Peter Jones: England learning to fly its own flag

England, the dog that has apparently not stirred while the Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish have gained devolved self-rule, is now barking loudly.

This main finding from a major report by the Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR) has prompted a range of political responses, most claiming it means the break-up of the UK is now more likely. I don’t think this is the case, because nobody, including the English, really understands the nature of Englishness.

The Scots certainly don’t understand England. This has always struck me as odd. While politicians, particularly those of a nationalist bent, have been eager to learn all about countries from Ireland to Finland, they have paid little attention to our biggest and closest neighbour. The idea that Scots can learn from what happens in England – from education to economic development – is anathema in Scottish politics. Right across the political spectrum and right across civic institutions – from think-tanks to churches – I cannot think of anyone suggesting that Scotland might benefit from following an English example.

The reason for this, I think, is that we suffer a reverse form of the south of the Border short-sightedness about which Scots regularly complain – that the English think England and Britain are one and the same thing. North of the Border, many Scots, especially Nationalists, think Britain is a failing state. They conflate that with England and so believe that there is nothing to be learned from our southern neighbours.

It follows on that if we don’t bother learning about England, we hardly have a sound basis of knowledge on which to either (somewhat high-handedly) tell the English, or even to predict, that England should have, or will have eventually, some form of devolved self-rule or even independence from the pesky Scots.

That the English have no clear idea emerges from the IPPR study. It found that 70 per cent of English voters thought that the UK government should have the most influence over the way in which England is run. But given a theoretical institutional landscape which imagined regional assemblies and an English parliament as additional choices, only 26 per cent opted for an English parliament as best for running England.

Nonetheless, it is pretty clear from the IPPR study that dissatisfaction with the way England is run has surged in recent years. It is also clear that this is more than just about the general growth of mistrust of politicians of all parties and disaffection with politics generally.

Of course, The Scotsman highlighted, as did other newspapers, that the advent of devolution is one of the factors which appears to have contributed to this rising discontent. The fact that it has appeared some 13 years after devolution first occurred is most likely due to recession. The media in England regularly feed their audiences with a diet of stories about the better deal that Scots appear to be getting with devolution – free care for the elderly, no university tuition fees, free prescriptions, etc.

That didn’t seem to matter so much when the economy was happily chuntering forward and public spending was rising. But now that the economy has slumped and looks to be stuck in a bit of a rut, while public spending is being cut and services withdrawn, there is bound to be some southern resentment that the Scots still seem to be getting plenty of fat.

Hence the sudden upsurge in the proportion of people in England who think that devolution has made the government of England worse – which seems strongly linked to a rising tide of opinion that Scotland is getting more than its fair share of public spending.

But there are other factors upsetting the English. One is the EU. No less than 27 per cent of English voters think that the EU has most influence over the way England is run, and only 1 per cent think it should have any influence. Comparing this finding with other survey work undertaken in Europe, the IPPR finds that the English appear to be alone in Europe in their degree of hostility to the EU.

A second factor is distrust of London. I spent ten years covering Scotland and the north of England for the Economist. One thing that surprised me was the similarity of belief in both Scotland and northern England that the UK government was dominated by its concern for the voters of London and south-east England. There was a shared dislike of perceived south-eastern arrogance which you could find in Northumbria and Cornwall.

Not surprisingly, when you dig down through the IPPR report, you find that around four-fifths of English voters reckon that some parts of England are looked after better than others, with London and the south-east being seen as the main beneficiaries. And when you consider what might be the political answer that would deal with that problem, it is not at all clear why it would be an English parliament or even voting on English-only matters at Westminster being confined to English MPs.

Indeed, what the IPPR report highlights is that English opinion is not the monolithic creature that some in Scotland suppose it to be. It is highly divided, both geographically and politically, and given that background it is nigh-on impossible to think of a political solution that will satisfy majority opinion.

Scotland is different in that it has a Nationalist party which has successfully rounded up Scottish opinion and is now in the process of herding it towards its own preferred solution of either independence or greatly enhanced devolution.

England does have some parties that might be called Nationalist, but they are stuck on the wilder fringes of politics. None of the main parties appear to have the remotest idea how they might come up with a democratic and broadly appealing prescription that would respond to this new but still rather confused sense of Englishness.

They need to do so quickly, because otherwise the vacuum they are leaving will be filled by the politics of resentment. Such acrid sentiments feed off fear and suspicion and could lead to hasty decisions which would ill-serve all the people of these islands, whether or not Scotland is independent. For, regardless of such a change, the English will still be our nearest and much bigger neighbours.