Last Word: We Need to Talk About England
| Author | Ailsa Henderson,Richard Wyn Jones |
| Published date | 01 June 2021 |
| Date | 01 June 2021 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/20419058211022940 |
40 POLITICAL INSIGHT • JUNE 2021
Last Word
There was rather a lot of public
money spent between 1999 and
2003 looking for evidence of an
English backlash to devolution. But
apparently to no avail. At the time at least, it
appeared that the English were not about to
succumb to the sort of ‘what about us’ reaction
that so many had predicted in response to the
establishment of devolved legislatures and
governments in Scotland, Wales and Northern
Ireland. The overwhelming impression was that
the English were pretty much indierent to the
whole thing.
Yet for scholars of territorial politics, that
sense that there was nothing to see never sat
particularly well. By the time we (along with
Charlie Jeery and Dan Wincott) established
the Future of England Survey in 2011, it was
clear that however true that claim of 'nothing
to see' might once have been, something was
indeed changing in England. English national
identity was on the rise, accompanied by a far
faster fall in the sense of British identity.
In a series of reports, we outlined the
dimensions of this new Englishness: a sense
of frustration with the domestic constitutional
status quo (best summed up as ‘devo-anxiety’,
directed in particular at Scotland, and the
perception that it had more resources and
inuence than it should) and Euroscepticism.
Attitudes to England’s (then) two unions were
linked and attached to national identity. Those
who were more devo-anxious and Eurosceptic
were also more likely to prioritise their English
national identity over a British one.
Since then we have conducted the Future of
England Survey each year, gathering the largest
corpus of data on attitudes to English identity,
governance and constitutional preferences
(and, since 2018, through the State of the
Union Survey, tracking attitudes across the UK
to the union).
Understanding the various dimensions
of Englishness is the focus of our new book.
English identity is unlike Scottish and Welsh
identity in that it is not dened in opposition to
Britishness, but subsumes within it a veneration
of British institutions, symbols and values.
Asked what makes them proudest to be
English and proudest to be British, the English
largely say the same things. Simultaneously,
Englishness includes strong preferences about
England’s place in the UK (that would seem
easily understood as hallmarks of
English
nationalism) and the UK’s place in the world
(that would seem best understood as features
of
British
nationalism).
British identity has fractured within Great
Britain, to the point where those who prioritise
their British identity hold not just dierent
but opposite constitutional preferences.
It was always the case that British identity
was interpreted through a local lens (as was
Scottishness, and Welshness) but the situation
we now have is one in which British identiers
in England tended to vote Remain, while the
same identiers in Scotland and Wales tended
to voted Leave. The corollary of this is that
those who have a sub-state territorial identity
hold very dierent views across the state.
The English want some sort of solution
to the ‘English question’ but, for unionists at
least, their preferences in that regard make
for unpalatable reading. The constitutional
option least disruptive to the state (and most
often championed by unionists in Scotland
and Wales) – the carving up of England
into Scotland-sized regions in some sort of
symmetrical federal arrangement – enjoys only
limited support. Rather, England-wide solutions
are preferred. Given the overwhelming size of
England compared to the other constituent
units of the state, this makes it hard to envisage
a constitutional arrangement for the state that
isn’t hopelessly unbalanced.
This combines with a distinct ambivalence
We Need to Talk
About England
Ailsa Henderson and Richard Wyn Jones report on the
political forces transforming Britain.
among the English towards the UK’s
constitutional status quo, including the state’s
territorial integrity. So for example, sizeable
proportions on both sides of the Brexit divide
in England are willing to put up with radical
constitutional change, in order to secure
their own preferred outcome in terms of the
relationship between the state and the European
Union; change up to and including the secession
of other non-English parts from that state.
What does all this mean for how we
understand British politics? As scholars of
nationalism and territorial politics, it will come
as no surprise that we think the political
communities that exist below the level of the
state matter! But our claim is stronger than
an appeal that more people should examine
politics at dierent territorial scales.
The study of British politics often ignores
Northern Ireland and treats Britain as something
that exists in a largely undierentiated way,
with Britishness meaning the same thing
(and predicting the same behaviours) in
Coventry just as it does in Cardi or Crie, or
makes conclusions about ‘British’ attitudes and
behaviour drawn from the analysis of England-
dominated samples that make it dicult to
detect what are Britain-wide, rather than merely
England-wide ndings. It is simultaneously
England-centric and ignores England as a
political community; English distinctiveness
masked by a hazy understanding of the
boundaries that matter to people.
One cannot make sense of contemporary
British politics without understanding that
nationalism, and the dierent values and
attitudes that associate with national identities,
not only help drive politics and political
behaviour on the Celtic periphery of the state –
something that has long since been accepted by
most scholars – they are now centrally important
features of the politics of the English core as well.
Taking England and Englishness seriously is
therefore no longer some kind of optional extra.
For those political scientists who would seek to
understand the UK’s current, quite extraordinary
political and geo-political transformation,
engaging with the values and attitudes that
attach to Englishness has become both essential
and fundamental.
Ailsa Henderson and Richard Wyn Jones’s
new book, Englishness: The Political Force
Transforming Britain, was published in
2021 by Oxford University Press.
Political Insight June 2021 BU.indd 40Political Insight June 2021 BU.indd 40 12/05/2021 15:3412/05/2021 15:34
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