Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Crazy_Ivan80]

A former MP and Corbyn supporter, Chris Williamson, has now accused 'many' Labour MPs of being Lyndon Crosby/Tory party 'sleepers' who've been activated to cause a Labour civil war.

I have nothing

Well I don't know if Corbyn and company are actually Trotsky-types but they sure run their party as if they are.

His closest aide has some associations with Stalinist left:
http://standpointmag.co.uk/node/6327/full

So some Trot groups like Workers' Liberty generally support Corbyn but publish a lot of very angry articles about Milne

It's been a giant mistake of the west not to discredit Communism/Stalinism/Maoism as thoroughly as nazism. Means we still get assholes supporting those mass-murdering, mass-impoverishing (sp? ,but you get the idea) ideologies and still being seen as generally okay people.

[Tamas]

Yep.

[Valmy]

Yep.

I am not sure how much we could have done that more than we already did.

But the Brits are a pretty stubborn case. Even some I really admired remained staunch authoritarian and mass murder apologists till the day they died. Looking at you Erich Hobesbawm.

[garbon]

Yep.

I am not sure how much we could have done that more than we already did.

Well at least not the US. I think we, indeed, did our fair share of demonising communism.

[Admiral Yi]

I propose that the groups that are the wellspring of Marxist support--academics, journalists, and writers--did not do particularly badly during the socialistic excesses of the 70's, and have been left behind by the free market/globalization boom since the 80s.

[Sheilbh]

But the Brits are a pretty stubborn case. Even some I really admired remained staunch authoritarian and mass murder apologists till the day they died. Looking at you Erich Hobesbawm.

God what a writer and historian though. Age of Revolutions

Also to my knowledge he didn't deny or minimise the crimes or the human cost. His position was more honest, stark and scary than that it was that if it lead to actual Communism it would have been worth it. I think there's something impressive in that that I find preferable to the people who try to deny or minimise those crimes or pretend they're mostly spin - all of which Milne is guilty of.

We also shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Marxism is still a great and enlightening tool for analysis of history or literature for example.

Edit: For example I think the best analysis of Corbynism, why and how it happened was by a Marxist academic:
https://medium.com/@matatatatat/the-terrifying-hubris-of-corbynism-6590054a9b57#.8u4defia1
Which is that it's about and drawn from a 'social movement' style and theory of politics - see Corbyn and the Stop the War Coalition. Rejecting Corbyn or even worrying about 'electability' is a betrayal of the project because it aspires not to winning elections but to creating a movement and getting boots on the ground to fundamentally shift British politics to the left. But it actually isn't a social movement so it might just fuck the Parliamentary presence of the Left instead.

[The Brain]

Yep.

I am not sure how much we could have done that more than we already did.

Not cozying up to Uncle Joe?

[Valmy]

Not cozying up to Uncle Joe?

Well fair enough. But we certainly did not cozy up to him for long.

[Valmy]

We also shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Marxism is still a great and enlightening tool for analysis of history or literature for example.

It was nice to draw people's attention to studying economics in history sure but that was decades ago. Marxist analysis is of questionable utlity for history as it promotes lazy conclusions and analysis. IMO anyway.

[Sheilbh]

Hobsbawm's hardly lazy. And I don't know I think writing of Marxist analysis is like writing off Durkheim or Weber. It's still a valuable tool and it's opened up new avenues like New Historicism in criticism.

[Gups]

Yep.

I am not sure how much we could have done that more than we already did.

But the Brits are a pretty stubborn case. Even some I really admired remained staunch authoritarian and mass murder apologists till the day they died. Looking at you Erich Hobesbawm.

Did he though? According to quotes attributed to him on Wiki:

"Still, whatever assumptions are made, the number of direct and indirect victims must be measured in eight rather than seven digits. In these circumstances it does not much matter whether we opt for a "conservative" estimate nearer to ten than to twenty million or a larger figure: none can be anything but shameful and beyond palliation, let alone justification. I add, without comment, that the total population of the USSR in 1937 was said to have been 164 millions, or 16.7 millions less than the demographic forecasts of the Second Five-Year Plan (1933–38)."

That said, he did stay in the party even after Hungary 1956

[celedhring]

Pretty sure Hobsbawm repudiated Soviet Communism since the 1960s like. He was one of the intellectual leaders of Eurocommunism.

[Sheilbh]

Angela Eagle has apparently been warned by the police not to host any constituency surgeries for the foreseeable future.

Meanwhile the leader of the largest union, Unite, has suggested that the intelligence services are using 'dark practices' against Corbyn:
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jul/22/intelligence-services-using-dark-practices-against-jeremy-corbyn



Couple of pieces following May's trip to Europe reinforces the point I've been making: yes the UK needs to work out what it wants from Brexit, but so does Europe. It looks like Europeans are starting to think about it rather than just the bromides we've had so far. First Germany, on pre-negotiations and timing:

'Mission Impossible': Tight Brexit timeline unsettles Germans
By Noah Barkin | BERLIN

(Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel and fellow European leaders are pressing the new British government to trigger divorce proceedings with the European Union as soon as possible.

But behind the scenes, senior German officials who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue, say they fear a swift move by London to invoke Article 50 of the EU treaty risks creating an impossibly short window for negotiating Britain's departure.

Further complicating the task, EU leaders have rejected the possibility of any negotiations before Britain moves on Article 50, a step which would start a two-year countdown to Brexit.

Behind their stance is a desire to send a message to Britain that it cannot hold the EU hostage by horse trading on the terms of an EU exit before it commits to leave.

But six top officials in Berlin and Brussels described this position as problematic, with one dismissing it as "absurd".

Some believe Europe's hard line on the sequencing of Brexit talks will need to be revised, perhaps as early as October, when new British Prime Minister Theresa May is due to attend her first meeting of EU leaders in Brussels.

The comments reveal the depth of anxiety in Europe's key capitals about how both sides in the Brexit showdown have positioned themselves in the weeks after the shock June 23 vote to leave the bloc.

"It was not wrong to send a tough message after the Brexit vote but I don't think the current stance is sustainable," said one official. "You need to start some sort of process as soon as possible, whether you call it negotiations or not."

A second senior official said: "It's absurd to think that we won't negotiate on anything before Article 50 is invoked."

May, on her first foreign trip since replacing David Cameron as prime minister last week, visited Berlin on Wednesday for talks with Merkel before traveling to Paris on Thursday to discuss Brexit with French President Francois Hollande.

At a news conference in Berlin, she said Britain needed time to agree on its objectives for the talks and would not trigger Article 50 this year. Merkel said it was understandable that Britain would take a few months to figure out its negotiating strategy, but added: "Nobody wants a prolonged period of limbo."

The French have taken a tougher line, pressing Britain to move fast, and launching an open campaign to woo London-based financial firms to Paris.

FAR TOO SHORT

Behind the concern of the German officials is a creeping realization that the two-year window for negotiating a Brexit, as set out in Article 50, is far too short.

An extension of the period is possible, but it would require the unanimous agreement of the remaining 27 EU member states, and is therefore seen as unlikely, or at best unsure.

Berlin is also skeptical about the possibility of Britain revoking Article 50 once it has been triggered.

This means that something will have to give, German officials say. They spell out two possible scenarios.

Under the first, the EU would revise its position and agree to a prolonged period of negotiations before Article 50 is invoked. That would win both sides extra time before the clock starts ticking, but it would represent a climbdown and probably provoke outrage in some EU capitals, notably Paris.

The second option, in the event May triggers Article 50 early next year, would be for Britain to settle for a very basic framework for its future ties with the EU, based on an existing model similar to that of Norway or Switzerland.

Even then, the deadline of two years is widely viewed as a stretch.

A third senior official said it took the EU three years to seal its divorce from Greenland, a negotiation that was focused almost exclusively on fishing rights.

That official estimated that the EU and Britain, because of the complexity of their relationship, needed at least twice that time -- six years -- to seal their separation, describing two years as "mission impossible".

Adding to the muddle is the heavy election calendar in Europe next year, which officials fear could lead to paralysis.

Germany, France and the Netherlands are all holding elections in 2017, Spain is still struggling to form a government after two inconclusive votes, and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has said he will resign if he loses a referendum on constitutional reform in the autumn.

Leaders in these countries will be focused on their campaigns. If there are changes in power, new governments will need time to settle in.

"Do you really think that Europe will be in a position to focus on Brexit talks next year if its five biggest countries are in the middle of elections or dogged by political uncertainty?" a senior Brussels-based official said.

DOWN TO EARTH

Even if formal negotiations do not start for half a year or more, the official said it was important that Britain and the EU converge on a "corridor of principles" for Brexit talks in the months ahead.

One of the big worries in Berlin and other capitals is that London has unrealistic expectations about what it can secure from the Brexit negotiations, particularly on the tradeoff between access to the EU's single market and respect for the bloc's core principle of free movement.

British diplomats also acknowledge that the team May has put together to steer Brexit talks has a starry-eyed view of what concessions London can win from the EU and say their European counterparts need to deliver this message to them directly.

"A lot of people have 'climbed up trees', people like David Davis and Liam Fox," said one of the German officials, referring to the new Brexit and trade ministers in London. "They need time to climb down."

The problem is not just on the British side. It remains unclear who will take the European lead in negotiations, although officials say the aim is to clear this up by September.

Berlin is reluctant to hand over responsibility to the executive European Commission, its president, Jean-Claude Juncker, and his chief of staff Martin Selmayr, out of fear they could take an overly confrontational stance toward Britain.

An alternative would be to let the European Council, led by Poland's Donald Tusk, take the lead, with input from sherpas in European capitals and with the Commission playing a secondary, supportive role.

Either way, agreeing a common negotiating strategy between the remaining 27 EU countries is becoming a huge challenge, especially because Berlin and Paris have different views about how to treat Britain during the process.

(Editing by Timothy Heritage)

And then the French:

Why France is unlikely to spoil the Brexit party
François Hollande welcomed Theresa May to Paris but he has his eyes firmly fixed on how to win the Brexit negotiations.
By   PIERRE BRIANÇON 7/22/16, 5:30 AM CET Updated 7/22/16, 7:40 PM CET

PARIS — François Hollande was all smiles and compliments Thursday night for his first encounter with U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May, especially as she was gracious enough to demonstrate in her very first sentences her mastery of the French language.

Gone for the moment was the desire to punish Britain in order to halt the march of anti-EU forces elsewhere on the Continent that had characterized the French position prior to the June 23 referendum. Political tumult in the U.K. following the Brexit vote has suppressed France's need to make an example of their neighbors from across the Channel.

Behind the mutual celebration by both leaders of Franco-British relations, and despite the French president's gratitude for British solidarity in the fight against terrorism, it was clear that both leaders anticipate tough negotiations over the terms of the U.K.'s exit in the months ahead.

What Hollande couldn't say out loud is that it is unlikely that France will ultimately play the spoiler. Paris is keen to keep strong bilateral ties with London and besides, French interests are closely aligned with those of Germany and other European major powers.

Instead France is eying ways to win.

French pragmatism

While May has indicated she won't begin the Brexit process before 2017, the French government had repeatedly stressed since the referendum that negotiations over Britain's future relationship with the rest of the EU should begin as soon as possible.

What has gone from the French position in the last weeks is the original intention to "make Britain pay" to serve as an example to others.

That appeared to put Paris at odds with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who seemed more understanding towards the British position when May travelled to Berlin Wednesday.

But the timing doesn't depend on either Hollande or Merkel. As the French leader acknowledged Thursday the date will be of May's choosing since she kicks off the process by triggering Article 50, the EU's divorce clause.

Hollande is practical enough to know he doesn't have much leverage over her choice of when to do it. He even admitted at a joint press conference at the Elysée Palace that Britain's new prime minister would need "time to prepare."

French diplomatic efforts will instead focus on the substance of future negotiations, namely the trade-off to be offered (or forced on) the U.K. for participating in the single market.

On Thursday night, Hollande reiterated the French view, which is also the official EU view: The single market is based on four freedoms – of goods, capital, services and people. "The UK must abide by the four freedoms if it wants to be part of the single market. None of them can be separated from the other," he said.

Or, as translated for POLITICO by an ever-helpful French diplomat: "This has nothing to do with feelings. It's just business."

What has gone from the French position in recent weeks is the original intention to "make Britain pay" to serve as an example to others. The extent of the post-referendum crisis in the U.K., the semblance of political chaos in the days following the vote, the likely economic impact on the U.K. of the current uncertainty, are now seen as strong enough deterrents to any other country contemplating a similar "exit" from Europe, the diplomat noted.

And what the French see as the spectacular "reprise en mains" by May of the agenda, as well as her mastery of the political process, have reassured Paris that there is in London "someone to do business with," said the same diplomat, knowingly paraphrasing Margaret Thatcher's line about the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev.

Eyes on the City

Despite his focus on the single market, the French president also appeared to offer the British prime minister one possible path to compromise.

Hollande seemed to hint that it might be possible for May to simply seek an improvement to the terms her predecessor David Cameron got on immigration when he renegotiated Britain's relationship with the EU prior to the referendum vote. This could give May a way to meet British voters' desire to reduce immigration and still remain almost a full member of the single market.

On the substance of the future negotiations, which both Merkel Wednesday and Hollande Thursday repeated could not possibly start before the U.K. triggers Article 50, Hollande has been and remains explicit on the trade-off he will seek for restrictions of movement: The end of the so-called "financial passport" that allows EU-based banks and fund managers to market their wares in all of the member countries without additional, national regulations.

"If May really proves less City-friendly than Cameron and [former chancellor of the exchequer George] Osborne, she might be easy to convince on this," quipped a French treasury advisor mentioning the "social justice" speech that the new U.K. premier made on the steps of 10, Downing Street on the day she took office.

But "whatever the ultimate outcome," he added, "it may look nothing like what we are thinking of now. Those are just starting positions, everybody stakes his ground."

Hollande, of course, by now knows that he may not be the one who will see the negotiations through, as his chances of being re-elected to a second term next year are distant at best. That doesn't mean that his successor will hold different views. Most of the French right's conservative leaders have expressed the same opinions, in line with traditional French diplomacy.

On one thing Paris and Berlin agree and that is the need to sideline Brussels. Hollande and Merkel are reading "strictly from the same page," a source close to the Elysée said before May's visit. "They want to make sure national governments keep the control of the talks and that the EU bureaucracy doesn't decide to play tough on London for the sake of it."

That, on the other hand, he added, is "easier said than done."

I certainly don't see Brussels stepping back. The Commission will want to be very involved with their role as the guardian of the treaties.

[Sheilbh]

Also Robert Tombs (who voted Leave) has a piece in the (print) New Statesman on the English revolt:
http://www.newstatesman.com/2016-07-21

Can't find it online yet. But here's his piece from before the last election when the SNP looked likely to prop up a Labour government and the whole issue of England was becoming bigger:

What does England want?

Not since the 1640s, when Scottish armies repeatedly marched south against Charles I, has the English establishment been so politically threatened in its heartland.
BY ROBERT TOMBS 

An interest in history, a nostalgic curiosity about the past, is often a consequence of present worries. Hence, perhaps, the recent rapid succession of historically focused events: the honouring of Richard III, the celebration of Magna Carta and the publication of the first ever detailed genetic map of a country, produced by the Wellcome Trust's "People of the British Isles" project. All three look well back into history, to times before the creation of the United Kingdom, precisely at a moment when England's future and that of the United Kingdom are uncertain.

We are, or so it is generally agreed, in the midst of a deep political crisis that has undermined "the Westminster establishment": self-serving, dishonest, out of touch and aptly symbolised by the crumbling of its great Victorian-Gothic palace. This crisis appears widely to be perceived as a breakdown of a previously functioning system, causing a disillusioned electorate to turn away in disgust.

Much of this myth draws on some unspecified vision of a golden age from which we have declined. But when was it? For some on the left, it seems to have been the 1970s. For the right, it is said – by its opponents, anyway – to have been the 1950s. Can it seriously be suggested that we are worse governed now than when Anthony Eden conspired with the French and the Israelis to attack Egypt? Or when Harold Wilson proclaimed, "A week is a long time in politics"? When sterling periodically collapsed? When a former Labour minister faked his own suicide? When the leader of the Liberal Party was implicated in a shooting? When billions were squandered on lame-duck industries?

Go further back: are politicians dimmer today than in the 1930s, when Neville Chamberlain thought he could do a deal with Hitler and the much-loved former Labour leader George Lansbury praised the Führer as "a total abstainer, non-smoker [and] vegetarian" who "liked children and old people"? Are Westminster politicians today more "out of touch" than in the great age of parliament, when hundreds of MPs were local notables who were returned unopposed and Disraeli lamented that they "could not be got to attend to business while the hunting season lasted"; that they "never read" and "learnt nothing useful, and did not understand the ideas of their own time"?

Are politicians less honest today than in the 1880s and 1890s, when dozens of constituencies had to be disfranchised for gross corruption – such as Macclesfield in 1880, where two MPs, both party agents, four magistrates, three aldermen and 31 local councillors were disqualified from office? We have a political class today that, warts and all, is harder-working, more professional and more accountable than at any time in the past. On the whole, it might even be more honest – and it is undoubtedly more so than in most neighbouring countries. Its vices, now constantly exposed to the public gaze, are the obverse of these virtues: it is arguably too cosily professional, too careerist, too slick and too hyperactive, but we can hardly blame it for being what most of us insist it should be.

Yet a large number of electors feel that "the system" is letting them down; hence they are deserting the main parties and threatening to stir up political chaos, or at least uncertainty. The causes of this undeniable change are not all negative. When the two-party system was most dominant and voters were most engaged – for example, in the 1860s and 1870s and the 1940s and 1950s – our whole society, and not only our politics, was deeply divided by sectarianism or by class. The largest ever turnout in a British general election (86.8 per cent) was in January 1910, the height of the struggle of "the peers against the people".

For Victorians, voting was determined by religious affiliation more than by anything else. In the mid-20th century, there was an unprecedented and unrepeated identification between class and party. In the 1945 general election, three-quarters of the middle class voted Tory; two-thirds of the working class voted Labour. The waning of two-party dominance and the emergence of other parties reflect a welcome blurring of these old divisions. The popular complaint "My vote makes no difference" is plausibly a part of this phenomenon: many are no longer content as voters to be the foot soldiers of a social or religious bloc. They want to make a difference individually and although in a mass democracy this may lead to inevitable frustration, few would want to return to a time of extreme political polarisation.

Britain's crisis is not simply home-grown: it is the local variant of changes affecting the whole western world, which has jettisoned the sharp ideological and religious antagonisms, the utopian visions and the fixed social stratifications that once spurred people to vote and showed them whom to vote for. Since the 1990s, a collapse of political participation, cynicism (sometimes justified) about the professional political class and the consequent rise of anti-establishment movements have been phenomena occurring from Norway to New Zealand. The symptoms are the same: denunciations of the system, citizen disengagement from mainstream parties, electoral volatility and/or apathy, the rise of dissenting movements that appeal to large numbers who are, or feel themselves to be, disfranchised or ignored by an establishment dominated by uncontrollable and often faceless forces.

The political scientist Peter Mair has convincingly identified the main cause: the loss or deliberate yielding up of decision-making power by national governments to other organisations, both domestic and international – quangos, the law courts, business corporations, central banks, the EU, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organisation. Hence the perception that parties and politicians are no longer willing or able to represent their voters, that they are "all the same" and that politics has become an irrelevant smokescreen for the machinations of special interests and lobby groups.

France, Italy and the Scandinavian countries are among those worst affected by political disillusionment, with Britain following the trend. When things are going well – or when relatively few people are losing out – these changes may not seem to matter much. They may even seem desirable: "pooling of sovereignty", removal of political interference from civil society, increasing checks on the executive by domestic and international courts, subsidiarity in decision-making, encouragement of inward investment, and so on. Not so, of course, when things suddenly go wrong. Radical populist movements have become an increasing presence, notably in France, the US, Holland and Germany. In several countries experiencing a strong sense of crisis or grievance, there has been massive political mobilisation of this kind; the outstanding cases are Spain, Greece and Scotland.

***

British politics nevertheless retains remarkable elements of stability and the coming election will show how resilient it still is. Most people are not floating voters. The broad UK pattern of voting – usually with the Tories leading in England and their opponents ahead in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland – has been noted. The Tory share of the vote in England in 2010 was almost identical to its share in the decade Queen Victoria ascended the throne. In England, regional political patterns have been very consistent: areas of Anglican dominance shown in the 1851 census (the only one to record religious affiliation) are similar to the strongholds of the modern Conservatives. Liberal and later Labour support was similarly linked with Dissent. In 2010, Anglicans were twice as likely to vote Tory as Catholics, despite the latter group's conservatism on many social and cultural issues; Muslims, even more small-C conservative, were the most Labour-voting religious group in Britain.

This is not a matter of theology but one of identity. Religious affiliation reflects and also strengthens, mobilises and perpetuates socio-economic and cultural differences, helping to create community solidarities. One might think of this as Ambridge v Coronation Street. The difference even has genetic markers, as the Wellcome Trust study reveals. The areas of greater socio-economic and demographic stability (the Ambridges) show genetic as well as political continuities.

London is different but it has always been this way – now, as ever since the advent of democracy, Londoners have voted along individualistic lines, hence the success of Boris Johnson in a mostly Labour-voting city. But community loyalties, however deep-rooted, are not permanent. France, too, had a very long-established pattern of regional loyalties, now almost erased by the Front National's ability to appeal to the discontented on both right and left. We shall soon find out whether Ukip can do the same.

The wobbly status quo in England is being given a hefty shove by Scotland, with Alex Salmond poised to descend on Westminster like the wolf on the fold. Not since the 1640s, when Scottish armies repeatedly marched south against Charles I, has the English establishment been so politically threatened in its heartland. Then, the Scots demanded a large financial subsidy and seats in government and they insisted that conservative English Anglicans should adopt their sternly progressive Presbyterianism. For much of the civil war period, the Scots acted as power brokers, with decisive results. Their troops played an indispensable part in breaking the royalists at the Battle of Marston Moor in 1644.

The Scots' aim in the 1640s was to transform England. Now, more modestly, it is to break away from it, whether inside or outside the United Kingdom. In both cases, there seems to be a conviction that Scotland is fundamentally different: indeed, ethically superior – a conviction that in its origins (and perhaps even now, subliminally) is religious. The English have never shown the same ambition to interfere in Scotland, which after the 1707 Act of Union was largely left to itself. In the 19th century it was dominated by Scottish Liberalism and in the 20th by Scottish Labour, both offspring of religious difference. This gave Scotland a particular role in British and hence English politics by enabling Liberal and Labour governments to outweigh Tory support in England. As William Gladstone put it, "Our three corps d'armée . . . have been Scotch Presbyterians, English and Welsh Nonconformists and Irish Roman Catholics."

The Tories, associated with Anglicanism and England, were invariably less popular in Scotland and, in Gladstone's day as now, usually won even fewer Scottish seats than their share of the vote: in 1885, 34 per cent of the vote but 14 per cent of the seats; in 2010, 17 per cent of the vote but 2 per cent of the seats. It was similar in Wales and Ireland. In England, however, the Tories have usually been the largest party since the Liberals split in 1886. Though they lost spectacularly in 1906, 1945 and during the Blair years, the Tories have won most votes in England in 23 of the 32 general elections over the past 129 years. These differences, real and deep though they are, are magnified, sometimes hugely, by our electoral system.

Scotland's dynamic nationalism draws not only on modern discontents but also on ancient and deep-seated ideas of identity, rights and differences. This gives the SNP a protean quality that is able to appeal across conventional socio-economic and ideological divisions. Hence, it first absorbed much of the Scottish Conservative vote and most of its seats as an opponent of Labour during the 1990s and now is doing the same to Labour as an opponent of the Tories. The English response to the rise of Scottish nationalism, beginning in the mid-1970s, has been slow and reluctant, rather like Charles I's hope that if he could pay the Scots off, they would go away.

The social scientist Krishan Kumar has a convincing explanation for the muted self-assertiveness of England: it was not in the interest of England, as the leading element in a multinational state and then in a global empire, to "beat the nationalist drum". Most English people have long been content to merge their identity with Britishness. The public authorities celebrate "British values" and promote British identity. English voters have acquiesced in devolution to the other British nations and an independence referendum in Scotland without expecting to have a say – impossible in any country with an entrenched constitution – and so far without formulating clear demands in return.

What is unique in our current situation is not, however, the place of Scotland (which has similarities to, Catalonia and Flanders, for instance) but that of England. England has existed as an idea – the gens Anglorum – since the 8th century and as a political community since the 9th, with a recognised land, language and even literature and common political institutions. This makes it, in the view of some historians, the world's oldest nation. The "Angelcynn" came together largely in its present territory in the course of a long struggle with Scandinavian invaders, under the kings Alfred, Edward and Æthelstan. These testing circumstances developed characteristics that long marked England's history: strong royal authority, uniform local government and relatively wide popular participation, whether willing or unwilling. The Norman Conquest pres­erved or enhanced these characteristics and further increased the power of the Crown. This led eventually to the rebellion against King John, to the emergence of parliament as the representative of "the community of the realm" and not least to the rise of one of our proudest and most influential national myths – that sooner or later rulers have to defer to the wishes of the ruled.

England changed profoundly over the centuries. Moreover, it was a leader in some of the great changes in human history: religious reformation, the intellectual Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, global imperialism. Yet many of its ancient institutions adapted to and survived these changes. This was above all because those institutions worked, securing the country from internal chaos, economic meltdown and foreign conquest.

This arguably has both good and bad sides. It is good, evidently, in that it preserved millions of people from extremes of poverty, oppression and premature death – England has always been one of the richest and safest places on the planet. It is bad (at least, so many would think) in that it has had no occasion for a thorough clear-out of its archaic institutions, a forced rethinking of the way we do things and the creation of a conscious sense of what England is all about, which, for many countries, is written into their constitution. Instead, England just is.

Perhaps for this reason, the past affects us in more complex and deep-seated ways than in countries that have experienced violent historic ruptures. We still feel the lingering effects of the civil war, the Acts of Union, the Industrial Revolution, the empire, the two world wars – even as we mark the 8ooth anniversary of Magna Carta.

Four bequests of history are particularly important at the moment. The first two were products of 17th- and 18th-century conflicts with France: the Act of Union 1707 and the City of London, which grew by financing war. The other two were products of the Second World War: centralisation of administration and the NHS.

The partial unravelling of the Act of Union by devolution of power to Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast has left England as the largest nation in Europe, without its own political institutions and as one of the largest centralised administrative units in the world. It was the Second World War, in the judgement of the historian Jose Harris, that changed Britain "from one of the most localised and voluntaristic countries in Europe to one of the most centralised and bureaucratic"; for "Britain" now read "England". The proportion of England's public spending controlled from the centre is roughly twice that in France, Japan and Italy, and more than three times that in Germany.

This creates a political and administrative burden that Westminster and Whitehall can neither manage nor surrender – a great cause of popular discontent. Particularly difficult to manage are England's two contrasting and uncontrollably growing monsters: the City of London, now as for three centuries the much-resented goose laying sometimes toxic golden eggs, the only part of the British economy that has consistently been a world leader; and the National Health Service, the embodiment of a cherished ideal of solidarity, a formidable political lobby and the largest non-military public organisation in the world.

This odd combination of capitalism and socialism in a highly centralised system without a national government makes England today a very unusual place. We rarely observe how different this is from the ways most other populous countries manage their affairs: local, regional or state governments, or non-political authorities, have autonomous responsibilities and (in the best cases) democratic accountability. However, centralisation is a 70-year habit we find very hard to break, as public apathy towards elected mayors and police commissioners indicates. Perhaps, with our dislike of "postcode lotteries", we prefer centralisation. But it has its price.

What to do about England is a new and also an old problem. Its history has echoes today – an excellent case of those who are ignorant of history being condemned to repeat it. The English Question first appeared in embryonic form after Gladstone proposed Irish home rule in 1886. He needed the 86 Irish home rule MPs to have a majority over the larger Conservative Party. He also hoped that devolution would put an end to nationalism. But his Liberal Party split; in the ensuing general election, Scotland, Wales and Ireland all produced majorities favouring home rule but England voted against.

Gladstone's Liberal successors a generation later faced a similar parliamentary problem: a minority in England, they relied on backing from the Celtic fringe. The chancellor David Lloyd George's great victory in the 1909-11 battle over the "People's Budget" required the votes of the Irish nationalists, who had all but wiped out Liberalism in Ireland. In return, they again demanded home rule. In April 1912 a home rule bill was introduced and in May 1914 the Commons passed it.

As in our own time – though to a larger degree – this opened up a constitutional free-for-all. Ulster Protestants demanded autonomy ("home rule within home rule") and threatened rebellion. Lloyd George, to placate Scotland, Wales and England, proposed House of Commons "grand committees", through which their MPs would deal with internal matters.

Yet some Scottish and Welsh Liberals wanted full devolution. Other ministers, including the then home secretary, Winston Churchill, who sat for Dundee, suggested "home rule all round".

The obvious problem, then as now, was that England was so much bigger than the other nations. Churchill suggested breaking it up into ten or 12 "provinces", each with its own legislative and administrative "assembly", while Ireland, Scotland and Wales would have parliaments. This idea was briefly resurrected by the Blair government and it still appeals to some worried that a self-governing England would be a Tory stronghold dominating any federal Britain.

What might just have been acceptable in 1912, amid visions of a world imperial federation and in the face of a threat of civil war in Ireland, would be a different matter now. Even then, opponents denounced the idea of England being broken up as it had never been since Anglo-Saxon times. Today, to sugar the pill, such a division is presented as a remedy for over-centralisation and the dysfunctions of "Westminster", the benefits of devolution extended to England and especially to the north of England. Yet note the fundamental difference. Scottish and Welsh nationalists have demanded – and have been given – not regional, but national government; the principle of a United Kingdom of nations has been conceded. Imagine Alex Salmond's response if he had been offered as a remedy for the "remoteness" of Westminster a northern British region with its capital in Newcastle or, alternatively, a Highlands region based in Aberdeen and a Lowlands region governed from Dumfries.

National identity, not administrative or economic efficiency, is the core of both devolution and independence – and the rest is window-dressing. Would the people of England, whose torpid sense of national identity has been prodded from a long slumber by Scottish assertiveness, be placated now by a few unloved regional assemblies, too weak to stand up to Westminster, Brussels or Edinburgh? What would be the point if Scotland wants independence anyway? And could an extra layer of politics provide a solution to England's problems of governance, rather than creating sources of conflict and incoherence, generators of grievance?

***

Our own recent experiences and those of neighbouring countries amply demonstrate that regionalism is no automatic remedy for poor government and can aggravate it through mediocrity, cronyism, corruption and waste. Those who insist that Britain is "better together" cannot easily argue that England is better in fragments. Moreover, as the political scientist Michael Kenny has asked, "Is it feasible that the English will remain satisfied with a political conversation among their representatives that is still conducted within a British, not English, framework?"

If, after the May election, a Labour government can only be formed by relying on Scottish votes and seats, this will be nothing new; but if those votes and seats belong to a separatist SNP, it will feel very different and it is likely to precipitate, as Alex Salmond seems to want it to do, a far-reaching constitutional reappraisal.

The rise of Scottish nationalism is a challenge. It may even be a crisis. Independence would undeniably cause political, economic and strategic upheavals in Britain and Europe and it would need the resolution of difficult and potentially divisive issues concerning oil, debt and the nuclear deterrent. But it would undoubtedly be less traumatic than the independence of Ireland in 1921, something that most people in England have probably forgotten.

Moreover, the future of Scotland is a plain and simple question: a relatively small part of the UK (8 per cent of its population) may stay or may go – in either case, one hopes, on fairly amicable terms. Whatever happens, there will remain the question of how to govern a big, growing, diverse, crowded and increasingly self-conscious England. This is a more complex problem. In the long run, it may also be more important. It is high time we tackled it.

Robert Tombs is a professor of French history at the University of Cambridge. His most recent book, "The English and their History", will be published in paperback by Penguin on 4 June

[Josquius]

Scoland goes and the country is done. Might as well glass the lot of it for what it's worth.