England is facing the very same divisions Scots first saw in 2014

FOR TS Eliot, English culture was about ‘Derby Day, Henley Regatta, Cowes, the twelfth of August, a cup final, the dog races, the pin table, the dart board, Wensleydale cheese…’

There is a classic TV sketch featuring Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie as elderly cricket commentators who forget the match and eulogise about England: ‘Heaps of cream; cream and lawnmowers; summer holidays in creamy Cromer; vaulting over a stile in a country lane…’

For Sir John Major, Britain (sounding suspiciously like England) was, rather more prosaically, ‘the country of long shadows on cricket grounds, warm beer, invincible green suburbs…’

These long and sometimes unconvincing lists were intended to sketch out what British culture is – but were really about trying to define English national identity.

England has produced the best literature and music the world will ever see, from Shakespeare to the Beatles, and some of the greatest political leaders, from Churchill to Thatcher.

But for all of this proud history, it is also a country in the midst of an identity crisis, and there is no greater reflection of this than the EU referendum debate.

In Scotland we have already experienced, or perhaps endured, a tumultuous period of national introspection, during the independence referendum. It was a messy and highly divisive process that created deep scars which have yet to heal.

Central to that debate was a basic question, of even more fundamental significance than the economic practicalities of leaving one of the world’s greatest alliances.

Zealotry

It was whether Britishness, however we choose to define it, retained any meaning for Scots.

The final result – a 55 per cent No vote – did indeed reflect the shoddiness of the Yes movement’s economic argument and its frequently ugly ideological zealotry. But it also showed there was a narrow majority in support of the increasingly complicated entity that is ‘Britain’.

Coming so tantalisingly close to losing the Union reawakened and reaffirmed a sense of ‘Britishness’ for many Scots.

But that process and its conclusion were also a kind of prolonged howl of anguish, from a nation in the shadow of a much larger neighbour, whose citizens were trying to determine whether they were Scottish, British – or both. That referendum, however painful, at least allowed us an opportunity to consider national identity – and now it’s England’s turn.

The EU referendum debate has shared many of the key characteristics of the independence poll.

In 2014, Unionists were accused by many Yessers of ‘talking Scotland down’, a charge now regularly levelled at George Osborne over his apocalyptic threats of economic meltdown post-Brexit.

But aside from arguments about race, migration and free movement of labour, what all of this is really about is a quest for English identity – clumsy, perhaps misdirected and at times deeply toxic, but still an entirely legitimate enterprise.

There is a tendency, particularly among Scotland’s liberal Left, to sneer at and belittle that search for identity and to portray the Brexit movement as driven ostensibly by a ‘little Englander’ xenophobia.

But the notion that Scotland is intrinsically more egalitarian than England is baseless.

If parts of Scotland had experienced anywhere near the level of immigration seen in the South-East of England, there is little doubt the Brexit vote here would be stronger.

Divisive figures such as Nigel Farage are easy to mock – and indeed frequently deserve to be. But they exist because generations of politicians failed to respond to growing public concern about immigration; pretending it wasn’t a problem or portraying those who believed it was as racists.

English nationalism – far from the bucolic idylls presented by Eliot and Fry and Laurie – is easy to parody as being of the skin-headed, thuggish, football hooligan variety. But this is a nasty and simplistic mischaracterisation, as is the notion that the many thousands preparing to vote for Brexit are essentially racists.

Hankering

The EU referendum has seemed distant in Scotland, lacking the passion and relevance of the separatism poll in 2014, partly because it has appeared to be a hankering after a lost sense of ‘Britishness’ – or more exactly of Englishness.

For many Scots, the politics of national identity has become something of a millstone, with the threat of another referendum and further constitutional unrest seemingly ever-present.

But Scotland’s recent political history also presents a cautionary tale for England, now that this Pandora’s Box has been opened.

Referendums by their nature raise more questions than they settle, and the demons that they aim to exorcise continue to lurk in the shadows. The threat of another referendum lingers in Scotland – bolstered by the prospect of a Brexit vote – despite the rejection of the independence argument nearly two years ago.

It seems inevitable that on Thursday the result of the EU poll will be desperately close.

Now commentators and politicians south of the Border are beginning to wake up to the possibility of Quebec-style ‘neverendum’.

A narrow vote either way will not make the question of EU membership simply disappear.

The closeness of that result means England faces exactly the same kind of division that we have seen in Scotland.

And if a strong Remain vote north of the Border kills off the possibility of Brexit, there will be a festering resentment of Scots in the English heartlands of the Leave vote.

Given that a resounding vote in either direction seems almost impossible, the likeliest outcome is a further weakening of the ties that hold the UK together. English nationalism of the kind that has powered this debate must find an outlet – and an English parliament may provide the solution.

Scottish Tory MSP Murdo Fraser believes it would be ‘entirely possible to create a new English parliament with powers similar to those held at Holyrood’. To some extent, the Commons is already an English parliament given the advent of ‘English Votes for English Laws’, itself precipitated by the Scottish referendum result.

Mr Fraser proposes a system of English city states, following the devolution of power to London and Manchester, while the Lords would be replaced with a Senate, ‘providing equal representation for each federated part of the UK’.

Plotting

The fallout from the EU referendum could bolster Welsh nationalism, while Irish Times journalist Fintan O’Toole has warned that in the event of Brexit, ‘Northern Ireland will be in a horrendous bind, cut off from the rest of the island by a European border and with the UK melting around it’.

It is clear that the SNP is already plotting to exploit this turmoil for its own eternal goal of Scottish independence.

A Holyrood vote against the ratification of an EU withdrawal could hold up the process of Brexit for many years.

The SNP may also try to renegotiate Scottish membership of the EU after a Brexit vote.

A system of nation states, each with their own sovereignty in a federal structure, could be the perfect antidote to Scottish nationalism – providing a step short of outright Scottish independence and laying to rest the corrosive threat of ‘neverendum’.

The irony is that while most Scots are certain to vote Remain in many cases to preserve the UK, the Union in its current form is disintegrating – and federalism may represent its only salvation.