitrary regions. More sensibly London is now a part of the South East and Oxfordshire has been ejected. Oxfordshire never really had any real relationship with counties like Sussex, Essex and Kent; Oxfordshire sits far more comfortably with the likes of Warwickshire and Gloucestershire, at least to those of us with any sense of place and appreciation of English landscape and culture. But surprisingly the BBC have chosen to lump Oxfordshire in with Dorset and Hampshire.

What would make real sense would be for the BBC to forget about regions altogether and just use English counties. If Northern Ireland (population 1,775,000) can have its own BBC, then why can't Kent (population 1,406,600) or Yorkshire (3,978,484) or Sussex (population 1,392,737)? I don't have any objection to counties being lumped together where there's a good marriage (East & West Sussex, Hereford and Worcester, Norfolk and Suffolk, Devon and Cornwall), but I fail to see the point or purpose of these fake regions, whether governmental or BBC.

Having kicked the West Lothian Question into the long grass, Nick Clegg has only gone and lost the bloody thing. Fortunately the Labour Party's Alan Whitehead (yes, you read correctly, he's a Labour MP) was on hand to remind the Deputy Prime Minister that he had promised to set up a commission.

To ask the Deputy Prime Minister what progress he has made on establishing a commission to consider the West Lothian Question.

And the response from Conservative Mark Harper (Parliamentary underling to Nick Clegg, Political and Constitutional Reform) was:

I will be giving consideration to the requirements over the coming weeks and aim to announce our plans for the commission by autumn 2010.

In other words they've done absolutely bugger all because they're all too busy slashing the budgets on English departments. Isn't it strange to have a Labour MP raising the West Lothian Question? If my memory serves me correctly only three Labour MPs ever mentioned it during Labour's thirteen years in power (Frank Field, Andrew Macinlay and Derek Wyatt).

And since the coalition government took power Labour's Lord Stoddart and Lord Grocott have each asked two Parliamentary questions on the WLQ, both enquiring as to the predicted cost of such a commission and its likely composition. Perhaps some Scottish Labour sphincters are a twitching at the prospect of English Votes on English Laws, or perhaps Labour sense that this is an issue with which to divide Conservative from Lib Dem.

The following is an SNP press release from 12 January 1995:

Labour are miscalculating in seeking to impose assemblies throughout England, merely to lend cover to their Scottish devolution plans. Labour's only response to the anomalies inherent in devolution is to issue parrot cries about creating regional assemblies in England. In other words, Labour are proposing assemblies for regions whose names sound like contenders in the 'Come Dancing' television programme, merely as a means of disguising some of the inadequacies of their Scottish devolution plans!

It's a shame that we didn't have Scottish and Welsh nationalists in power in 2001 when the UK Government was hatching its plans to regionalise England. I remember well the odious Rhodri Morgan campaigning enthusiastically alongside the even more odious John Prescott in the North East. This was back in the day when serious political commentators referred, only half-jokingly, to John Prescott as the First Minister of England on account of the swingeing undemocratic powers over England that the fat Welsh buffoon had stolen away to the ODPM. My new Freedom of Information request is an attempt to shed some light on exactly what support for the balkanisation of England was offered by our partners in the United Kingdom, and what support if any John Prescott requested.

Dear Ministry of Justice,

I would like to make a request under Freedom of Information to see all the minutes of the 2nd Joint Ministerial Committee meeting during which the Government’s White Paper on English Regional governance was discussed.

The devolved administrations expressed their support for devolved regional government in England and offered to assist the process based on their experience of devolution to date.

However, no representatives of England were present at this meeting. Attending were representatives of the UK Government along with representatives from the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish administrations, as follows:

UK Government
Rt Hon Tony Blair MP, Prime Minister
Rt Hon John Prescott MP, Deputy Prime Minister
Rt Hon Paul Murphy MP, Secretary of State for Wales
Rt Hon Helen Liddell MP, Secretary of State for Scotland
Rt Hon Dr John Reid MP, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland

National Assembly for Wales
Rt Hon Rhodri Morgan AM, First Minister
Jenny Randerson AM, Acting Deputy First Minister

Scottish Executive
Rt Hon Henry McLeish MSP, First Minister
Rt Hon Jim Wallace QC MSP, Deputy First Minister

Northern Ireland Executive Committee
Sir Reg Empey MLA, Acting First Minister
Mark Durkan MLA, Minister of Finance and Personnel

I understand that the meeting took place on 30th October 2001.

Yours faithfully,

Gareth Young

I'm reasonably sure that this request will be refused, they wouldn't want to 'prejudice the UK government's current dealings' with the devolved administrations.

There's something comical about today's Daily Express headline

It's probably something to do with how old-fashioned it sounds. As Ed West says "Monty Burns is the only person I've heard use the word 'ethnics'".

We're all ethnics these days, pigeon-holed by racially coded identity, and petitioning for 'rights' not as individual Britons or Freeborne Englishmen but by ethnic affiliation. That is Blair's legacy; that is Britishness and New Labour's New Britain.

David Miliband has 'answered' my question on Labour Uncut:

Q. (from Gareth Young) In the New Statesman you wrote ‘An “English Parliament” is not the answer’ but you gave no indication as to why it was not the answer. An English parliament seems like a very good answer to many people, so could you tell me why you think an EP is not the answer and whether or not you support a referendum on the issue so that the people of England can decide (as did Scotland and Wales)?

A. I think they must have edited out my answer! I actually did say why. English MPs are already 85% of the UK parliament and the way to respect the needs as well as the history of England is to build up the civic institutions being launched are local institutions. And actually the needs in South Shields are very different from the needs in the Thames Valley. And the way to recognize that is not through an English parliament that tries to treat the whole of England as the same but through effective local governance that does reflect the different needs of the different parts of England.

I say 'answered' but the observant among you will notice that he didn't really answer it. David Miliband is a master at giving oblique answers to direct questions, which is presumably why he is favourite for the job.