English Nationalism,the 2019 Election and the Future of the British State

English Nationalism?

In England, the Tory party’s determined focus upon the commitment to deliver Brexit (a goal favoured by an overwhelming majority of the English) was combined with a policy programme tailored towards greater investment in public services and a concerted focus upon the challenges of regional economies and ‘left behind’ places. And in key respects this programme proved closer to the national mood of many non-metropolitan parts of the country than Labour’s poorly crafted series of policy giveaways and focus upon the Northern regional economy. Rather notably, there was much less reference in the Tory campaign to the dream of regaining ‘Global Britain’, and some of the key motifs of Brexiteer political discourse.

The mood of disenchantment which the Conservative campaign addressed predates Brexit. Since the mid-2000s, there has been a discernible increase in the number of people who wish to identify as English, rather than British, when asked to indicate their national identity. This trend was thrown into relief by the census result of 2011 when 57.7 per cent of the population of England chose ‘English’ as their sole national identity. It has been most noticeable in communities that live on, or beyond, the fringes of the largest cities. An analysis of those who identified as English in 2011 highlighted a swathe of post-industrial centres (including Doncaster, Grimsby Mansfield, Middlesbrough, Southend, Stoke, Sunderland, Wakefield and Wigan) where this was the preferred national affiliation of around three quarters of the population. (Gidley, 2011) These were exactly the areas where the Conservatives made some of their most notable advances in the election.

One possible reason for this shift is that Englishness is felt to be a disapproved – or ‘forbidden’ – identity by British public authorities and politicians, and appeals most to those who feel especially disenchanted with the political system for a mix of economic and cultural reasons. This kind of patriotic identification serves both as a way of promoting a neglected class interest, and as it supplies a vernacular for expressing disillusion with aspects of contemporary politics, including policies in areas like immigration (views on which were an important indicator of attitudes to Brexit) (Goodwin and Milazzo, 2017). But it is important to note, too, that the large pool of Leave-voting, English-identifying voters also includes older, relatively well-off Home Counties pensioners who formed an important part of this electoral coalition of the ‘insulated and the excluded’ which the Tories assembled.

Brexit and Englishness

Euroscepticism has been most deeply rooted in England, though certainly not confined to it. In the extended political crisis following the vote, Brexit became a totemic sign that parts of the political class did not respect a mandate, supplied predominantly by the English electorate. For those living in communities which feel they exercise little control, and are politically and economically marginal, it offered a rare chance to make a mark on political life. Polling in the run-up to the 2016 referendum consistently reported a strong correlation between those who identified most strongly as English, and the likelihood of supporting Brexit.

This shift has been happening for some years, but has only really come to political attention since the referendum. Now that this mood of collective disenchantment is the focus of political concern, there is, however, a risk that it is caricatured and condemned, rather than explored and properly conceptualised.

Nationalisms in other parts of the UK are rightly understood as being open to varied political expression, but their English counterpart is typically assumed to be chauvinistic and ethically exclusionary. There is a long tradition in the social sciences of explaining its inherently ‘ethnic’ character in relation to the traumas and loss of Empire, and a tendency to overlook studies highlighting the diverse ethnic and geographical backgrounds of many of those who now identify as English (Colls 2004; Skey 2011). Some critics continue to doubt the existence of ‘Englishness’ at all, holding to the shibboleth that the English people are so deeply divided along regional lines that a coherent sense of nationhood is simply not achievable.

Such judgements reflect some of the ingrained assumptions that tend to stunt understanding of social attitudes and national sentiment in the English context. Like other forms of nationhood, Englishness is also open to different forms of political expression. And England is far from being the only nation to encompass profound regional differences. Many of the place-focused identities associated with its villages, towns and counties are also conduits to distinct, geographically rooted, forms of Englishness.

Rather than invoking ‘English nationalism’ as a catch-all term that occludes differences of outlook and geography, we should consider whether the gradual emergence of a distinctive and widely shared outlook across large parts of England amounts to a full-blown nationalism at all; or in fact represents a growing sense of shared interest and identity – which has both local and national dimensions to it.

Understanding how the English feel about the domestic union in which England is by far the largest partner, is going to become increasingly important in the next few years. The process of reacquiring sovereignty is bound to accentuate tensions among the different governments and peoples of this multi-national state in which one people is overwhelmingly larger in number than its counterparts. This has been apparent already in disputes over the return of powers from Brussels in areas of devolved competence, and also because in Scotland and Northern Ireland most people remain steadfastly opposed to Brexit. The territorial composition of the governing party’s support in Parliament may also make intra-national conflict more likely, given that 345 of its 365 MPs represent English constituencies.

Future of the Union

OPEN IN VIEWER

For many Leave supporters, achieving Brexit has assumed precedence over all other concerns. Some polls suggest that Brexit supporters in England would be prepared to lose both Scotland and Northern Ireland if that was the price required.

But is also clear that a majority of the English would prefer not to have to choose between leaving the EU and preserving the domestic union. Most share the view of their fellow UK citizens that the union is comprised of national groups who have the right to determine their own future, and most favour the continuation of the UK in its current form. There is little sign of any appetite for forcing Scotland to stay in the union against its will, and the kind of majoritarian nationalism which has undergirded the refusal of Spain’s political parties to accept the legitimacy of Catalan claims to self-rule, is largely absent in this context.

English attitudes towards constitutional issues have, for the last century, been characterised by a distinctive medley of indifference and tolerance. In recent years, there is some evidence that more people have become irked by aspects of the domestic constitutional order, but nothing like the same level of scepticism directed at the EU has taken hold. Some of these grumbles – about for instance the territorial distribution of public spending, and the potential for politicians from Scotland to exercise too big an influence at the centre – have a lengthy historical pedigree. One newer idea has gained ground in recent years – the contention that, since devolution was awarded to all other parts of the UK, England may well need more protection and greater recognition within the British system of authority and governance.

Such a preference rubs awkwardly against the distinctive institutional architecture and governing ethos of the union state. Developing a suite of English institutions, or designing a substantive model of legislative devolution at the English level, have long been seen as incompatible with the UK’s territorial constitution. This orthodoxy may well need to be rethought if, as seems likely, a growing number of the English are no longer willing to consent to the unspoken territorial contract that undergirds the British state. As many come to feel that their position at the heart of national life has changed significantly for the worse, and resentment at the wealth and opportunities hoarded in London and the South East has grown, the pool of legitimacy enjoyed by the state may well have diminished.

But there are other dimensions to the rise of Englishness, and these too are important. For many it supplies what the theorist Michael Billig terms a rather ‘banal’ kind of cultural nationalism, as the cross of St George morphed rapidly during the 1990s from being a disapproved emblem of far-right nationalism into a symbol found on t-shirts and coffee mugs across the land. And for a small number of campaigners and commentators, a renewed sense of English nationhood provides the basis for a demand for greater self-government and a sharp critique of the British state’s resistance to this idea. Whether this idea will spread in appeal is an important, but currently underestimated, political question.

Party Politics

Among mainstream parties, the Conservatives have been most attuned to England’s national mood – perhaps unsurprisingly given the party’s strengths in the shires and towns where political Englishness is most rooted. Under David Cameron, in the wake of the Scottish independence referendum, a concerted attempt was made to harvest English grievances for political ends, as he committed to reform the House of Commons in order to solve any future recurrence of the West Lothian question. The fruits of this initiative – the complicated rules known as ‘English Votes for English Laws – have been barely noticed outside Westminster, and are still poorly understood within it (Gover and Kenny 2015).

Cameron’s successors have steered away from this aspect of his territorial politics. Both Theresa May and Boris Johnson have been wary of presenting themselves too nakedly as the party of the English interest at a moment when the union faces grave threats in relation to the future of Scotland and Northern Ireland. Johnson’s hyperbolic brand of unionism aims to rectify the deficiencies of Labour’s centrifugal governance model, to renew the central state as a core vehicle for the promotion of the union, and to challenge nationalist forces in the peripheries more directly. And the stage is now set for a major confrontation between a Scottish nationalist government and its UK counterpart.

The new government is focusing heavily on the need to deliver on the electoral promises it made to the forgotten-about parts of England, with extra funding promised for some of its poorest towns and cities, and major new infrastructure projects likely to be unveiled in Wales, too. Whether it can deliver on these promises, and demonstrate the benefits of its interventions before the next election is a key political question for the Tories. For the state as a whole, a deeper – perhaps existential – question is whether Johnson will do enough to stem the depletion of English consent for the domestic union.

The mixture of cultural symbolism – flying the union jack on more public buildings in Scotland – and calculated instrumentalism – ensuring that the UK government is seen as the provider of investment and economic opportunities (for instance via its city deals programme) – which inform the new government’s unionist agenda, have been devised with Scotland and Wales in mind. But it is increasingly important for unionist politicians to ascertain how the English now feel about the union, and whether they are still willing to consent to its anomalies, fixes and least popular features. In addition to its policy programme on regional productivity and left-behind places, the new government may well find that it needs to formulate a new agenda for the UK’s territorial constitution – perhaps including the idea of a new upper chamber for the nations and regions, and an expanded model of city-regional devolution across England.

The future of the UK may well depend upon its ability to assure the English, as well as the Scots, that the home union is still worth the sacrifices and compromises it inevitably requires.