In the newly published IPPR pamphlet The Dog That Finally Barked: England as an Emerging Political Community, Richard Wyn Jones and Guy Lodge demonstrate, to anyone’s satisfaction, that there is such a thing as English identity and that it has a political component.

Perhaps their most surprising finding was that in comparative context, England has a stronger sense of identity in terms of the standard 'Moreno scale’ than Bavaria, Galicia, Vienna or even Wales. Only Scotland and Catalonia (of areas surveyed) were stronger sub-state units of identity. The research found that only about a quarter of English respondents were happy with the constitutional status quo, although there was no consensus about an alternative and the question demonstrated some of the qualities of an issue that is ill-formed in the public mind, for example a strong effect from the wording of the poll question.

This is a wake-up call to the people of England. If we do not rouse ourselves we are going to find that when we or our loved ones, friends and family, neighbours or colleagues fall ill it will be too late to ensure that medical help is available. The universal service that has lifted fear and insured our health for three generations since the Second World War will be in the hands of international corporate 'providers' who profit from scarcity and privileged access to Ministers and administrators.

Anyone who even slightly believes the government rhetoric about health care “reform” — that “We are committed to an NHS that is free at the point of use”, that it’s about giving “patients the power to choose the treatments that are best for them”, and “strengthening the power of doctors and nurses as patients’ expert guides” — might take just a few minutes to read a deeply shocking and rigorous exposé in the current edition of The Lancet.

Labour could not be more wrong to accept the general approach of 'cuts and realism'. But what alternative approach could be adopted this side of a revolutionary replacement of capitalism altogether? This article sets out the case for a transformational budget and suggests some of the elements it would include. We hope to develop the debate on what the UK’s economic government could be.

Regulatory reform of Britain's media is coming: the question is how, and when. This year's annual Oxford event brought the big players together to wrangle over the future of the press.

There was a lot of side-stepping at the annual Oxford event this year. Culture minister Ed Vaizey expressed his admiration for Ofcom, the UK media regulator so loudly criticized by the Tories (when in opposition) for over-stepping its remit.

In turn, Ofcom boss Ed Richards, whilst advocating a coherent structure for future media regulation, to cover content accessed by viewers from the entire range of sources, declared he had no personal or corporate appetite for becoming a super-regulator, least of all with responsibility for the press.

We are at the crisis point in global transformation analogous to Karl Polanyi’s account of the impact of the rise of the market economy in England in The Great Transformation.

What does X factor, the SNP and this summer's riots have in common? It's that they force the English to look at themselves and to point to a new English identity that is not in any part British. Whatever the causes for the lawlessness that swept Birmingham, London, Manchester and a clutch of other cities in the summer, these events did not happen in Wales, Northern Ireland or Scotland, and like a cast of singers on X Factor its participants were nether wholly black or white.

Watching the X Factor reveals an England that is white, black and brown, an England that is very different from it's Celtic cousins. Whether it is Misha B, JLS or half the members of Little Mix, the ethnic minorities it depicts always speak with English accents, they are Brummies, Cockneys and Scousers. Yes there are a few non-white famous Brits like Hardeep Singh Koli and Shirley Bassey but they are the exceptions to the rule, Britons with black or brown skins are nearly always English.

A second teenager has died in the space of a week after being found unconscious in a cell of a young offender institution.  His death comes just a day after that of 17-year-old Jake Hardy, who died in hospital on Tuesday after being found at Hindley Young Offenders Institute in Wigan.
 

Around the globe, new forms of governance are being sought to counter-balance the hyper-empire of global capitalism. Scotland is developing its own resistance, could England follow suit?

"C'est en Europe que commencera l'hyperdémocratie": Une breve histoire de l'avenir (2006), Jacques Attali.

In his Scotsman column last week, Allan Massie argued that “16-and-17-year-olds will be given the opportunity to have their say on Scotland’s future” in the coming referendum. And so they should, since “it may make more difference to them than it will to those of us who have passed the biblical allotted span of 70”. I agree. 

And also, I suspect there’s more to this move than tactics and the likelihood of teenagers being more radical. The deeper ground is shifting as well – under 17- and 70-year-olders alike. In his 'Short History of the Future', the political philosopher Jacques Attali suggests that 'more than a hundred new nations could be born in this century', in reaction to what he sees as the 'shock wave' of capitalist-led globalisation. I see Scotland is in the middle of his list, in between Catalonia and Kurdistan.

Anthony Painter outlines the case for why we need a new debate on Englishness. Originally published by Soundings (Issue 49, Winter 2011). Reproduced with kind permission.

National communities tend to be imagined or re-imagined at times of convulsive change and crisis. Yet though such change - social, economic, technological and constitutional - is currently undermining the political status quo, the English political conversation continues to be avoided. My argument here is that this avoidance is becoming increasingly unsustainable - and that a serious conversation on the issue is now overdue.

There are three potential sources that could force the English hand in this regard: an increasingly assertive and antagonistic English nationalism; a resurgent and forceful Scottish nationalism; and the changing contours of the international economy and financial crisis, which are likely to lead to constitutional change, especially - for our purposes here - within the EU and eurozone. And there are two dominant forms of evasion.

25 January 2012, Burns Night, will be remembered as a historic, watershed day for Scotland and the UK.

Alex Salmond announced to the Scottish Parliament his government’s proposed question for the autumn 2014 referendum on Scottish independence, ‘Do you agree that Scotland should be an independent country?’ This was he said ‘short, straightforward and clear’ (1).

Andrew Lansley’s Health and Social Care Bill will fundamentally undermine the founding principles of the NHS by turning the NHS into a regulated competitive external market system, leading to increasing NHS commercialisation and privatisation. The public provision of healthcare will increasingly be replaced by private sector providers. This process will be driven by Clinical Commissioning Groups, which will buy in private sector commissioning support to help manage the new healthcare market.

Doctors Clive Peedell (right) and David Wilson delivering "Postcard from Bevan" to David Cameron's Witney constituency office. Photo: Chris Honeywell - chris@working-images.co.uk 

This process will be catalysed by the £20 billion of efficiency savings required of the NHS by 2014-15. This will lead to increasing waiting lists, service failures and rationing of care, driving a new market for private healthcare insurance, top ups and co-payments.

Alex Salmond’s Hugo Young lecture, delivered yesterday evening in King's Place, the Guardian's headquarters, was an enjoyable affair. It was also, thanks to Tory policy and IPPR’s research, a potentially important moment - a turning point, even, in what can legitimately be called ‘this island’s story’.

The Howard League has just published a new essay by renowned criminologist Professor Robert Reiner questioning the role of the police as we know it. This is the first in a new series of challenging pamphlets entitled ‘What If…?’ in partnership with the Mannheim Centre at the London School of Economics. Professor Reiner argues for a rediscovery of the social role of policing, beyond crime control, and a frank recognition that the police are primarily there as a first line response to people in distress.

Last year saw a welcome shift in the way British ministers and government officials talked about the treatment of women who seek asylum in the UK. A pledge to do more to make the asylum system sensitive to the needs of women and girls was included, albeit in a slightly hesitant tone, in the Home Office Action Plan to tackle the causes and consequences of all gender-based violence. This was followed in May 2011 by a pledge from the Immigration Minister to “improve the gender sensitivity of our asylum system”, and a keynote speech from the Deputy Prime Minister committing the Coalition to pay special attention to the way women are treated when they seek international protection.

The Welfare Reform Bill (WRB) comes back to the House of Lords for the final leg of its Report Stage this week, with the government bloodied but unbowed in its determination to radically reshape health, welfare and social provision.

Conservatives want to end what they claim is a ‘culture of entitlement’ by shrinking state investment and involvement, introducing ever-larger private and voluntary elements into public provision, and shifting from a web of universal care (the welfare state as was) towards a much smaller ‘safety net’ for the most vulnerable only.  

The arrest of Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, son of the now deceased Colonel, prompts the question: where should his trial take place?

“Feminism is not dead.  This is not a postfeminist era.  Feminism is still vibrant, despite declarations that it is over.  Feminism is a success, although many gender inequalities remain.  Feminism is taking powerful new forms, which makes it unrecognisable to some.”

So begins Sylvia Walby’s The Future of Feminism, a powerful yet quietly detailed assessment of feminism’s achievements and new challenges.  As UNESCO Chair in Gender Research at Lancaster University, Walby brings rigorous methodological tools to outline her central thesis that feminism is thriving and is crucial to twenty-first century life; for readers more used to the tone of recent popular feminist writers like Jessica Valenti and Ariel Levy, the lack of obvious polemic in Walby’s writing takes some adjusting to, with Walby writing in the same crisp prose as in her earlier comprehensive report on the costs of domestic violence.    But although her writing style is academically understated, the case she makes is compelling: feminism is now stitched into all levels of political and public life, and our task is to continue this stitching, through gender mainstreaming and through a self-aware approach to intersectionality.

Last week in Parliament the new ‘Green House’ thinktank launched with a report I’ve authored on how to restructure our democratic institutions to take account of those who are not here yet: future people (here are some pictures). The 30 page report prepared with the assistance of the new ‘Alliance for future generations’ umbrella-group of NGOs is called Guardians of the Future and you can access the PDF here.

The starting point of my thinking on all this is this question: ‘Democracy’ means ‘government by the people’, but who are ‘the people’?

There is no doubt that the Occupy Movement has had a significant role in bringing inequality into mainstream political debates. At the same time, a concern over the financial crisis has encouraged chief economists to describe “stark social inequalities” as “the greatest threat to economic growth.” These words were not uttered on the

With head scarves and minarets banned in the name of freedom, some argue that faith and human rights are locked in a desperate conflict. But Jonathan Sacks’ work: The Great Partnership: God, Science and the Search for Meaning (Hodder & Stoughton, 370pp, paperback released 21 June 2012) counters this claim, strongly arguing that religion preserves liberty in contemporary states.