Fascism

Tom Griffin (London, OK): Arthur Aughey recently described English nationalism as 'a mood not a movement.' The English Democrats represent one attempt to change that, but it is an attempt which English nationalist blogger Gareth Young suggests is deeply problematic.

Over at Little Man in a Toque, Gareth documents the party's attempts to build alliances with far-right fringe groups such as Third Way and England First.

"There’s a huge centre-ground of people who vote Labour, Conservative or Liberal Democrat, and it’s those people that the English Democrats need to attract," Gareth writes.

This won’t be achieved from a position in the gutter. The EDP have never taken my advice on anything (which is why I reluctantly write this article), and perhaps they won’t now, but for what it’s worth here’s my advice: Stop meeting with racists, instead you should fight them; differentiate yourselves from ethnic nationalists in the minds of the public, help show that English nationalism is not soft white nationalism; move yourself out from the fringes, focus on the mainstream; stop poaching from other parties, recruit from your own ranks, and; for all our sakes start preaching the progressive nationalist values that I think you believe in, make those your main focus and people will find common ground with you.

It's good advice, but one can't help feeling that a party that needs such basic lessons in democratic politics is unlikely to be the vehicle that remedies England's democratic deficit.

Yes! Well done Shane

Winner:

This is England

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0jkv2bRFgQ]

THIS IS A LONG POST: WERE WE RIGHT TO PUBLISH IN THIS WAY?

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): The future of Britain as it enters a period of constitutional upheaval is the subject of a number of overlapping conversations in OurKingdom. Inevitably, Scotland is a magnetic reference point. Twenty years ago the convention that led to its new parliament was explicitly based on principles that subverted the English form of sovereignty. As a result one can see the whole of the UK as being caught up in the slow collision of the opposing forces embodied by Holyrood and Westminster parliaments. When al Jazeera TV ran a report on this, my colleague Jon Bright linked to it and queried how Scotland could be genuinely nationalist or independent. Some of us responded by pointing to the difference between its "civic nationalism" which is open and embraces sharing sovereignty within the EU and an exclusive "ethnic nationalism".