This site is intended to be a place where anyone who’s concerned about the political and constitutional future of England can join in an ongoing ‘national conversation’ about it, partially modelled on the Scottish government’s National Conversation for Scotland.
The reason why this conversation is needed is that it is virtually inevitable that the Scottish people will vote for independence from the UK at some point in the next few years, perhaps as early as 2010. This means that, whether the English people choose it or not, the present United Kingdom will break up, and England will then have to determine new arrangements for its government and relationships with Wales and Northern Ireland. So, as a nation, we need to be prepared for these changes and to take the opportunity to debate the future for England. If we do not do so, we could find that England will just drift into another version of the present-day constitutional settlement: a UK minus Scotland with no national English parliament or civic institutions, merged into a British doppelganger of itself that strangely cannot acknowledge the existence of England as a nation while effectively serving as the English state in all but name. An unrepresentative London-centred government, with massive majorities for one or other of the two leading parties bolstered by one of the most disproportionate democratic electoral systems in the world; and hence, burdened with governments that can just do whatever they like, ignoring the will of the English people.
England deserves better government than it has had to put up with for many decades. The secession of Scotland is its chance to seize it.
I welcome all comments, favourable or not. The only ones I will moderate out will be ones liable to cause offence to others or to break laws, such as those inciting racial or religious hatred, or personally malicious. Also, anything totally irrelevant to the discussion in progress may find itself ‘censored’ in this way.
I’m particularly keen to enlist the support of any persons that are more web-savvy than myself in improving the design and usability of this site, and in adding features. I’ll gradually evolve things myself; but if anyone else wants to get involved, that would be great. The same applies to adding content, e.g. opinion pieces, news items or polls. The aim is not to produce long discussion pieces and just have heavy intellectual debates; but rather to introduce a new topic every week or so, and let the discussion roll. Any potential contributors of any sort can get in touch with me via the comments to this About page.
DAVID
Hello David,
Can I just suggest that a forum where nationalist, regionalists and autonomists from all the home nations, crown protectorates and historic regions and of all political persuasions could come together and debate the questions would be a step forward (at worst an interesting talking shop).
We have countless debating forums for England, Scotland, Wales and Cornwall but nowhere where we can all come together.
Good idea, Philip. If you want to go ahead and set up such a blog site, I’d gladly be a regular contributor of either articles or comment. I’m not in a position to set up such a site myself, as I have neither the time nor the web expertise to ensure that it had all the features that would be required. However, if there’s a financial cost involved - i.e. if you chose not to host the site on a free platform such as WordPress - I would gladly make a (of necessity, modest) contribution.
If this isn’t too ‘Benettonish’, you could call it ‘United Nations of Britain’ or something! Anyway, whatever you call it, I’d be glad to support it.