Welcome back, England

19 April 2008

The Spectator welcomes England back

As Fraser Nelson writes on page 10, the political class is adjusting its contingency plans accordingly: the SNP, mischievously ruling in Edinburgh, plots a course to an independent Scotland, as the Tories confront the practical realities that may lie ahead of them as a prospective governing party. Gordon Brown’s astonishing political freefall means that — even if Labour recovers partially before the general election — he might well find on the morning after polling day that he was notionally Prime Minister of a country in which the Conservatives had a majority of seats in England. At that point, to put it mildly, the chemical compound of the United Kingdom would become distinctly unstable.

We say this without relish, but in a spirit of realism. The Spectator remains emphatically committed to the Union and the survival of the United Kingdom: the ‘Britishness’ to which Mr Brown alludes so often (and, to be fair, honourably) is a magnificent historical, institutional and cultural inheritance, and one whose dissolution would be tragic. Britain still punches above its weight in the world. But would England? Imagine, too, how much more hungrily that other Union — the European version — would eye a dismantled UK, seeking to gobble up its constituent parts.

That said, the Englishness which our writers explore in this issue is not as defensive or decrepit as might have been feared only a few years ago. On the contrary: England is more robust, more adaptable and more joyful than seemed probable in the depths of the New Labour winter. It embraces the cultural heritage described by Roger Scruton and Sir Donald Sinden, and the younger patriotic enthusiasm of our columnist Alex James, bassist in Blur, one of the most distinctively English pop groups of recent times. Orwell’s words in his 1940 essay ‘The Lion and the Unicorn’ have a fresh resonance today: ‘We must add to our heritage or lose it, we must grow greater or grow less, we must go forward or backward. I believe in England, and I believe that we shall go forward.’

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John

April 18th, 2008 2:35am Report this comment

We've been here all the time.

Welcome back, Spectator.

Mark Solomon

April 27th, 2008 6:42pm Report this comment

There is too much scaremongering and doomsaying about the dismantling of the Union. It is not the all or nothing proposition commonly portrayed, to scare people into backing the status quo. The Union of England and Wales dates from the Middle Ages; Scotland joined in 1707; Ireland in 1803; the southern counties of Ireland left in 1918. So Scotland could quite easily leave the Union if it wanted to, without the UK being dissolved - it would just be a United Kingdom of England,Wales and Northern Ireland instead. If that is what Scotland wants, then us English Conservatives should welcome it-democracy at work, money being saved and political dominance of the remaining UK Labour would have trouble breaking! Scottish Nationalists are Nationalists-ie generally right of centre people and potential allies if the poison surrounding the 'unchanging Union' can be removed from the debate. With no seats up there, what have we got to lose?

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