Meg Rusell and Jack Sheldon
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780197266465
- eISBN:
- 9780191879609
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197266465.003.0005
- Subject:
- Political Science, UK Politics
Ever since devolution to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, one proposed answer to the English Question has been to create symmetry by establishing an English Parliament. This has been widely seen ...
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Ever since devolution to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, one proposed answer to the English Question has been to create symmetry by establishing an English Parliament. This has been widely seen as a fringe proposal—with many arguing that England is too big and is already well represented by what has long been its Parliament, that is, Westminster. But in recent years, interest in an English Parliament has grown. The idea has its own campaign group and has gained support from UK Independence Party (UKIP) and some in the Conservative and Labour Parties. This chapter explores the history of the English Parliament idea, examines two competing visions of a English Parliament—the ‘separately elected’ and ‘dual mandate’ models—and considers a range of largely unexplored questions about what an English Parliament would look like and what implications it would have for Westminster and for the territorial stability of the UK.Less
Ever since devolution to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, one proposed answer to the English Question has been to create symmetry by establishing an English Parliament. This has been widely seen as a fringe proposal—with many arguing that England is too big and is already well represented by what has long been its Parliament, that is, Westminster. But in recent years, interest in an English Parliament has grown. The idea has its own campaign group and has gained support from UK Independence Party (UKIP) and some in the Conservative and Labour Parties. This chapter explores the history of the English Parliament idea, examines two competing visions of a English Parliament—the ‘separately elected’ and ‘dual mandate’ models—and considers a range of largely unexplored questions about what an English Parliament would look like and what implications it would have for Westminster and for the territorial stability of the UK.
Michael Kenny
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- April 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199608614
- eISBN:
- 9780191775208
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199608614.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, UK Politics
This volume supplies a comprehensive overview of evidence and arguments relating to the revival of Englishness, and explores its political ramifications and dimensions. It examines the difficulties ...
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This volume supplies a comprehensive overview of evidence and arguments relating to the revival of Englishness, and explores its political ramifications and dimensions. It examines the difficulties which the major political parties have encountered in dealing with ‘the English question’ against the backdrop of the diminishing hold of established ideas of British government and Britishness in the final years of the last century. And it explores a range of factors-including insecurities generated by economic change, Euroscepticism, and a growing sense of cultural anxiety-which created the conditions for a renewal of English nationhood. The book provides a powerful challenge to the two established orthodoxies in this area. These either maintain that the English are dispositionally unable to assert their own nationhood outside the framework of the British state, or point to the supposed resurgence of a resentful and reactive sense of English nationalism. This volume instead demonstrates that a renewed, resonant, and internally divided sense of English nationhood is apparent, and reaches across the lines of class, while also refracting some of the divides associated with them. It characterizes several distinct and competing visions of the English nation in this period, contrasting the appearance of populist and resentful forms of English nationalism with an embedded and deeply rooted sense of conservative Englishness and attempts to reconstruct a more liberal and civic idea of a multicultural England. The book gives particular emphasis to the cultural aspects of the renewal of Englishness and the limited and tentative manner in which politicians and policy-makers have, as yet, engaged with this trend.Less
This volume supplies a comprehensive overview of evidence and arguments relating to the revival of Englishness, and explores its political ramifications and dimensions. It examines the difficulties which the major political parties have encountered in dealing with ‘the English question’ against the backdrop of the diminishing hold of established ideas of British government and Britishness in the final years of the last century. And it explores a range of factors-including insecurities generated by economic change, Euroscepticism, and a growing sense of cultural anxiety-which created the conditions for a renewal of English nationhood. The book provides a powerful challenge to the two established orthodoxies in this area. These either maintain that the English are dispositionally unable to assert their own nationhood outside the framework of the British state, or point to the supposed resurgence of a resentful and reactive sense of English nationalism. This volume instead demonstrates that a renewed, resonant, and internally divided sense of English nationhood is apparent, and reaches across the lines of class, while also refracting some of the divides associated with them. It characterizes several distinct and competing visions of the English nation in this period, contrasting the appearance of populist and resentful forms of English nationalism with an embedded and deeply rooted sense of conservative Englishness and attempts to reconstruct a more liberal and civic idea of a multicultural England. The book gives particular emphasis to the cultural aspects of the renewal of Englishness and the limited and tentative manner in which politicians and policy-makers have, as yet, engaged with this trend.
Arthur Aughey
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719068720
- eISBN:
- 9781781701300
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719068720.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, UK Politics
This book provides a digest of the debates about England and Englishness, as well as a unique perspective on those debates. Not only does it provide readers with ready access to and interpretation of ...
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This book provides a digest of the debates about England and Englishness, as well as a unique perspective on those debates. Not only does it provide readers with ready access to and interpretation of the significant literature on ‘The English Question’, but it also enables them to make sense of the political, historical and cultural factors which constitute that question, addressing the condition of England in three interrelated parts. The first part looks at traditional narratives of the English polity and reads them as legends of political Englishness, of England as the exemplary exception, exceptional in its constitutional tradition and exemplary in its political stability. The second part considers how the decay of that legend has encouraged anxieties about English political identity, of how English identity can be recognised within the new complexity of British governance. The third part revisits these legends and anxieties, examining them in terms of the actual and metaphorical ‘locations’ of Englishness: regionalism, Europeanism and Britishness.Less
This book provides a digest of the debates about England and Englishness, as well as a unique perspective on those debates. Not only does it provide readers with ready access to and interpretation of the significant literature on ‘The English Question’, but it also enables them to make sense of the political, historical and cultural factors which constitute that question, addressing the condition of England in three interrelated parts. The first part looks at traditional narratives of the English polity and reads them as legends of political Englishness, of England as the exemplary exception, exceptional in its constitutional tradition and exemplary in its political stability. The second part considers how the decay of that legend has encouraged anxieties about English political identity, of how English identity can be recognised within the new complexity of British governance. The third part revisits these legends and anxieties, examining them in terms of the actual and metaphorical ‘locations’ of Englishness: regionalism, Europeanism and Britishness.
