I was encouraged to see that columnist, broadcaster
and former Conservative Parliamentary candidate Iain Dale believes in an
English Parliament. In his column in Conservativehome he writes of his
appearance on a panel in Norwich seeking to answer the question: “What does it
mean to be English?”
It does seem a bit of a cheek to even be asked such a
question! No-one would dream of asking
what it means to be Scottish, Welsh or Irish, or French, German, Italian,
Russian, American or any other nationality for that matter. In Britain it is always the English who seem
to have to justify their sense of nationhood and identity.
Be that as it may, Mr Dale spoke alongside John
Denham, former Labour Cabinet Minister, who also supports the creation of an
English Parliament. Below is the relevant
part of the article which appeared on Conservativehome
on today (December 12).
“On Monday evening. I took part in a panel in Norwich
which sought to answer the question: “What does it mean to be English?”
John Denham, the former Labour Cabinet Minister who
now leads the Centre for English Identity at the University of Winchester was
one of my co-interlocutors, and did a far better job of answering the question
than I did.
Indeed, we agreed on so much (such as believing in
creating an English Parliament, for example) that we nearly formed our own
political party there and then.
The event took place at the Forum in the centre of
Norwich, and there were around 120 people there. It was a very engaged audience
which asked some quite challenging questions. However, I’m still not sure I
answered them very well.”
Here is a link to Mr Dale’s article on Conservativehome
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