If Scotland goes, all we'll have left is the Englishness we

so despise
We must start shaping a progressive English nationalism that we can be proud of – as
the Scots did in the 1970s
The conversation round the family supper table started sensibly enough, with questions such as
whether we would need passports to go toScotland if it became independent. Then, steered by an
eight-year-old, it took a more sinister turn: will there be a war? Will it be like Afghanistan or Libya? He
looked almost disappointed when I insisted, absolutely no chance.

Like a lot of English families, there's a deep, romantic attachment to Scotland in our household with plenty of
photographic evidence of how the place has shaped our sense of family. It was the same in my childhood, all our
holidays were in the Highlands. This streak of diluted diaspora romanticism goes even further back to my much
loved grandfather, a Farquharson, born in Southampton. It's absurd, but on my last visit to Edinburgh I bought
Farquharson souvenirs for all the kids; I want them to feel the connection – they are part Scottish, I tell them, as I
was always told.

So the suppertime conversation left me more deeply disturbed than I cared to admit. On the one hand, I
recognise that if Scotland wants greater autonomy, even one day full independence, it is entitled to it; on the
other hand I dread the shorn smallness of England. The more I thought about the vibrant rejuvenated Scottish
Nationalists driving a debate north of the border about what kind of relationship it wants with England, the more I
grimly contemplated the fallout this side of the border. At an emotional level I feel bereft.
Over the last few decades questions of national identity – British, English – looked rather like a board game to
some people; a way to pass the time but basically pointless. Suicide bombing on the tube: go back 10 places;
sunshine and a royal wedding: pass go and collect double bonus. But Scotland's first minister, Alex Salmond, is
doggedly demonstrating that all those endless conversations about Scottish nationalism over at least four
decades have concrete political results. The talking shops of geeky policy wonks, historians and pollsters end up
shaping nations.
But even more unsettling is the realisation that we've been playing entirely the wrong board game. Cool Britannia,
Brown's Britishness: a waste of hot air sponsored by Labour for obvious reasons of self interest. The nationalism
that urgently needs definition is Englishness. Britain will probably be vestigial within a few decades, and 50-odd
million of us are then left with England, hopefully still within some form of UK.

Why does that make us shiver? What is it about Englishness that, in some contexts, makes polite society
nervous? We're happy to talk about the wonders of the English language, the delights of the English landscape
and English rock or pop, but definitions of English nationalism have been abandoned to football hooligans and
the far right. There's a curious and debilitating disconnect between the rich cultural traditions of Englishness and
its political expression.

We are in the midst of a mini-boom in cultural Englishness. To pick one example, the surprise success of
Alexandra Harris's book Romantic Moderns last year, which traces the imagining of England by artists and writers
in the 1930s in the shadow of looming war. The popularity of such distinct writers as Richard Mabey and Paul
Kingsnorth speak also to this quest to connect to land and place, and describe a sense of home.
But this cultural flowering has no political corollary. Our institutions of state and nation are British not English.
British is seen as the inclusive, accommodating civic identity for a multicultural society and, by default –
dangerously so – English has become a racialised political identity of resistance, resentment and grievance.
British Muslim, British Asian are widely used terms; English is still perceived as predominantly white. The 2011
national census in England, unforgivably, defined English as white.

There have been brave attempts to stem this slow capture of English as an identity of far right protest – the
singer Billy Bragg for instance – as well as a rapidly expanding literature offering new historical narratives of
English identity and its possibilities as liberal, cosmopolitan and multicultural. English history is littered with
material that can be fashioned as a backstory for a confident, small, multicultural nation, argues Professor Mike
Kenny, who is writing a book on English nationhood. We've forgotten what Daniel Defoe was well aware of in the
18th century, namely that English – both the language and the people – have absorbed new influxes and
influences for centuries: "Thus from a mixture of all kinds began, That het'rogeneous thing, an Englishman."
Part of the dangerous disconnect is because few major politicians want to go anywhere near the knotty problems
of an English political identity and the unappealing option of an English parliament. For Labour, it's a subject to
bury because it spells the party's demise; for the Tories, Englishness is to be ignored as an unruly nationalism of
grievance characterised by the former Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie's attitude to Scotland as a "sick, skint nation,
the sooner we take them off the payroll the better". Nor is this nervousness of the political elite likely to ease
soon, given Salmond's appetite for fiscal autonomy.
Several times in the last week, the Barnett formula (which allocates public expenditure across the UK) has been
crudely and inaccurately summed up as a £7bn "subsidy" to Scotland, taking no account of North Sea oil
revenues. The more Salmond asks for, the more it will intensify the tendency to grievance now sinking deep into
English nationalism. The process of separating Scotland and England is being driven solely by Scottish
nationalists – England is passive, without the institutions or politics to give it a voice. Scroll through comments on
blogs, and what emerges is an unattractive narrative of the English being ignored, taken for granted – or for a
ride.

Questions of national identity have suddenly acquired a pressing new urgency south of the border. It's no longer
just a board game. If we don't start shaping an English nationalism – just as the Scots started doing in the 1970s
– that is outward-facing, optimistic and progressive, we'll end up with a traumatic politics of decline. Because the
unavoidable backdrop to all this is a loss of status, the final curtain on the long strung-out post-imperial legacy of
Britain strutting the world stage. Trends far bigger than the nationalism of islands off north-west Europe are
inexorably driving that process; another issue which Westminster politicians are lamentably failing to prepare
their voters to face with confidence.

Combine these global trends with our island family relations and the powerful emotional responses they prompt,
and it has the potential to get toxic. What has to be articulated in its place is what the Scottish writer Pat Kane
describes as a conviviality between equal nations that have shared so much history. The consolation for "losing"
Scotland would be a reinvigorated English politics as a "community of purpose and will" in the phrase of that
prophet of Scottish nationalism, Tom Nairn.

This is a massive political challenge, but the first step is to start talking about it. We have plenty to learn from our
Scottish neighbours, not least novelist Alasdair Gray's use of the quotation now engraved on the wall of the
Scottish parliament: "Work as if you live in the early days of a better nation."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/may/15/nationalism-scotland-redefine-englishness-britain-england