National Question

For most public, high-profile relationships, when rumours of a rocky patch surface there is plenty of 'advice' around. So it is with that most celebrated political marriage: the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Intense debate has raged about its imminent break-up or whether Britishness can be 're-forged'. The recent publication of the Calman Report has energised such debates in Scotland though with significantly less impact in England which would appear to be more concerned about on-going quandary of whether Andy Murray is British or Scottish. Those who suggest that the UK is in its death throes often draw attention to the decline of ascription to British identity and the institutions by which it is defined. They point to the concurrent growth in identification with the historical nations of the UK or other ethno-religious identities. Musician Billy Bragg recently suggested that England needs to be ‘freed from this unhappy Union’, thus appearing to agree with Scottish National Party leader, Alex Salmond, that Scottish and English independence is the only way to solve the inequalities of the current devolution settlement.

Gordon Brown is seen by those who seek such a divorce as the ‘Bard’ of a Britishness that is a politically-motivated act of ‘terminal Britishry’. However, Brown has avoided reference to the ‘common ground of Britishness’ recently. Plans for future constitutional reform outlined in June focused on re-asserting the propriety of Westminster in the wake of the expenses scandals, this linked to further devolution of power, reform of the House of Lords, and encouraging youth participation in politics ‘to lift our politics to a higher standard’. This signalled a marked difference to previous constitutional statements which allied such reforms to developing ‘a stronger sense of shared national purpose’.

Brown has not been quiet on the issue though, and recently penned the introduction to the edited volume Being British. There are a number of critical voices within the volume, which highlights the refreshingly open ‘hands off’ approach to the project adopted by Brown. Contributions from the editor Mathhew D’Ancona and a host of others from the left and right treat Brown’s version of ‘Britishness-plus’ with justified scepticism and suspicion. He is rightly accused of drawing on a simplistic, uncritical Anglo-British historical narrative in defining a ‘golden thread’ of British values, such as liberty and tolerance, which overlooks many negative aspects of the imperial past. Such values remain abstract and ill-defined for most Britons, and are actually universal to most modern nation-states.

Tom Griffin (London, The Green Ribbon):November 30, 2010 is the day to mark in your diary, according to the Sunday Times. Kenneth Gibson, the MSP for Cunninghame North has apparently let slip details of the SNP's heavily symbolic timetable for Scottish independence.

The plan calls for a referendum bill to be introduced on 25 January, Burns Day, ahead of a vote in November on St Andrews Day.

That will only happen, of course, if the SNP minority government can get a majority for the bill. The outcome of the current Labour and Liberal Democrat leadership debates may tell us a lot about how likely that is.

Gareth Young reviews Beyond the Constitution: Englishness in a post-devolved Britain by Michael Kenny, Richard English and Richard Hayton, ippr.

New ippr report calls for positive engagement with Englishness but ignores the need for political recognition.

(ippr, February 2008, 11pp)

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): At the end of my recent post on the fate of Peter Hain I noted the way events favour the nationalists if not the break-up of Britain. A small story covered by BBC Scotland but not, to my knowledge, any London paper provides another illustration. At the end of December the Library of Congress decided to reclassify Scottish literature as a sub-category of, wait for it, English literature. Huge row. Now a u-turn. One that means the category of "Scottish writer" has been newly recognised by the Library of Congress, whose classifications set a global standard. What might once have been a literary or academic correction has become a political statement.

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): I can guess how David Cameron will handle the issue of a referendum on the European Treaty - as one of trust - although what priority he gives it will say a lot about how he intends to play an early election. But I am very curious to see how he responds on Britishness and the national questions within the UK. Will he be so very British and understated as to not mention Britain at all, as the sort of thing one does not need to do, just as Brown decided not to mention the Tories?

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): The Prime Minister has just announced his new Cabinet Committees. You can see them here (opens as pdf). Before Brown took over, Robert Hazell of the Constitution Unit argued in OK that he would need to “revive the Cabinet Committee on Devolution, and the Joint Ministerial Committee to negotiate with the new governments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland”. It seems he hasn’t. There is a sub-committee on Local Government and the Regions, chaired by Harriet Harman, under Domestic Affairs (read England?) but nothing bringing together Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Moderator: Paul Kingsnorth has just posted a longish comment on Anthony Barnett's post about Edward I. He talks about English voice and votes, here is a taster:

"Some of the voices calling for equality for England are undoubtedly ’shrill’, Anthony. This is probably not suprising, though. Campaigns for justice - which is what this is - often are... The average English citizen had as much say in Edward 1’s military campaigns as they had in Tony Blair’s... The 1998 devolutions were vital and positive. Now we need to complete the cycle with an English parliament. Shrillness aside, I have heard no arguments from genuine democrats which make a good case against it."

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): The One Wales agreement was endorsed today by Plaid Cymru and thus a Labour-Plaid coalition is formed to govern Wales and the nationalists will become a party of government there for the first time. Momentum means a lot in politics and if the voting age is indeed dropped to 16, as Gordon Brown suggests, then a back-of-the envelope actuarial calculation suggests that if this coalition lasts into the next Welsh parliament it may be Labour’s turn to be the junior partner. Neil, now Lord, Kinnock, the Labour leader who opened the doors to modernisation in part to prevent just such an outcome, spoke against the coalition with Plaid at Welsh Labour’s special conference yesterday. According the BBC’s Betsan Powys, in her blog, he observed that Plaid's support was like “a rope that supports a hanged man”. If he did indeed slip into the past tense, that reveals how much life he thinks Rhodri Morgan’s Labour machine has left in it.

Gordon Brown (10 Downing Street, Prime Minister): “In Britain we have a largely unwritten constitution. To change that would represent a fundamental and historic shift in our constitutional arrangements. So it is right to involve the public in a sustained debate on whether there is a case for the United Kingdom developing a full British Bill of rights and Duties, or for moving towards a written constitution.”

Guy Aitchion (London, OK) As Brown struggles to pin down an elusive ‘Britishness’ an interesting ippr document sheds light on the issue of national identity in modern Britain (download it here in pdf). It shows that those seeing themselves as British first has fallen whilst the numbers of those identifying themselves as English, Scottish or Welsh is growing. But one interesting table shows that identification with country, as well as with the continent and the wider world, has declined in the UK, while across the world it has risen (or in the case of identifying with one’s continent remained unchanged). Instead, a majority in the UK now identify most strongly with their ‘locality or town’ rather than the nation (56% compared to 25%). This 'local' form of identity has shot up in the UK compared to the rest of the world (see below). The politics of identity seems to be playing a growing role in shaping constitutional change and there are other interesting snapshots in the ippr report for OK readers to reflect on.

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): In his farewell speech an hour ago Tony Blair said that this country “gets” the "essential" interdependent character of today’s world, he boasted that the British are “comfortable” with globalisation and the country is “at home in its own own skin”. In these short reactions he exposed his originality (no previous Labour leader could have thought or felt like this) and his delusions. Globalisation is essentially discomforting even when it is positive and to be welcomed, as it transforms the meaning of ‘home’. To suggest otherwise is callous. Inter-connectedness is complicated and needs rules, it is not something you “get” or fail to “get”. When I heard Blair say this I thought of his ex-foreign policy advisor Sir Patrick Wall talking to Michael Cockerell in his TV films on Blair. He recounted how they were meeting with other European leaders just before the Iraq war. President Chirac told Blair that he had fought in Algeria and that invading Iraq was a mistake Blair would regret. As they left the meeting Blair rolled his eyes and said that Jacques didn’t “get it”. Three years later they were watching Pontecorvo's The Battle of Algiers in the Pentagon... Far from Chirac not "getting" what modern leaders needed to do, it was Blair who failed to learn from the living past and showed no curiosity about it. A terrible failure for a leader. Much has improved in Britain since 1997. But if the Scottish and Welsh votes show anything, it is that we are not at home in our current skin, not to speak of how few of us feel comfortable with Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness being our leaders in Northern Ireland. Blair's talk of "getting" things turns what should be judgements which can be challenged into instincts and feelings.

Anthony Barnett (London): And what about England? In the run up to the elections on the 300th anniversary of the Union Roger Scruton writes a mischievous openDemocracy article, more a ‘Don’t sleep’ than a 'wake up!’ call to England and Simon Heffer poses a brutal but still uncertain demand for the Tories to come out as England's party (he calls it a "wheeze"). Contrast them with the thoughts of Timothy Garton Ash. He wants to keep Britain united. Yet in Scruton and Heffer there is the breath, even if it is the bad breath, of democracy - a stirring of an appeal to the people and their representation. Garton Ash is sadder and more personal, a meditation on what we have inherited “by accident rather than design”. Where in all this is an energetic, forward looking democratic argument for Britain? Is it possible any more?

Anthony Barnett: Is Wales getting more like England or Scotland as a result of today’s elections in the two smaller nations? Is the rise of the Welsh speaking Tories there a sign that Cameronisation is now crossing a border and has a Union appeal? Or does the growth of Plaid mean that Wales is joining the Scottish process of moving towards more independence?  If it is the second then the same process is indeed at work across the UK.