David (Cambridge, Britology Watch): I’d like to draw a new 10 Downing Street e-petition to the attention of OurKingdom readers. This reads as follows:
“We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to state whether he recognises that England is a nation”.
Readers will doubtless have their own ideas concerning the value and purpose of such petitions, especially as those demanding impossible concessions (such as immediate independence for England) abound! However, this one is meant to strike at the real heart of the issue: before we can even address the question of whether England can or should have its own parliament or even independence, we need to establish what, and indeed whether, England actually is.
The background to this petition is the conclusion I’ve come to – which is shared by many – that England presently has no official or constitutional status as a nation whatsoever: effectively, England does not exist in any meaningful legal, political or constitutional sense. So, for instance, when people complain – as I frequently do – that Gordon Brown, Westminster politicians in general and the national media refer to England as the UK / Britain, and to English matters as British matters (and that they never say England when they mean England), this ‘correctly’ reflects the legal position: there is no such thing as England other than as the name for a territory; only the UK / Britain and UK / British governance exist. Further contextual background to my thinking on this can be found >here and here.
In my view, it’s time the government were forced to come clean on this issue and state, one way or another, whether it views England as a nation or not (as I think is the case).
If, however, the answer to the petition is ‘yes, England is a nation’, this would enable the case for popular English sovereignty (the basis on which we in England might actually be consulted about our constitutional future, as well as the basis for any future English parliament) to be pressed much more powerfully: ‘as England is a nation’, we could say, ‘it is the sovereign right of her people, under human-rights legislation to which the UK government has signed up, to demand to be able to govern themselves in the manner of their own choosing’.
If, however, the answer is ‘no, England is not a nation’, then this could become a significant focus for popular protest. Again, an official statement; but this time an explicit government acknowledgement that England is no more as a nation – as opposed to the term ‘country’, preferred by the government, which carries no political or constitutional weight and is just a territorial jurisdiction.
The further details given for the petition tie in acknowledgement of England’s nation status to that of Scotland and Wales; i.e. if England is a nation, then Scotland and Wales are to be recognised as nations, too; but if England is not a nation, neither should Scotland nor Wales be accepted as such. This means that any rejection of the petition effectively also denies nationhood to Scotland and Wales; hence, the protests against it could be greatly magnified – media in those countries could be alerted. However, if the response to the petition provides any latitude to the present impression that Scotland and Wales are being allowed to reaffirm their nationhood (through devolved government etc.) while England is merely (what is left of) Britain, that, too, could help to amplify the protests in England.
I suspect the response – if the petition gets up to the requisite total of 500 signatures – will be equivocal and ambiguous. But anything less than an explicit answer to this question should be treated as a rejection of the proposition that England is a nation. Let’s watch the government try to wriggle out of this one!
However, as I’ve just said, we do need those 500 signatures. So let’s try to force the government to be honest and up-front about these vital questions of nationality. Does England exist or not? Is her people sovereign or not? Are Scotland and Wales nations, too – to say nothing of Northern Ireland? Let’s take this chance to get them to reply to this particular English question.
