Image: Theresa May addressing the 2018 Conservative Party Conference. Credit: Victoria Jones/PA Images, all rights reserved.
When UK party leaders regale their conferences with promises on health, schools, social care and housing their actual writ runs no further than the English border. Outside England most domestic policy will be determined by other politicians, usually from different parties, and elected – with no English input - to their own parliaments. That has been the effect and the intention of 20 years of devolution.
While the leaders do address major UK-wide issues, of course- not least Brexit and the ‘end of austerity’ - for the larger part these are conferences in and about England. Yet, quite bizarrely, England, as England, plays almost no part in the language or vision of the party leaders. This year Theresa May, Jeremy Corbyn and Vince Cable managed to name England just once between them. Even the leaders of the SNP and Plaid Cymru named England four times between them (though not necessarily in the most complimentary context).
