Scottish independence: Backlash warning as English identity rises

THE UK government has been warned it faces a voter “backlash” south of the Border if it ignores the growing sense of English identity – and a decline in Britishness – which has emerged as a consequence of the debates over Scotland’s constitutional future.

A report by the Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR), published today, suggests that Englishness is now clearly ahead of Britishness in personal identity in England.

Entitled The Dog that Finally Barked: England as an emerging political community, the report reveals polling of English voters shows:

An estimated 80 per cent of people support full fiscal autonomy – devo-max – for Scotland.

Slightly fewer – 79 per cent – say Scottish MPs should be barred from voting on English laws.

Support in England for the constitutional status quo has fallen to just one in four of the electorate.

Nearly half of voters in England (45 per cent) believe Scotland gets “more than its fair share of public spending”, while 40 per cent believe England gets less than it should.

The findings led Tory Scottish grandee and former foreign secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind to warn that politicians should be aware of the circumstances that led to the break-up of Czechoslovakia when debating Scotland’s future.

He told The Scotsman: “The Slovaks said they wanted more time, but the Czechs had had enough and said, ‘Sorry we’ve decided for you’.

“It is quite possible for England to decide it doesn’t want the other parts of the United Kingdom.”

The report comes in a week in which First Minister Alex Salmond will travel to London to deliver a major speech on independence ahead of his government launching a consultation on Wednesday.

And yesterday he appeared to make a pitch to English voters to support his party.

He said: “Most people in England think if Scotland wants to become independent then fair enough, as long as they raise their own revenue and govern their own spending.”

But Liberal Democrat Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg yesterday publicly slapped down his party’s deputy leader, Simon Hughes, who called for English devolution.

The Scotsman has also learned that a group of right-wing Tory MPs are leading a back-bench push aimed at attempting to force the UK government to accept a UK-wide vote on Scottish independence.

The MPs, led by Stone MP Bill Cash supported by fellow eurosceptics John Redwood and Bernard Jenkin, will this week launch an all-party group on “preserving the United Kingdom”.

The Tory eurosceptics have already forced Prime Minister David Cameron’s hand on vetoing a new European Union treaty and there was speculation in Westminster that they could prove difficult to deal with over the independence referendum.

Their move comes amid widespread anger, particularly on the Tory back-benches, that the referendum will be limited to people living north of the Border.

Former Labour chief whip Baroness Taylor of Bolton, who has lived most of her adult life in England but was born in Motherwell, has put down an amendment to the Scotland Bill calling for expat Scots to get the vote.

And Scottish exiles in the Commons, such as Colonel Bob Stewart, have made similar calls, while a large group of English Tory MPs have publicly pressed for a UK-wide referendum.

But last night the SNP said such “ham-fisted” interventions from Westminster would guarantee a surge in support for independence, while Sir Malcolm, a former Scottish Secretary dismissed the idea of a UK-wide vote as “absurd”.

“Essentially, if people wish to leave a club, then it is up to them, so it should be a vote for people in Scotland only,” he said.

However, he said this did not apply for a devo-max option.

“When you want to change the rules of a club, then that affects everybody and it can’t simply be put to a referendum, it needs to be done by negotiation.

“I think the SNP appear to be pulling back from this second question.”

Sir Malcolm’s comments followed a warning from former Liberal leader and Holyrood presiding officer Lord Steel, who said last week that Westminster politicians should keep out of the independence debate.

THE IPPR Yougov survey of 1,507 adults, taken last summer, has revealed a growing resentment south of the Border towards Scotland and devolution.

It showed the number of voters in England who believe that Scottish devolution has made the way Britain is governed worse now stands at 35 per cent and has doubled since 2007.

In addition, 45 per cent of voters in England say Scotland gets “more than its fair share of public spending”, a figure that has almost doubled since 2000. Just 23 per cent think Scotland gets its fair share, a number that has halved since 2003.

While support for Scottish independence has increase by just 8 per cent to 22 per cent since 2000, only 22 per cent support the UK in its current form compared with 50 per cent in 2003.

And reflecting concern over the so-called West Lothian Question, where Scottish MPs can still vote on English-only matters, 54 per cent of people in England back either English votes for English laws or an English parliament rejecting Scottish involvement in English matters, such as health and education.

The report shows that the proportion of the population that prioritise their English identity over their British identity is 40 per cent, which is now twice as large as that which prioritise their British over their English identity at 16 per cent.

IPPR director Nick Pearce said: “English identity is on the rise and it is increasingly expressed in terms that are resentful of the devolution settlement. But that doesn’t mean that Englishness is not capable of an open and inclusive political and cultural voice, within a reformed UK.”

He warned mainstream political parties needed to embrace Englishness and take it seriously, or face the consequences.

He said: “There are those that fear that an engagement with a debate about England and Englishness will weaken the Union, but the truth is the opposite.

“The longer this debate is ignored or worse denied the more likely we will see a backlash within England against the UK.”

Richard Wyn Jones, professor of politics at Cardiff University and co-author of the report, argued that attempts to promote Britishness by former Labour prime ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, as well as by Mr Cameron, had failed.

He added: “There is strong evidence that English identity is becoming increasingly politicised. The more English a person feels the more likely they are to be dissatisfied with the way that the UK is being governed post-devolution, and the more likely they are to support the explicit recognition of an English dimension to their country’s politics.”

Mr Cash said the new group at Westminster aiming to save the Union would look in detail at issues such as defence, the economy, North Sea oil and energy, as well as international treaties.

He told The Scotsman that some Scottish MPs had expressed an interest in the group.

But SNP ministers said the intervention would actually bolster support for independence.

A spokesman for Bruce Crawford, the SNP cabinet secretary for government strategy, said: “This is Scotland’s referendum, and the Scottish Government has an overwhelming mandate to hold it. Support for independence is running high in the polls, and nothing could better guarantee that that support surges higher still than this blundering, ham-fisted intervention by Tory right-wingers with no mandate in Scotland.