52 Britain The EconomistFebruary 1st 2020
B
rexit is aRorschach blot into which everybody reads their
own preoccupations; one of the few interpretations universal-
ly accepted is that it was a triumph of English nationalism. The
English voted in favour of Brexit by a big margin while the Scots
and Northern Irish voted against. The Welsh, who also voted in fa-
vour, did not play a large part in the campaign, which was run by
self-consciously English politicians: Jacob Rees-Mogg with his
double-breasted suits and Edwardian vowels; Nigel Farage with
his pint and fag; Sir John Redwood and his excruciating attempt, as
Welsh secretary, to mouth the words of the Welsh national an-
them. The whole thing was saturated in English iconography, from
the flag of St George to the white cliffs of Dover.
If foreigners are confused by the distinction between English-
ness and Britishness, that is hardly surprising, because the confu-
sion is deliberate. For centuries, as the senior partner in “our is-
land story” in terms of both size and power, the English used
“England” as a synonym for “Britain”. J.R. Seeley, a great Victorian
historian, entitled his history of the British Empire, “The Expan-
sion of England”. George Orwell’s essay on the national mood dur-
ing the Blitz is “England, your England”. The Scottish and Welsh
put up with being marginalised because they did well out of em-
pire, industry and the Labour Party. It was when they stopped put-
ting up with it that English nationalism, too, grew teeth.
Although thanks to a combination of geography and religion
English nationalism has been around since Henry VIIIdeclared
that “this realm of England is an empire” that didn’t have to bow to
a foreign pope, in its modern form it has been forged by three great
blows to the national psyche. The first was the loss of empire,
which lent it its dominant tones: an elegiac sense of loss of past
greatness and fury at power that has been wrongly snatched away.
The second is the rise of Scottish and Welsh nationalism, which
won the smaller nations parliaments. This not only made it im-
possible to keep using “England” to mean “Britain” but also gave
birth to the English question. Why should the Scots and Welsh
have a parliament and not the English? Why should England con-
tinue to subsidise such ungrateful satraps?
But it was Europe’s determination to transform itself from a
trading bloc into a political union that most infuriated the Englishnationalists. Eurosceptics such as Sir Bill Cash were convinced
that Europe was bent on castrating Parliament and subordinating
English common law. Andrew Roberts, a Tory historian, published
a novel about the heroic struggle of the English Resistance League
against a European Reichthat had renamed Waterloo Maastricht
Station and forbade women from shaving their armpits.
Euroscepticism and English nationalism proved self-reinforc-
ing. Mr Farage succeeded in distilling English nationalism into an
insurgent party, with the misleading name of ukip(he seldom
went north of the border) and the revealing slogan “we want our
country back”. The three and a half years of parliamentary stale-
mate after the referendum result further stoked the fires of English
nationalism. The Daily Mailsummoned all the fury of Middle Eng-
land against “traitors”. Mark Francois, the Captain Mainwaring of
the European Research Group of mps, railed against Germans on
television. Mr Rees-Mogg talked of “vassalage”.
In its new form, it is a dangerous concoction. It has destabilised
geopolitics by robbing the euof one of its biggest members. It has
divided the British Isles and exposed constitutional problems that
wise statesmen have done their best to conceal. Britain has always
been a peculiar multinational kingdom because one of its compo-
nent parts, England, accounts for 84% of its population and more
than 85% of its income. Brexit has thrown this contradiction into
sharp relief and revealed growing weariness with the union. In
2018 a poll showed that three-quarters of Tory voters would accept
Scottish independence and the collapse of the Northern Ireland
peace process as a price for Brexit.
For Scottish nationalists, the fact that Scotland voted to remain
constitutes irresistible grounds for holding another referendum.
If the government agrees to one, they might well win, particularly
given that Britain’s reckless decision to leave the euhas neutral-
ised the Unionists’ strongest argument, economic prudence; if it
doesn’t, the belief that they were dragged unwillingly out of the eu
will continue to fester. In Ireland the Unionists feel betrayed by
Boris Johnson’s decision to, in effect, put the border in the Irish
Sea. That weakens Ulster’s links with the mainland at a time when
the demographic tide is turning against the Protestants.
The Tories need to repair the damage that their flirtation with
English nationalism has caused. This means folding English na-
tionalism into the wider carapace of British nationalism and forg-
ing a broader patriotism that can appeal to all sides of the Brexit ar-
gument. The party brings some distinctive resources to this battle.
The Conservatives’ commitment to the Union is enshrined in its
official name, the Conservative and Unionist Party. Mr Johnson is
loved by provincial Tories but was a successful mayor of London.
He demonstrated that there was no contradiction between hang-
ing on a zip wire waving tiny Union flags and reaching out to eth-
nic and sexual minorities. The government is already mulling over
a host of projects designed to bring a fractured United Kingdom
back together: embracing a global and forward-looking version of
Brexit; making the border in the Irish Sea as invisible as possible;
devolving power to the English regions. But none of this will work
if the Conservative Party does not return the more bellicose advo-
cates of English nationalism—Rees-Mogg, Francois, Cash and
their ilk—to the obscurity from which they came.
Noisy English nationalists are enjoying their moment of tri-
umph this weekend with “Independence Day” shenanigans on the
white cliffs of Dover. Mr Johnson must make this their last hurrah
and engage in his greatest piece of political alchemy to date: turn-
ing English nationalism back into British patriotism. 7Bagehot The English problem
The Tories need to put the genie of English nationalism back in the bottle