Albion

Is it me or is there now a slow inevitability about there being an English parliament soon (in the next five years), as the political dimension of a broader resurgence of English national identity? The fact that for the first time, the Scottish National Party has minority leadership in Scotland, and will surely make plans for a referendum on Scottish independence (which they will probably lose), is perhaps the removal of the final blockage. The English have been in an awkward position of symbolic political under-development ever since the Welsh, the Scottish and the Northern Irish (via the Stormont process) had their own parliaments. I sense that there is a growing confidence of the distinction between embracing an English national identity (in all its complexity and parallel histories) and English nationalism. What all this means for the Scottish-dominated Labour party is another issue..