St George’s Day falls just two weeks before the election. After a poisonous and divisive Tory Scottish National party campaign the scale of the challenge facing Ed Miliband on 8th May – to rebuild both England and the union – is becoming clear.
Forget the spurious row about Labour’s ‘dependence’on the SNP. There is no substance to the Tory claim – shamefully repeated by broadcasters who should know better – that Labour wants or needs SNP support. Even without Labour the overall majority we are fighting for, Labour can govern as a minority, implementing the manifesto on which we have fought the election. Ed Miliband has been right to reject a deal: there is no need for discussion, concession or amendment – the challenge will be to others, Tory, SNP or whoever else – to take the responsibility for making the United Kingdom ungovernable.
By swallowing Cameron’s framing, the broadcasters have ignored the real devil’s bargain. The Tories talk up the SNP because the SNP want to damage Labour; if the SNP succeeds, the Tories have more hope of being the largest party and claiming the right to stay in power.
But these cynical moves will not quickly be forgotten. As Tory unionists like Michael Forsyth have realised, polarising the UK between an ‘English’interest and nationalists in Scotland fatally undermines the Conservative commitment to the union.
Yet today’s Tory party, despite its casual undermining of the union, cannot play the role of a true English party.
The beating heart of English patriotism does not usually lie in the fervent national identity found in other nations. Without a shared history of invasion, absorption or oppression, England is much less defined in relation to other nations. There is a strident group of English separatists, but most patriots are looking for something different: to be recognised for what we are; for our way of doing and seeing things, for our history, our traditions of freedom and liberty, self-organisation and the common good. We English have, historically, been as concerned with what the powerful do to the rest of us, as to what other nations do to England. Our patriotism means the right neither to have our identity suppressed nor our English rights denied.
By defending the super-rich; relying on non-dom and hedge fund donations, and promoting the speculative foreign dominance of London’s housing market, today’s Tories represent the narrow pursuit of self-interest by a few that most English patriots have always fought against.
On the doorstep there are few signs that the Tory scare campaign resonates with potential Labour voters, but people will not want to see another election in which a party that wants to end the UK claims the right to dictate to all of it.
On 8th May, Ed Miliband will lead an England that is divided and unfair, within a UK whose nations are also divided and whose bonds are weakened and fractious.
Resolving those tensions is not separate to the economic and social rebuilding of our nations and country but internal to it. And there is much in Labour’s manifesto that shows how we can. Labour’s case for economic and social change has been well set out. But the manifesto is equally strong on the necessary constitutional change.
We advocate a new constitutional settlement, settling the relationship between the UK nations, will do; a settlement that defines what is settled within each nation and at a UK level and which, for England, sets out how power is devolved to our powerful historic cities and counties. We acknowledge that change will be needed to decision-making in the Commons as devolution spreads. And we understand that change itself most be guided by a popular constitutional convention not delivered top-down from Westminster.
This election is no longer about which party might be a better government than another, but about whether we choose the only party that can rebuild our nations and our country.
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John Denham is former shadow secretary of state for business. He tweets @JohnDenhamMP
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The SNP has mimicked Labour policy to get votes, but this leaves it with no negotiating power. Major’s claim that they could somehow force the Labour government to spend money it doesn’t want to really makes no sense. A more interesting question is the DUP, which has kept its options open. Can Cameron say whether or not he would spend more money in NI to get votes?
Happy Saint George’s Day. God Save The Queen. Of heavy immigrant stock as she is, and married to an immigrant.
They are both probably part-black. In fact, no one could believe anything else having seen a portrait of Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, whose features were publicly called “Negroid” at the time, when her ancestry was common knowledge and apparently disturbed nobody. The city of Charlotte in North Carolina is named after her, and it is the seat of Mecklenburg County.
The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh are also plausibly believed to be descended from Muhammad through various part-Moorish royal lines on the Iberian Peninsula, even if Robert Graves was once ushered away from Her Majesty after he had mentioned their common descent from the Prophet of Islam. The view is widely held in an entirely matter-of-fact way across the Islamic world.
Genghis Khan and the Tang Emperor Suzong are less plausible ancestors, but not impossible ones. Loyalty to the monarchy is nothing if not an inoculation against racism, and not only, although certainly, because the Queen is the Head of the Commonwealth, as well as directly of 16 member-states.
Only four of those 16, including this one, have white majority populations, just as only two of the remaining 14 British Overseas Territories are predominantly white, and only one of those two has a population descended primarily from these Islands.
Today ought to be a public holiday throughout the United Kingdom. As should Saint Andrew’s Day, Saint David’s Day and Saint Patrick’s Day. Away with pointless celebrations of the mere fact that the banks are on holiday.
It is amazing how many people assume that because there is a legend about Saint George, then he himself must be a purely legendary figure. He is not. Although the Tomb of Saint George at his birthplace, which is now known as Lod and which is the location of Israel’s principal airport, has become a shadow of its former self.
It was once a major focus of unity between Christians and Muslims in devotion to the Patron Saint of Palestine, Lebanon and Egypt before, and as much as, the Patron Saint of England. But three quarters of those who practised that devotion were violently expelled in 1948.