David Blunkett

Part of a series of four lectures covering Scotland, Ireland, Wales and England; in which Mr Blunkett discusses Englishness, citizenship and identity and the implications of current and past political thinking for the English nation

It will shortly be a hundred years since the Encyclopaedia Britannica made the most terrible faux pas. Scholars who looked up Wales were greeted simply with the injunction: “See England”.

Those days have long gone. Wales now has its own National Assembly, has revitalised the Welsh language and has long put behind it the burning of cottages and the bitterness from a handful of zealots against the ‘incomers’. It also has – at least temporarily – the most senior Labour politician in office in the UK in the form of the First Minister, Carwyn Jones – in coalition with Plaid Cymru, of all things, which could never have been envisaged 20 years ago.

In this lecture, I want to examine those things which we have and still hold in common between Wales and England and Wales and Yorkshire – particularly here in South Yorkshire and my home city of Sheffield.

I want to identify the particular nature of Englishness. I wish to examine the political differences which exist in England compared with the rest of the United Kingdom; and why Labour has some historic and continuing lessons to learn about the innate conservatism of very substantial parts of England.

In addition, there are ramifications for Yorkshire which form an interesting backcloth – and I shall ask the question, perhaps tongue in cheek, of whether it is time for Yorkshire to consider its own ‘independence’ – or, more accurately, devolution – whilst remaining a key part of the UK!

Finally, I shall explore why the present Government and their economic policies, their ideology and what for some is a ‘scorched earth’ approach to our public services could undermine the union of the UK and, at the same time, fracture the nation of England. I will highlight the inherent London-centric nature of decision-taking and the differential impact of policy which retains power at the centre and decentralises the pain.

What we hold in common

There are some clear and obvious areas, particularly between South Wales and South Yorkshire, that are common to the recent history of our people: the emphasis on steel and mining; the propensity to grumble – particularly about London and southern England; and an undeserved reputation for penny-pinching. We even have strange dialects which are different between the north and south of both Wales and Yorkshire; and, if we don’t quite have a language, then for some south of Nottingham, it’s difficult to always understand broad Yorkshire!

In North Yorkshire and North Wales we have the rural beauty; the hills – in Yorkshire’s case, the Dales – to walk in; the special things to eat; and the rawness of the coastline. In Yorkshire as a whole, as with Wales, we have the poetry, the music and, yes, the folk heritage to draw down on – everyone from Ian McMillan and Simon Armitage to Alan Bennett and the music of Delius, not to mention the historic ballads and brass bands from the mining and wool industries of the past.

In substantial part, we also have solidarity and a sense of mutuality. We have a pride in being different which can sometimes be irritating to others and can appear aloof or even arrogant; but, even with the Yorkshire tendency not to suffer fools gladly, it adds up to being something different to the Anglo-Saxon individualism which is the hallmark of England as a whole.

Englishness

The English are more difficult to define. As I spelt out in an essay I wrote for the ippr in March 2005, there is a mixture of confidence and internationalism borne of the outreach of the English language; the development of empire; the reliance on trade; and the stability of being part of ‘this island race’. There is, too, the self-belief that comes from a thousand years of defending Britain from invasion and our overseas military successes; and the endurance of institutions like the Anglican Church, the ‘Church of England’, which, whilst in attendance it may not have the significance of years gone by, still remains a symbol of the cultural differences that can be seen within the UK.

There is also, of course, a pessimism that ensures that certain branches of the English media will jump immediately on bad news. Take the recently-published ‘Prosperity Index’, which hardly anybody had heard of until it told us that we had ‘slipped’ to 13th in the so-called ‘league of happiness’! This is, of course, reflected in the headlines of the London-based newspapers on a daily basis.

Today, the benefits of the English language and the historic outreach of trade are reflected in new forms of communication, from satellite and the internet to mobile phones – and the consequent downplaying of the need to adopt and understand other languages and cultures.

This form of internationalism has both pluses and minuses. Free trade has been a feature of the ‘English’ political debate for 300 years. This has inevitably created a different sense of identity and of our place in the world, which has both reinforced that arrogant self-confidence on the one hand and diluted a sense of identity and belonging on the other.

Inward migration has both benefited and disquieted the English – more so than in Scotland or in Wales – and is now the subject, once again, of political controversy. What Daniel Defoe described four centuries ago as ‘this mongrel race’ likes to think of itself as anything but!

Individualism, philosophically and instinctively, is much more an English trait than it is Welsh or Scots. Rousseau and David Hume may have walked the hills of South Derbyshire and North Staffordshire, but it was John Stuart Mill who articulated and affected the psyche of the English.

Roger Scruton and David Starkey believe that Englishness is dead. But theirs is an Englishness of a bygone, ‘Wessex’ version of the English nation.

The Scots may cry in their whisky, the Irish may grow melancholic over Guinness, the Welsh may sip at their Under Milk Wood beer; the English simply love to wallow in a nostalgia for a never-present lost era as they sip an indifferent Bordeaux borne of Aquitaine, rather than the missed opportunity of an alliance with the Burgundians.

For some, therefore, the John Major, 1993-version of Orwell’s reminiscences of a mythical English scene constitute the backcloth from which the world is viewed. Linda Colley, with her interesting reflections on nationhood and identity, looks at changes towards the end of the 18th and early 19th centuries, with the retreat of Bonnie Prince Charley and the paranoia invoked by Napoleon. Somehow, the concept of Britishness and an emerging English identity started to emerge.

Others – including Krishan Kumar – believe that it was at the turn of the 19th and early 20th centuries, prior to the appalling experiences of young men in the First World War – men who had previously never been further than the local market town – that created a particular version of Englishness. This is underpinned by the endearing reflections latterly in Upstairs, Downstairs and currently in Julian Fellowes’ Downton Abbey on ITV.

By contrast, the Welsh had a cultural sense of identity – as well as grievance – going back to medieval times, when their own moral and legal code was retained whilst their bigger and more militaristic neighbour sought to suppress their independence. Scotland, with its own legal and judicial system and with its own connections and contact with the continent, was able to retain a much greater sense of its own identity – but a greater bitterness towards the English.

Sharing a sense of belonging, of shared identity, at local level and through nationhood, matters more at a time of flux and change than in periods of economic prosperity and peace. Aneurin Bevan – an example of the Welsh predilection for the use of language to invoke emotion – rightly described that what we had to fear was fear itself. Yet for a nation to be outward-looking, inclusive and internationalist, it is necessary to reinforce that sense of security through a strong individual and collective sense of ourselves, our history and our current place in the world.

That is why, as so often, the opportunity to debate these issues as part of the development of the so-called Defence Review and military expenditure has once again been missed.

It is fair to say that Englishness has been welcoming, avoided the worst of bigotry and has been strong and certain, not weak, defensive and prejudiced. The English have been outward-looking as a naval power and a trading nation, which is why the use of fear and prejudice by the British National Party and the English Defence League are so worrying.

That kind of nationalism is equated with the far-right, with resentment, deep-seated fear of change and a particular form of individualism which has a dangerous attraction – as can be seen from the election of the English Democrat Mayor of Doncaster and his son, the right-wing Conservative MP for Shipley, Philip Davies. The economic meltdown and the Government’s response reinforce the political view that, far from ‘all being in it together’, we fend for ourselves, we reject the social wage, we undermine that feeling of solidarity which comes ‘from each according to his means, to each according to their need’.

Of course, change brings instability. Rapid change brings gross uncertainty and worry; and that brings the desire for something to hold on to – a rock, a shelter, some certainty in a world of insecurity. This can pose its own dangers, undermining any sense of wider place; of city, county or regional identity. The danger, therefore, is of evoking a reaction from the little Englanders who, in running our country today, have transformed one-nation Conservatism into a reflection of just one nation – or rather, just a part of one nation – of the union of the United Kingdom.

This raises the danger of a new form of English colonialism, with power drawn to the centre, with the abolition of regional development agencies and regional government offices, with the power of local government to raise its own finance restricted still further and with the distributive nature of public expenditure curtailed.

More of that shortly, for I want first to explore the disconnection between my own party and the individualism, the small ‘c’ conservatism, which makes up part of the English nation.

Labour

Please indulge me for a moment. I need to explore how social democratic politics responds to the nature of a specifically English nuance, a voting pattern which has historically been small ‘c’ conservative.

There are exceptions across England; places where mutuality and solidarity are seen as part of a local culture, mirroring that of Scotland and Wales. It is reflected at times in the history of our northern cities and towns and, of course, in our mining communities; and yet, within them, we see the seeds of the artificial disconnect between reciprocity on the one hand and mercantile enterprise, innovation and entrepreneurship on the other.

We delude ourselves if we forget that, until recently, Liverpool was controlled by the Liberal Democrats, Leeds and Bradford often revolved into Conservative/Liberal administration, Newcastle is under the control of the Lib Dems and, of course, currently – but not for long – so is the city of Sheffield.

But through the Midlands, the south, the east and south-west, the ‘anti-state’ nature of individualism and that innate conservatism I have spoken about is a powerful force. In large cities such as Birmingham and Bristol, Labour has struggled over the decades to hold the hegemony which popular myth within the party would have us believe exists across the major urban conurbations of England.

Outside the culturally diverse and cosmopolitan city of London, the south and east returned just ten Labour Members of Parliament out of over 200 constituencies on 6 May this year. Current opinion polling shows voters broadly still in support of the draconian cuts in public expenditure.

Yet self-reliance, entrepreneurship, enterprise and innovation are a feature of Britain as a whole and of those areas of England where solidarity has remained from time immemorial. Sheffield is an example of the tremendous gains that have been made in research, in hands-on and imaginative industrial and craft skills. Still, the city historically has had a reputation for left-of-centre politics.

So what conclusions can we draw? At least in part, that England and Englishness has an overriding suspicion of big government – an Anglo-Saxon aversion to being herded or being told what to do. At the same time, it has a natural caring and generous spirit, which nevertheless is not automatically turned into socialised or collective generosity. As can be seen in many of the right-wing states of the US, a willingness to give, to support, to be a good neighbour is not always translated into voting for reciprocity writ large or mutuality in political institutions.

How, therefore, to convert this innate and instinctive decency into a social and political reciprocity has to be the question for the English – or at least for those of us on the social democratic left, if we ever hope to return to government in Westminster and to build a politics in England which would draw on the earned entitlement, the ‘something-for-something’ attitude, which the New Labour era endeavoured to inculcate into Labour thinking.

This brings me to Yorkshire.

Yorkshire

In Yorkshire, we represent a mix of both the mutual and the stolid ‘no nonsense’ type of individualism. Yes, an emphasis on self-reliance, on knowing what’s best; but then being prepared to join in moving from individual caring to collective action.

In political terms, this is almost a mix of the more ‘English’, anti-authority conservatism and the more collective reciprocal commitment to each other.

Economically, we are innovative, inventive and hard-working. But a century ago it was the workers of Sheffield who gave their pennies to create a major contribution to the development of this university, with what in today’s money would be £15 million, literally volunteered from the weekly wage packet of Sheffield workers.

But unlike Scotland and Wales, we are not self-determining in our political structures. Our own destiny does not lie in Yorkshire. We cannot deal with the spending reductions, the social consequences and the reinvestment of growth in our own way.

The population of Wales is 3 million, Scotland’s just over 5 million and Yorkshire’s 5.2 million. Using what is known as the Barnett formula for distributing UK-wide government income, we could expect a tremendous advantage in having what in Wales is known as the Central Fund and in Scotland the Block Grant. Wales – the best comparator – will receive £14.5 billion for Assembly purposes in 2011-12. Rounded up for Yorkshire, this would be £24 billion.

Like London, we could then have our own development agency; draw down on and match European funding; ensure that we were able to reach out for inward investment and build up the capacity for our own knowledge-based economy. We could set our priorities, share across departmental budgets and charge others for the use of our facilities.

It may well be tongue in cheek; but, instead of a projected 82,000 job losses, independence for Yorkshire could have ensured the raising of loans for Sheffield Forgemasters, using all the resources of that part of HBOS which used to be the Halifax and taking our share of the Higher Education Funding Council money to make our priorities work for the people of our area.

Above all, we could reinforce our identity, develop the pride and motivation needed, restore our own form of Englishness and assert that important combination of bluff independence with caring mutuality.

We could include parts of the North Midlands, if they chose to do so. With the power stations, the military installations from RAF Menwith Hill to Catterick Garrison and with nine members of Labour’s Shadow Cabinet – including the Leader of the Opposition – Yorkshire would be well-placed to be the driving force of economic recovery outside the south-east of England!

Even better, we wouldn’t have to put up with the Deputy Prime Minister – the man who, on 19 March in a question and answer session organised by the Yorkshire Post, let it be known that he was horrified by the idea of a Conservative Government who would “slash public spending by a third”. Nor would we need a Prime Minister who on the one hand cuts investment to companies involved with the Advanced Manufacturing Park and describes the centre and the work done from this university with the private sector as cutting edge – while at the same time pulling the plug on the innovation and enterprise that goes alongside it.

The union

So, back to immediate reality!

What are the political voices of the south of England doing to the union? What is happening to our sense of ourselves – to our identity? Are we really going back to the ‘I’m alright, Jack’ or ‘It’s down to you’ view of the 1980s – overlaid by the so-called ‘Big Society’, when it is literally ‘down to you’?

From a governmental point of view, it’s very clever. If the State does not accept responsibility for the actions it is taking, how can it then accept the blame?

If we don’t respond adequately, if we don’t deal with our own problems in our own way, if we don’t play our part in the Big Society … it becomes our fault.

The actions that the Government have taken are making it more difficult to reinforce that sense of belonging which, even in the face of draconian cuts in essential services, can hold the fabric of society together. It is the fracturing, the tearing of that fabric, that concerns me most. The fact that we are likely to see a disintegration of the acceptance of responsibility, of the obligations and duties we owe to each other, as well as the imperative of fending for ourselves.

Examples are stark. Some of them are very small, but important.

The abolition of the Migrant Impact Fund reduces the chance of ensuring proper integration and building on the citizenship programmes and the teaching of the English language which has been so important to me over the years.

The demolition of specific funding for special and deep-seated needs – the Area Based Grant to local government and other ring-fenced funding – is deeply damaging. It is paraded as giving ‘freedom’ to decide. In reality, the decision already made – to change and to withdraw funding specifically directed to the most disadvantaged – is of course to take that money away from those very people.

Self-evidently, you have the choice of spreading the resources away from the greatest need and hence to protect the not-so-unfortunate from the impact of cuts. Sheffield City Council, under the Liberal Democrats, practices this policy already with devastating results – as shown by Professor Danny Dorling and his colleagues at the Department of Human Geography right here at this university.

Both the spending cuts themselves and the architecture of the British constitutional settlement now set London and the devolved administrations apart from England. The Balkanised nature of England affects us economically, in terms of determining our infrastructure and planning. Local Enterprise Partnerships – all 40 of them – cut regions into pieces, funding streams into smaller and less viable applications. Funding cut by two-thirds already is then fragmented even further; and, with the centralised governmental structures and the abolition of what is dismissively described as ‘quangos’, the influence over real decision-taking has been dramatically centralised.

Even in budgets that are superficially protected – the core schools budget and health – top-slicing means that demographic expansion will put more, not less, money into the south-east of England.

The denial that there is such a thing as regional identity and the failure to continue the previous Government’s emphasis on Core City development pulls the centrifugal force of England into London and alienates those who are hardest hit by the cuts. London retains a development agency and demands more resources – and in capital funding, gets it – as the scarce resources available are pulled like a magnet into the developments for and around the Olympic Games.

Preaching decentralisation and practicing metropolitan hegemony is undermining the union of the UK and a common sense of belonging and identity for England itself. Given the disparity of expenditure and the lack of flexibility within England, it is quite likely that Scotland and Wales – as well as Northern Ireland – will be able to protect services to a degree that will prove impossible in fragmented England. The improvements that have been wrought in public services could easily slip backwards as they are forced to make cuts and to switch services into an increasingly uncertain marketplace – just at the time when stability and reforms were beginning to bear fruit.

What’s more, our civil society – the glue that holds us together and the driving force for being able to assist each other in times of need – will be unable to respond as the years go by. Self-help is only possible when we pull together and support each other at times of greatest need.

Conclusion

Historically, a fear of patriotism as being jingoistic has run through thinking from the Stoics, Kant and Marx to modern thinkers such as Martha Nussbaum. Particularly on the left of politics in England, celebrating and applauding other people’s heritage and national pride – particularly the Irish – has been much more acceptable than identifying with and developing a sense of belonging from our own, English roots.

That is why I spent so much energy developing citizenship in schools. The Government’s proposals to abolish the curriculum will take us back to a belief that acquiring information without acquiring the means to use it will be sufficient for the future. Uniquely within the Midlands and the south of England, the politics of the right have asserted a narrow definition – a Home Counties view – of thinking in relation to Englishness, at once patronising and pessimistic at the same time.

Of course, some have said that ‘Britishness’ was invented by the English to assert cultural dominance throughout the UK. Well, it clearly hasn’t worked – but the English are still wary of the Scots, Welsh and Irish. Neil Kinnock and Gordon Brown can attest to this.

So I am advocating today that we rebuild confidence. Not in nationalism built on grievance; but on embracing an inclusive form of togetherness.

In our civil society and in helping each other to survive the years ahead, we will need to reinforce that reciprocity. We will need to ensure that people feel that independence of spirit, self-determination in daily life and self-reliance in economic survival can come together with that care and compassion that builds from the family into the neighbourhood and community. We can reunite our nation by acting collaboratively and collectively.

Today we are more mobile, we communicate more, we absorb through the immediacy of satellite television what is happening across the world. The fear of terrorism, the shock of conflict, the globalisation of economic activity – all bring an underlying sense of change, rapid change which is out of our hands and out of our control.

Rooting back into community and into nationhood a sense of ourselves can help us to find a way forward in what will be the uncertain world of the decades ahead.

David Blunkett, Speech to Sheffield's Cambrian Society, 27 October 2010

It seems counter-intuitive to argue that regionalisation prevents balkanisation and the rise of English nationalism, but that's what David Blunkett has done.

Blunkett said the abolition of regional bodies will lead to the "Balkanisation" of England, and end the ability of regions outside London to fight global market forces.

He said: "Our civil society – the glue that holds us together and the driving force for being able to assist each other in times of need – will be unable to respond as the years go by.

"It is the fracturing, the tearing, of the social fabric that concerns me most. The fact that we are likely to see a disintegration of the acceptance of responsibility, of the obligations and duties we owe to each other.

"The denial that there is such a thing as regional identity pulls the centrifugal force of England into London and alienates those who are hardest hit by the cuts.

To ward against this balkanisation of England, Blunkett suggests a Yorkshire Parliament:

"Can you think of one single reason why the people of Yorkshire shouldn't determine their own priorities?

"And, mischievously, one reason why the people of Yorkshire shouldn't have their own White Rose Parliament?"

No, and I can't think of one single reason why the people of England shouldn't determine their own priorities, or one reason why the people of England shouldn't have their own English Parliament.

UPDATE

Read Blunkett's speech here.

The English Question is a subject that tends to generate more heat than light whenever it is raised. It was first coined by Selina Chen and Tony Wright who defined it thus:

Where does England fit into the reconfiguration of Britain? What should be the English response to what is happening elsewhere in Britain? Does England need political reform of its own - and, if so, what kind? What does it mean to be English?

Selina Chen and Tony Wright, The English Question: Fabian Society, 2000

Over the years political commentators - usually Tories - have often used the phrase 'English Question' to describe the West Lothian Question. The Telegraph's Philip Johnston did just that in his article 'At last, an answer to the English Question', in which he hailed Ken Clarke's Democracy Task Force recommendations as the answer to the question of England. But Ken Clarke's recommendations were designed to mitigate the West Lothian Question, they were not an attempt to address the wider question of the national identity and national governance of England. If anything the West Lothian Question would be better described as a British Question because it concerns the voting privileges of British MPs in the British Parliament.

The West Lothian question is not an "English question," a "Welsh question," a "Scottish question" or a "Northern Ireland question"--it is a union question.

Jack Straw (2007), Prospect Magazine

Anthony Barnett argued that "The English question is bound to arise when all around others are finding and renewing their identities" (This Time: Our Constitutional Revolution (1997)). But as the 'others' increasingly gave expression to their national identities there was, claimed Andrew Marr, a nervousness, which in itself was dangerous, about allowing England to do the same:

‘Englishness exists. England’s senses of itself go back more than a thousand years, albeit in different forms, and unless England is recognised and given a new sense of its own security, then all the hopes for a liberal, open, democratic and tolerant future are in danger. England cannot be ignored, tied down, balkanised or dissolved. Yet England has been pushed into a corner where it is expected to passively await its future. That, in itself, is dangerous’

Andrew Marr (2000), The Day Britain Died.

David Blunkett, in a similar vein to the Campaign for an English Parliament, argues that it is the lack of political and constitutional recognition for England that constitutes the English Question.

In the island of Britain today there are three governments representing three constitutional and political bodies. There is the Scottish Parliament, there is the Welsh Assembly, there is the United Kingdom Parliament. They represent Scotland, Wales and the United Kingdom Constitutionally and politically just those three exist. Constitutionally and politically England does not exist. That situation, and its implications, constitutes the English Question.

David Blunkett (2005), A New England: An English Identity within Britain: IPPR

In his book The English Question Prof Robert Hazell identifies the dual nature of the English Question: whether England needs a stronger political voice, to balance the louder political voice now accorded to Scotland and Wales; and whether England too would benefit from devolution, by devolving power within England.

However, Hazell doubts whether the English have any interest in answering the English Question, and suggests that the English may decide to leave the question of England hanging:

...the English Question does not have to be answered. It is not an exam question that the English are required to answer. It can remain unresolved for as long as the English want. Ultimately only the English can decide whether they want to seek an answer to the English Question.

Robert Hazell (2006), The English Question, Manchester University Press

The Institute for Public Policy Research take the view that the English Question is central to the British Question and the most salient of UK constitutional questions.

The English Question has moved from the margins of British political life to centre-stage. For too long the government’s approach has been to cross their fingers and hope the question will go away, but it will not: it is the one area of constitutional reform that is genuinely provoking widespread public debate.

But the English Question is not one overarching questions, rather it is a collection of problems. It refers to how England is governed in a post-devolution UK, the ability of Scottish MPs to vote on English matters but not vice versa and the way that devolution is financed, as well as broader social and cultural question about the identity of the English.

IPPR (2008), Answering the English Question: a new policy agenda for England

The BBC: Blunkett urges mass volunteering.

Everyone between the ages of 16 and 25 should do at least six months of "intensive" voluntary work, former home secretary David Blunkett has said....The ideas are presented in a report for Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

I started reading Blunkett's report for the Fabian Society, got as far as this bit, and cringed.

Furthermore, active citizenship – including stimulating the involvement of young people – is already part of government policy, whether in the National Curriculum or in the development of youth opportunity agencies funded by government to stimulate such engagement.

Which young people; what government, and; whose national curriculum?

Is it, perchance, the English youth, the UK Government, and the English National Curriculum?

Blunkett's report is menacingly entitled Mutual Action, Common Purpose: Empowering the Third Sector.

If this doesn't scare you - and it should - then you must read The Nationalisation of Childhood (pdf).

Back in 2006 Gordon Brown's big idea was to rope English students into "voluntary work" to encourage "strong modern patriotism" and "an agreed British national purpose". As an incentive he suggested that tuition fess could be waived, in effect a Britishness bribe. The rather glaring problem with the policy was that such a measure would not apply to Brown's own constituents in Scotland, it would only apply to English students, the only group directly affected by the UK Government's legislation on education. The idea was that English students should volunteer for community work to help build "an agreed British national purpose" when their Scottish counterparts did not have to pay the same tuition fees, because it was Scottish MPs voting in the UK Parliament that imposed those fees on English students.

The Russell Commission, set up by the former Home Secretary David Blunkett and Gordon Brown in May 2004 to develop proposals for a new national framework to promote youth volunteering in the UK (the "National Community Service" programme), spawned a new charity that has changed the face of volunteering "for 16 to 25 year olds in England". How very fucking predictable.

In my previous post I included a quote from the dishonourable John Prescott (philanderer, trustafarian, thug, champagne socialist and, unfortunately, MP). It went like this:

"Devolution has strengthened Britain because it has allowed the different parts of the UK to give expression to their diversity whilst celebrating the values that bind us together as a nation."

But has devolution really strengthened the Union? The Government go to great pains to tell us that it has.

Foreword by the Rt. Hon. Tony Blair:

The question is: is the UK stronger as a result of devolution or not? I think it is stronger, because people in Scotland say: 'Oh we have our parliament now, that is a fair settlement.' You will get the Tories and parts of the rightwing press trying to stoke up English nationalism, but my point to the English is we are 85% of the UK, we are the majority, we vote through the spending for Scotland and Wales. It is a fair settlement to have a Scottish parliament and my answer to English nationalism is the same as my answer to Scottish nationalism: it is foolish, and wrong and backward looking, and we can modernise the UK for today's world. But the fact that they take different positions on different issues is not a problem. --- Guardian; Friday September 24, 1999

"Our proposals have been designed to preserve the Union, the sovereignty of Parliament and the separation of powers." - Lord Irvine of Lairg The Lord Chancellor, Opening Address to the Conference on Constitutional Reform in the UK, 17 January 1998

"I feel that devolution has strengthened the UK." - Alistair Campbell, Sunday Herald, 22 February 2004

"Devolution has strengthened the UK, preserving the union on the basis of a fairer partnership." - 2001 Labour Party Manifesto

"Devolution has strengthened Britain because it has allowed the different parts of the UK to give expression to their diversity whilst celebrating the values that bind us together as a nation." - Tony Blair, Foreword to Your Region,Your Choice, May 2002

"Empowering our regions does not mean the break-up of England, just as devolution has not meant the break-up of the UK. It makes our nation stronger and more dynamic." - John Prescott, Foreword to Your Region,Your Choice, May 2002

"Devolution has strengthened the United Kingdom, not weakened it, as opponents once claimed." - Peter Hain, Better Governance for Wales, June 2005

"It is increasingly clear that devolution has strengthened the United Kingdom." - Tony Blair, Hansard, 29 November 2000

"Devolution has created a system which better responds to and reflects the needs of the people and I believe that strengthens the United Kingdom." - Rhodri Morgan, address to the Oxford Union, 13 March 2003

"Devolution has strengthened that democracy, giving Scotland a fresh voice within the United Kingdom." - Jack McConnell, Speech at the Union of the Crowns Dinner, 01 July 2003

"devolution has strengthened their [the Welsh, Scots and Irish] sense of identity so we can now assert Englishness without in any way damaging Britain." - David Blunkett, The Telegraph, 15 March 2005

"Then devolution to Scotland and Wales was a threat to the United Kingdom. Today devolution has weakened the separatists and strengthened the United Kingdom. Then childcare was at the bottom of the political priority list." - Alan Milburn, Speech to the Fabian Society, 17 Jan 2005

It's tempting to think that such a fine upstanding body of men could only ever be correct but sometimes, just sometimes, politicians don't always tell the full story.

So, has devolution strengthened the United Kingdom? Let me know what you think:

Has devolution strengthened the UK?
	Yes
	No
	The jury is still out
Free polls from Pollhost.com

Over the years I've grown sadly accustomed to the English flag being described as a racist symbol, divisive, uninclusive, you name it. The past few weeks have been little different, with various morons popping their heads up over the parapets of their ivory towers to decry the use of our age-old national flag.

DFH reports:

In recent days we’ve heard that the flying of England flags could result in charges of assault, that they frighten horses, contravene advertising regulations, upset Muslims, disturb the delicate multicultural paradise of Salford and cause global warming. It’s only a matter of time before someone links the flag to AIDS, cancer and avian flu.

The miserable bleating of these ignorant, and often bigoted morons (would they try to censure the flying of another nation's flag?), has become even more absurd due to the sheer abundance of England flags that abound; England is a riot of red and white, with flags flown in every corner. To say that the naysayers are swimming against an English tide of self-awareness and patriotism would be an understatement. To quote the a letter to the Independent:

Sir: Mr Pattison (Letter, 25 May) reports many members of ethnic minorities flying the flag of St George. This despite repeated government efforts to promote Britishness. It suggests to me that the Union flag, curtseying to the Queen, and having faith in the Home Office, are dysfunctional and unfit for purpose. On the streets, Britishness unites no one.

It's true. The Government et, al. are slamming the door to the Britishness stable after the horse has bolted. The only tactic left at the disposal of the stableboys now seems to be in claiming that people that wave the English flag are idiots, as in the case of the inverse barometer of public opinion, The Guardian:

Rejoice! Thanks to the national obsession with football, the cross of St George has finally been reclaimed from the racists. Nowadays, when you see an England flag on a car, sprawled across a T-shirt, or flapping from a novelty hat, you no longer assume the owner is a dot-brained xenophobe. Instead you assume he’s just an idiot. And you’re right. He is.

One snob seized upon this daft article to claim that the English flag was the mark of the über chav.

I consider myself neither a chav nor an idiot. Yes I will fly the flag in support of my football team, but, more importantly, I will fly it as a political statement; a message to Brown and the other purveyors of anti-English rhetoric that England is still here. And here's proof that I do...

Regardless of whether the objections stem from snobbishness, anti-Englishness, Unionism, left-wing self-loathing or some daft notion that the flag is 'racist' (how can an inanimate object be racist?) the tired old bigotry is at last beginning to wear a bit thin.We can see the tide changing before our very eyes. Take a gander at the true barometer of public opinion, read eagerly by chavs and Tony Blair's press secretaries alike, The Sun:

Suddenly, the Government, who for years have been conducting ideological warefare against the very idea of Englishness, come over all English. First up was the Tessa Jowell (Secretary of State, Department for Culture, Media & Sport) who, like some über chav, decided to fly the English flag from her ministerial car.

Incredible! But that's just for starters, we're not even warmed up yet. Step up to the plate Richard Caborn MP (Sports minister) and ex-Home Secretary David Blunkett:

Sports minister Richard Caborn and former Cabinet minister David Blunkett have blasted critics who say people should not fly the England flag for fear of upsetting ethnic minorities. They say the flag is not a symbol of racism but a sign of national pride. The pair spoke amid criticism the flag could upset some members of the community, and after some companies banned their employees from flying the flag. Mr Caborn, MP for Sheffield Central, said: "I don't think it's nationalistic nonsense. I think it's fantastic and I think getting behind the team, or indeed the cricket team, well it's great we have got that patriotism. "There is great pride in our nation and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. I am absolutely sure it has an effect on the team." Mr Blunkett, MP for Sheffield Brightside, added: "Don't listen to the clever dicks who thing the English flag is common. Ignore the politically correct clowns who reckon the red cross of St George is a racist symbol that will upset ethnic minorities."....He said if people didn't like people being patriotic about football they could go and "watch the shopping channel or catch the first bus to Scotland [thinnly veiled attack on Gordon Brown] while the rest of us wallow in the glory of success".

What the deuce! What could have precipitated such a sea-change in attitudes? Could the Sun really have so much influence as to have caused hastily scribbled Blair memos to be shuttled down the corridors of power to cabinet ministers? Er.....yes....

Surrender! At last! For you, Blair, the culture war is over. Downing Street yesterday ran up the white flag - the one with the red cross on it. For the period of the World Cup, said a cowed Labour spokesman, the emblem of St George would fly from No 10. Across England yesterday there were still Leftist forces that were keeping up resistance, oblivious to the Hirohito-like capitulation of the high command. In the country's Labour-controlled urban jungles, the culture warriors fought on with the pointlessness of Japanese privates lost in Burma in 1945.

It's not quite game set and match - not until the Scots are banned from voting on English legislation and the English flag flies from an English parliament - but this capitulation by the Government, a capitualtion that has its roots at No.10, is little more than a tacit acknowledgement that I and my colleagues in the CEP have been correct all along. Is this the beginning of a the civic nationalism for England that I have been calling for? Maybe I am counting my chickens too early, maybe not.

The burning question now is how Brown will react. Can the Scottish prime minister-in-waiting swallow his arrogant pride long enough to hoist the English flag outside the Treasury? It's the very question that Boris Johnson asks in today's Telegraph:

It is fashionable to say that the West Lothian question is just a "beltway" issue. But wherever I go I find people who instinctively understand the absurdity that Tony Blair is set to transfer power to Gordon Brown - with all the democratic accountability of the transition from Claudius to Nero - and that Gordon Brown, a Scottish MP, will be able to impose very controversial measures on English constituencies, when English MPs have no corresponding say over those questions in Scotland, and when (the crowning absurdity) he, Gordon, will have no say over those questions in so far as they affect his own constituents.

That is why poor Gordon gnaws his nails, and looks with ever more despair at the growing Labour claque for the English postman Alan Johnson, a claque that I now officially join, not least since he is probably a distant cousin and we Johnsons must stick together.

That is why Gordon now announces, pathetically, that he will be supporting the English team, and that is why I have no doubt that before the World Cup is out poor Gordon will have been bullied by the actions of his neighbour into submission.

Tony has pledged to fly the flag. Will Gordon have the nerve to do the same? Will Gordon have the nerve to resist? Yes, my friends, such will be the hysteria over the next few days that I predict that we will eventually see the hilarious and pitiful spectacle of the England flag being raised over No 11 as well. Gordon will put his ambition before his national feeling, to the derision of his fellow Scotsmen.

The Labour classes will finally bow to the masses and in the matter of the flag the masses are right. The prevalence and success of this cross shows how wrong and how misguided the multiculturalists have been, in the past 30 years, to try to suppress national symbols, and how powerful a flag can be in uniting a country rather than dividing it. Oh yes: I almost forgot. Everyone, whatever their race, creed, colour, is also flying the flag because they want England to beat Paraguay on Saturday.

The Government has lost the war on England and has started to march to the same tune as the über chav and idiot (or proletariat as Brown might call them), and it's very hard to see how a prime minister from a Scottish seat can pick up the drum and maintain the rhythm. We stand at something of a watershed for the Union: Either it is reformed to become as it is intended to be - a Union of nations - or it will fail. We've been saying it for a long time now but I have an inkling that others may slowly be coming around to the same conclusion.