It Could Be Said #8 How Do You Solve A Problem Like England?
A look at why English nationalism is a dead end
Jonn Elledge has a fun free post on his substack about just what an enormous chunk of the United Kingdom is taken up by England. Crazily, the figure he cites (85%) will almost certainly be revised upwards when we get the new census data. And whilst I agree the sheer mass of England creates an imbalance in the Union, it’s not necessarily for the reason he thinks.
The way to think of the Union is that it’s a way to solve the problem of how much larger England was to its near neighbours. Or to be more precise neighbour. Because England had actually conquered Wales outright, hence no yellow and black in the Union Jack, nor a Welsh dragon on the Royal Coat of Arms. Meanwhile the Anglican Ascendancy that ruled Ireland knew they were reliant on reinforcements from England if Irish Catholics or Ulster Presbyterians revolted, which made the negotiations for the 1801 Act of Union somewhat one-sided.
The idea of a partnership between equals really is something that strictly applied between Scotland and England. The Scottish had long punched above their weight having played a pivotal role in defeating Charles I, who was himself Scottish. Whereas Wales and Ireland had been colonised, Scotland dreamed of being a colonizer, looking to establish imperial possessions of its own. Of course those dreams turned out to be much like the nation’s current dreams of ever getting to the second round of a football tournament. But as a bankrupt Scotland laid prostrate before England, they managed to cut a hell of a deal. England assumed all of Scotland’s debts, let it keep a non-Anglican established Church, a separate legal and education systems, and welcomed Scottish noblemen into the House of Lords. Ireland got a noticeably worse deal when their time came 92 years later.
The genius of the deal that the Scots had stumbled on was that it was the best of both worlds. They had carved out enough exemptions from full-blown annexation by the English for their sense of nationhood to remain whilst also getting a say in how England drove the family car. Because the reality of the British Isles is that England’s size and proximity to continental Europe meant that it really did get to decide how pleasant a place it was to live for everyone. And whilst logistical advances and the rise of the European Union have reduced that power, it hasn’t eliminated it.
As the Union has evolved it’s a great positive that the three smaller nations of the UK get the trappings of nationhood. After all, it makes them feel more at ease about sharing the country with its hegemon, a sense that for all the challenges of living with the English, they have enough freedom to protect their seperate culture. The failure to be as generous to Ireland before partition, was one of many injustices that doomed the 1801 Act of Union.
But here’s the thing, what does England get out of this deal? A deal you have to remember that costs it as much as £40billion a year. Back in 1707 and 1801 the logic for Union was sound. In the short-term you strengthen defences against a French invasion, and in the medium-term you’re no longer bordered by fragile states whose elites often looked to England to settle disputes or solve problems. But that doesn’t really apply now. Rather than drag parts of Britain into helping them invade England, France keeps dragging all of us into helping them invade North African countries. And I don’t think Nicola Sturgeon’s worst enemies would suggest she couldn’t govern Scotland well enough to prevent England sending troops in to stabilise Scotland.
And the answer is the same as the long-term benefit that Britain stumbled upon after the Acts of Union, which is that the removal of internal borders helped it look further afield rather than be worried about what lay on the other side of a border closer to home. The process of separation would reverse that with England busy trying to impose itself on its nearest neighbours and obsessed with avoidable slights and disputes. Likewise whilst the other countries of the UK only make up 15% of the country’s population, that ten million is what keeps the country comfortably ahead of second-tier European powers such as Spain or Italy. An independent England would therefore be a more insular and less significant country.
Of course “spend money to get along with neighbours and be globally important” didn’t do Remain a lot of good in 2016, and it’s not a sound basis for maintaining Europe’s OG multi-national union. It’s overlooked that the simpliest explanation for Brexit, is that a majority of British people did not feel European to see the required pooling of resources and sovernigty as anything other than foreign interference1. Likewise the future of the United Kingdom rests on people in the four nations feeling like they are sufficiently British, that they don’t mind sharing money and governance with each other.
This is where the status of England comes in. The sheer size of England means that a clearly defined sense of English national identity cannot coexist with the Union. Elledge was right that there are few comparable examples to England’s position. The closest in my mind would be Russia in the USSR, and Prussia in Imperial Germany2. It’s notable that whereas the experiment with having separate Presidents of the Soviet Union and Russia, acclerated the dissolution of the Soviet Union because the latter quickly tiring at pretending he wasn’t preeminent, Imperial Germany sucessfully managed greater tensions by typically having the same man combine the roles of Imperial Chancellor and Prime Minister of Prussia. Not for nothing have more than two decades of devolution left Britain in the same place, with Boris Johnson acting on behalf of the entire country or just England, as circumstances dictate.
This does not mean English people cannot be proud of their country, it just means they shouldn’t ever be entirely clear which country their proud of. There does sometimes feel to be many in modern commentary that genuinely believes England people only became patriotic in 1996. But that’s clearly nonsense. It’s just that before the Euro 96-led revial of the St. George’s Flag, this patriotism was incorporated into a broader British framework, a framework that made it easier for Scottish, Welsh and Irish people to play a full role in English life. The rise of Scottish Nationalism and English Tory politicking has damaged that spirit but it still remains in sporting authorities using the British national anthem before English sporting events, watching Scotland’s must-win game rather than England’s match because deep down they wanted to see their neighbours progress, celebrating a Northern Irish sitcom as the funniest homegrown comedy in years, or relying on a Welsh singer to produce the best modern versions of English patriotic songs.
They’ll be those who complain that this is English cultural appropriation, the type that saw Irishman Terry Wogan proclaimed the epitome of Englishness. But would anyone really want to live in or near an England that jealously policed its civic life? It’s not just that there’s all sorts of ways such behaviour could become seriously unpleasant, but it’s just so unnecessary. England is Britain, and Britain is England not by might but by law of averages3. The asymmetrical displays of nationhood may not make much sense, but they allow England to draw upon and the celebrate the best of its nearest neighbours, whilst retaining the space for those neighbours to have their own identity. Urging England to mimic these displays of nationalism will only drown out the smaller nations of the UK and ultimately dissolve the Union from which all have benefited.
After all, as Vera Lynn once sang about, they’ll always be an England; which will be free, have a flag whose colours are red, white and blue, and a people that are British.
Here Scotland feeling both British and European is the exception, with Wales voting for Leave whilst Northern Ireland voting for Remain was due to its Irish Nationalist community overwhelming voting to stay in the EU, whereas the Unionist community voted for Brexit.
Russia made up about half of the USSR’s population at the time of dissolution. Prussia made up about 60% of Imperial Germany’s population.
Imagine a belief that was held by 60% of English people. That would be enough for a majority of Britons to hold the belief even if no one in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland shared it.