Mark Perryman's blog

Introduction by Mark Perryman , editor of Breaking up Britain : Four Nations after a Union

Breaking up Britain is a book-length conversation between individuals, parties and social movements who with or without borders nevertheless rarely talk to one another. Each contributor presents their own national context for the collection's four themes; post-devolution national identity, models of civic nationalism, formations of exclusion and states of independence. Yet each account, whether based on an English, Welsh, Scottish or Irish perspective seeks to be universal too. In essence this is what a politics of the progressive nation would look like. A civic nationalist politics now exists in Scotland and Wales prepared to push the devolution settlement to it limits, its breaking point. In Northern Ireland Irish Republicanism is now the majority party representing the nationalist community. In England a growing body of opinion and ideas demands that England must find a part to play in this process too. Ten years ago Scots and Welsh voters went to the polls to elect a Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly. Northern Irish votes have elected their Assembly too. Breaking Up Britain seeks to chart the past, present and future of this course . A direction towards states of independence in which we will surely witness a reformation of four nations after a Union that has run out of time.

Our Kingdom today features edited extracts from contributions to Breaking up Britain from Arthur Aughey, Mark Perryman and Charlotte Williams. Together with critical responses by Gerry Hassan and Paul Kingsnorth:

Breaking Up Britain is published by Lawrence & Wishart, available from lw books 

A FREE download of Mark Perryman's opening chapter ‘A Jigsaw State' in Breaking Up Britain is available here

Can Englishness be re-claimed from the populist right? In this extract from Breaking up Britain Mark Perryman suggests what the key features of a post-Union progressive English identity would be.

In disentangling our Englishness from a Britishness which has denied the Scots and Welsh their independence we have the opportunity to achieve a progressive national settlement for ourselves. George Monbiot describes both the process and the outcome. ‘ Three nations in the United Kingdom, as a result of one of this government's rare progressive policies, now possess a representative assembly. The fourth, and largest, England, does not. England, the great colonising nation, has become a colony.' A populist right defines the colonisation of England  in terms of a Scottish raj, they detest an ungrateful nation on our northern border and want nothing to do with the continent except cheap holidays and bottles of plonk while proposing to erect barriers to keep out asylum-seekers and migrant workers.

The political theorist Chantal Mouffe describes the context in which a response devoid of a progressively popular alternative is provided.  ‘ So far the answer has been completely inadequate because it has mainly consisted in moral condemnation. Of course, such a reaction fits perfectly with the dominant post-political perspective and it had to be expected. Given that politics had supposedly become "non-adversarial"  the frontier between us and them constitutive of politics can only be drawn in the moral register.' Chantal describes the likely consequences of such a failing, ‘ If a serious attempt is not made to address the democratic deficit that characterises the "post-political" age that neo-liberal hegemony has brought about, and to challenge the growing inequalities it has created, the diverse forms of resentment are bound to persist.