With a shrug of the shoulders, England is becoming a nation once again

The presenter on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme was doing a quick round-up of the weather on a freezing December morning, just before signing off at 9 a.m. Very cold all over Britain, he said. Later there would be ‘snow in the north of the country’. ‘Which country?’ I thought.

It was an immediate and unconsidered reaction; and of course on reflection context often does make clear. But not in this case. I still don’t know which country Today meant. If the country they were referring to was Great Britain then they must have meant snow in Scotland. If it was England they were talking about then we in the north Midlands were due for snow too.

A small confusion, and slight enough. But faintly it troubled me. As an Englishman, and as 2010 drew to a close, I was experiencing for the first time the thought that, when directed towards a predominantly English audience, the ordinary and natural meaning of ‘the country’ might now be England.

Another year has passed, and Scotland has quietly slipped just a little further from our English thoughts. The drift is continuous and very gentle, as with someone to whom you’ve once been close, someone who at one time was always in your thoughts; and later there’s been no big bust-up or walkout, but two lives have almost imperceptibly diverged until one day you wake and up and think ‘How’s old so-and-so?’ and realise it’s been a year since you spoke. These partings are almost more melancholy than those of the schismatic sort.

There was a time, and not so long ago, when as the Times’s political sketchwriter I would quite often have been asked to cover a by-election in Scotland, or Scottish constituencies at a general election.