The article, “Gordon Brown’s English Problem” by John
Denham, former Labour Minister and now director of the Centre for English
Identity and Politics at Winchester University, has been recommended on the CEP
website. I recall that Labour's Lord
Prescott once said something along the lines of: “There is no such thing as the
English”. Now, according to John
Denham’s article, when discussing constitutional change within the UK Gordon
Brown can hardly bring himself to mention England or the English at all and seems
to prefer the term “rest of the UK” instead.
I reproduce below, from the Fabian Society website, the
section of the article I found the most telling.
The
problem is that Gordon also seems to have decided what the outcome of the
constitutional assembly should look like. And that does not include any
acknowledgement of the existence of England as a nation or as a political
identity. By extension, it excludes all of that large majority of English
residents who describe their national identity as English, or English and
British. It is odd that a man who has fought all his political life for the
right of the people of Scotland to determine their own future should be so
resistant to allowing the English to do the same.
In
an analysis of the Scottish devolution published before the Scottish
referendum, Gordon showed the same myopia. Amid numerous references to
Scotland, he had 104 to a non-existent ‘rest of the UK (rUK)’ and just four to
England or the English. The fact that the English were exclusively referred to
either as taxpayers or as pensioners betrays a narrow view of English interest.
This marginalisation of England has long been the view of celtic Labour:
England should not want a political voice and, in any case, cannot be allowed
to have one. This is no longer tenable.
http://www.fabians.org.uk/gordon-browns-english-problem/
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