The widening gulf between the Senedd and Westminster

A SENSE of national grievance has created a new form of political “Englishness” that is transforming Britain, according to one of Wales’ foremost academics.

Professor Richard Wyn Jones, pictured above, the director of Cardiff University’s Wales Governance Centre, has co-authored a book on the issue with Professor Ailsa Henderson, of Edinburgh University.

Englishness draws extensively on research carried out by the Future of England Survey, established by political academics a decade ago to explore social attitudes to the constitution across England, Wales and Scotland.

The book charts the rise of Englishness as a political force, exploring the complex relationship between Englishness and Britishness.

Through detailed analysis of the survey results, the authors demonstrate that English nationalism – unlike Scottish and Welsh nationalism – is not a rejection of British and Britishness.

Rather, it includes both concern for England’s place within the UK as well as fierce commitments to a particular vision of Britain’s past, present and future.

It combines a sense that England has been “forgotten” and unfairly submerged with the belief that Britain, self-evidently, is or should be “the greatest nation on earth”.

Survey results demonstrate that in England, there can be marked differences in outlook between those who predominantly identify as English and those who predominantly identify as British.

At the 2015 General Election, the Conservative Party successfully mobilised the grievances felt by many English identifiers, who believe that Scotland and to a lesser extent Wales receive too much money from the UK Government.

They used a poster which showed the then Labour leader Ed Miliband in the pocket of former Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond – driving fears that if a Labour government was elected, it would be dependent on support from the Scottish National Party, which would wrest further concessions from the Treasury.

This proved to be a major factor in the unexpected election result, which saw the Liberal Democrats decimated and the Tories win an overall majority. That in turn led to the in / out referendum on EU membership, which culminated in Brexit.

English identifiers also tend to be strongly Europhobic, believing that the EU had a pernicious influence over their lives.

Among the English not British identifiers, the EU was seen as having more influence than the UK Government over English domestic affairs by a ratio of two to one.

On average, English respondents to the 2016 Future of England Survey were three times more likely to perceive the EU as having most influence than respondents in the next-highest-scoring regions, Brittany and Upper Austria.

This proportion was substantially higher again among those who identify as predominantly or exclusively English.

The authors conclude that despite measures like restricting MPs representing seats outside England from voting on “English-only” laws, the sense of grievance felt by English identifiers remains unassuaged, and that no satisfactory mechanism has yet been found to channel feelings of English nationalism in a constitutional manner.

Englishness: The Political Force Transforming Britain by Ailsa Henderson and Richard Wyn Jones is published by Oxford University Press at £30.

A POLICE Federation survey recently found that officers in Wales have been assaulted more often during the coronavirus pandemic than their English colleagues.

The Federation found Welsh officers were more likely to have been insulted, threatened, hit or kicked, with more than a third having been insulted at least once a week, a quarter threatened and 17% attacked.

While a police officer’s lot may not be a happy one, this has to be totally unacceptable.

Policing is devolved in Scotland (effectively since 1945), Northern Ireland, England, London, Manchester and the City of London.

The Crown dependencies: the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man and even the overseas territories (some of which are a focus for tax avoidance/tax evasion) have democratic control over their own police services – but Wales does not.

In 2017 Plaid Cymru called a vote on devolving policing during the passing of the Wales Bill.

We should remember that given an opportunity to devolve policing to Wales, the Conservatives voted it down and the Labour in Wales MPs abstained.

This provides another example of the way the Conservative Party and Labour Party happily co-operate at Westminster to disadvantage Wales. So much for standing up for our national interests.

Jonathan T Clark Plaid Cymru – The Party of Wales Newport West Senedd candidate