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.
