Agonising Over Englishness

The hand-wringing continued at the Fabian's Labour fringe event on Sunday:

Can Labour Speak for England?
With Jon Cruddas MP, Kwami Kwei-Armah (British playwright, actor and broadcaster), Gisela Stuart MP, John Denham MP, Yvette Cooper MP and chaired by Tim Horton (Fabian Society Research Director)

Covered by Sunder Katwala:

"At times, the Labour leadership contest this summer - equality and fairness sounded like one long John Rawls lecture. All of the hopey change stuff is very good but it isn't enough", said Cruddas. If the left could not find a popular and radical response to issues of identity and belonging it would fail to counter a visceral politics "which is creating in England an embryonic tea party from a populist nationalist right. If we don't do this, we will find that growing populist response to a profound sense of economic and social rupture, with deep cuts coming", he said.

Unfortunately we now have a Labour leader who does not know the date of St George's Day, and who is opposed to democratic English government.

I'm not in favour of a separate English Parliament and I’m against creating two-tiers of MPs in the House of Commons. I think one thing we must do is change our approach to politics. Devolution to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland has strengthened the Union. - Ed Miliband, Our Kingdom

For the benefit of John Cruddas and Nick Lowles I offer this Tom Nairn quote, upon which they should muse:

Blair’s Project makes it likely that England will return on the street corner, rather than via a maternity room with appropriate care and facilities. Croaking tabloids, saloon-bar resentment and back-bench populism are likely to attend the birth and to have their say. Democracy is constitutional or nothing. Without a systematic form, its ugly cousins will be tempted to move in and demand their rights – their nation, the one always sat upon and then at last betrayed by an elite of faint hearts, half-breeds and alien interests. - Tom Nairn, After Britain (2000)