English nationalism is silly – Dave at the Pod Delusion
The Pod Delusion is a new podcast that I really like; in their own words:
The Pod Delusion is a podcast about interesting things. From scepticism to lefty liberal things, it’s commentary from a secular, rationalist, ‘Guardianista’, sort of perspective. A bit like From Our Own Correspondent but with more jokes.
I’ve contributed a piece on English nationalism and the English Parliament.. It’s the last one on the programme. You can listen below and I do encourage you to go across and listen to the back issues.
xD.
Update 0345 – I’d really appreciate any feedback!
November 21st, 2009 at 11:32 pm
I listened with growing delight to your little aural essay against English nationalism. Those are *exactly* my views, but I have hardly dared breathe a hint of English regional assemblies these many years, so unfashionable has the idea become. The Lib Dems used to believe in the idea, but seem to have given it up. Until this moment, the only person I ever heard making the point that what we need above all is decentralisation, and that an English government at Westminster would not be one jot less centralised than a British government at Westminster, was me!
PZT (Director, Campaign for the North, 1976-1980)
peezedtee´s last blog: My blog has been discovered
November 22nd, 2009 at 1:06 am
PZT,
Thankyou very much for you comment. I am equally happy to meet someone who shares my opinions – I think – on the matter.
I stand by the point that the difference, from the point of state effectiveness, between 51 million and 60 million is minimal.
xD.
Dave Cole´s last blog: An instructive example of excellent blogging
November 22nd, 2009 at 9:10 am
So it’s ok to be an Irish nationalist, a Scotish nationalist and a Welsh nationalist.
Lets face it you are just anti English.
November 22nd, 2009 at 1:35 pm
Doc Snoddy,
No, I am not anti-English. I said that nations are not necessarily a good determinant of where sub-state boundaries should go. Given that Scotland has a population of about a tenth of England, and Wales less than that, it should be obvious that they are going to have to be treated in different ways.
I think it’s great for people to learn about and celebrate their history. I just don’t think that nations are necessarily a good basis on which to organise a polity, and that applies across the board. I object to the idea that ‘the state of Ruritania is the natural homeland of and state for the Ruritanians’ and prefer the idea that ‘the state of Ruritania is a historical and social construct with a lot of Ruritanians in it’, mutatis mutandis.
I dislike the imposition of nationalisms on people. I have said that I don’t want devolution to an English parliament because I think it is administratively suboptimal and philosophically daft. Even though I am English, my opinions (and I apologise if I’m tarring you unfairly, but this was I usually get) make me somehow un-English.
You came out and said I was anti-English, apparently because I wasn’t anti certain other nationalisms. Given that I specifically mentioned a few other nationalisms, that doesn’t hold up; given that I didn’t mention the nationalisms you mention, that doesn’t hold up again. It appears to me that you are looking for excuses to call people anti-English.
Dave Cole´s last blog: Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-11-22
November 22nd, 2009 at 2:00 pm
English nationalists flying the British flag? The EDL are no more English nationalists than the BNP.
The vast majority of people in England don’t want our country broken up into artificial regions fighting each other for scraps under the Chancellor’s table while the Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish with their proper national governments get on with working for their respective national interests. If an English government decides that the best way to govern England is to further devolve power to regional or county level then that’s fine but that is something for an English government consisting of politicians elected in England to represent only English interests (like MSPs, AMs and MLAs do for their own countries) to decide, not British politicians. Why should the MP for Kirkcaldy & Cowdenbeath have a say in whether my country is broken up into artificial regions?
Independent surveys consistently show that English people want a national parliament of their own, just like the Scots have had for the last decade. The referendum in the North East of England on an elected regional assembly attracted a 78% no vote and is representative of the opinion of England (the North East of England was chosen for the first referendum because regionalisation had most support there of any of the made-up regions of England) so why should their decision be ignored?
wonkotsane´s last blog: A very inconvenient truth
November 22nd, 2009 at 6:12 pm
Wonko,
I’m going to go through your post point by point – hope that’s OK.
As I said in the podcast, there are two broad tendencies within nationalism that we could look at – civic and ethnic. I know that’s a crude split, but it’s the best with which I’m familiar. I find the niceties of difference between the English nationalism of the EDL and the British nationalism of the BNP uninteresting. I don’t doubt that they are there, but I don’t think they make a huge amount of difference. There is, though, a very great difference between the BNP and the people around the CEP. While I don’t agree with the CEP’s aims, I don’t think they are beyond the pale – which the BNP’s aims clearly are.
I think a fundamental difference between us is that I don’t see national interest, as opposed to polity-interest (or somesuch), as important. I’ll come back to that below. You say you don’t want England ‘broken up’. There is no political entity called ‘England’ at the moment. Having English regions would no more break England up than the Local Government Act of 1972.
I reject the scraps argument out of hand as the precise funding arrangements would be dependent on the constitutional arrangement. What you describe is possible, but not necessary. In any case, I don’t see the difference between four entities and twelve entities working together.
Absolutely not. It is for the English people, not the English government. Something as radical as setting up proper English regions would have to be approved by referendum.
That’s an interesting restatement of the West Lothian Question, and I still think that there is a constitutional problem that needs to be settled. However, I would want the decision to be made by the people rather than the government.
I’d love to see exactly which question was asked, but I am allowed to disagree with the majority and to try to convince them that they’re wrong.
Holding one referendum doesn’t mean you can’t have another referendum on a different proposal. I reiterate the point made in the podcast: the NE England proposals were weak, and I would probably have voted against them. I would want powers similar to the Scottish parliament.
Dave Cole´s last blog: Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-11-22
November 23rd, 2009 at 12:08 am
Wonkotsane is quite wrong about the views of the people. The opinion survey carried out for the Royal Commission (Kilbrandon 1973) found greater support for devolved decision-making in the north of England than in Wales.
John Prescott’s half-baked referendum in the north-east could have been designed to fail. The idea was not explained or sold properly. It was not made clear that the idea is to devolve decision-making downwards from Whitehall. It is not to create an extra layer of bureaucracy: that layer exists already, and it needs democratising.
England is not a nation in any really meaningful sense, certainly not in the sense understood of Scotland or, to a significantly lesser extent, Wales. There are certain cultural phenomena that are often associated with “England”, but they do not mostly coincide with the geographical entity currently known as “England”, which doesn’t mean much more than “that part of the UK which is not Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland”. In other words, it defines itself very largely in negative terms.
Above all, the point is that a “national parliament for England” would remove a few Scots and Welsh but would not otherwise address the real problem, which is that at present government is hopelessly distant and over-centralised.
We are getting ourselves into an absurd constitutional mess on the quite artificial basis that the UK consists of four equivalent “nations”. It’s all bollocks.
peezedtee´s last blog: My blog has been discovered
November 23rd, 2009 at 7:15 am
I think there is an English nation – broadly, I agree with Anthony D Smith on what a nation is – but that doesn’t mean that devolving power to England makes administrative sense.
Otherwise, PZT, I agree with you entirely.
November 23rd, 2009 at 8:49 am
I still say you are anti English.
Are you John Prescott or Gordon Brown in disguise.
November 23rd, 2009 at 9:35 am
Doc Snoddy,
Why do you think I am anti-English? What are the features of my anti-Englishness?
xD.