Intimate 'boutique' festivals are mushrooming across the English countryside. Their biggest selling point: a sense of belonging. Is this a rejection of individualistic hedonism? Or the return of the pastoral, manufactured by the urban elite? One thing is certain - they are a sign of things to come.

The desperate construction of cultural Britishness observable in this summer's Jubilee and Olympics is just another attempt to conflate British identity with an idealised vision of England. The motivation for those in power is clear: to disguise the gaping constitutional issues that threaten the UK's political authority. 

The festivities around the London Olympics and Diamond Jubilee will paint a picture of a stable, timeless (simultaneously modern) Great Britain. But the Anglo-Britishness it appeals to is far from the present-day reality of contested identity and authority, in which England is preparing to speak.

Today, London will choose their future mayor, and cities around England will vote on whether they want to switch to the mayoral system. Does democracy benefit from the emphasis on individual character and personal power? 

In Britain, there is a country that is not officially celebrated: England. But it has a national day: St George's Day. This was yesterday, 23 April (also Shakespear's birthday by happy coincidence) and an active supporter of England gaining its own government sums up the mood.

English nationalism has long been trapped between American-led globalisation and small-minded nostalgia. Can England rediscover its identity in its rich local, regional and radical movements?