Devolved `New Britain' must tackle the English question

So, are the angry English, with their potential for aggression and violence, about to subjugate afresh the peoples of Ireland, Scotland and Wales?

Barely 11 days into the new millennium, the air still filled with Mr Blair's bright talk of pluralism, inclusivity and new beginnings, the reader might instantly suspect the rantings of some surviving member of the Tory "Barmy Army" which so tormented Mr Major in the last parliament.

But the discomfiture for Mr Blair is that the spectre of a violent upsurge in English nationalism is raised, not by some hopeless old reactionary yearning for the return of empire, but by his Home Secretary, Mr Jack Straw.

Mr William Hague will have thought himself on safe enough territory last night, seizing the Flag of St George with which to stir the still-sleeping giant of English nationalism.

Certainly, there was a familiar ring to his warning that this is the most dangerous of all nationalist forms now confronting the UK. When he travels to meetings in Essex, apparently, Mr Hague now finds the host hotel sporting the "English" emblem in preference to the Union flag.

Devolution, he says (clearly thinking primarily of Scotland rather than Wales), has contributed to the rise of an English political consciousness. "Once a part of a united country or kingdom that is so predominant in size becomes nationalistic, then really the whole thing is under threat," he told the BBC Radio 4 programme, Brits.

Left without a parliamentary seat in Scotland or Wales at the 1997 general election, his party defeated in the referendums of the same year, the Conservative leader has obvious continuing difficulty coming to terms with Mr Blair's devolution project.

It was, and is, impossible for the Tories to oppose constitutional reforms embraced by the people, the very demand for which is seen by many to have been fuelled by years of neglect and indifference by successive Conservative governments.

As it happens, given the Westminster wipe-out, the Tories were glad of the limited representation they won last summer in Cardiff and Edinburgh. And for all his criticism of the Blair project, Mr Hague has conspicuously failed thus far to embrace the concept of a separate parliament for the English.

However, if as yet unclear as to precisely what he does want, Mr Hague knows what he does not: continued Scottish interference in English issues over which the Holyrood parliament enjoys domestic autonomy.

The only answer to the threat, he says, is "to have English votes on English laws; not to set up an English parliament but to say that within the parliament we've got, when it considers purely English matters, then only English MPs should have a vote".

No surprises there. And Mr Blair would have no difficulty summoning the energy (if not quite the logic) with which to rebuke this latest Tory portrayal of the Little Englander.

Unfortunately for Downing Street, Mr Hague was joined on the programme by Mr Straw, one of Mr Blair's more engaging ministers and known for a willingness to delve into the detail of arguments other cabinet colleagues would cheerfully avoid.

Contributing his assessment of the meaning of modern Britishness, Mr Straw suggested that devolution and closer identification with Europe were challenging the English sense of identity for the first time in centuries.

The English, he said, had used their "propensity to violence" to subjugate Ireland, Wales and Scotland. "Then we used it in Europe and with our empire, so I think what you have within the United Kingdom is three small nations in terms of their populations who've been over the centuries under the cosh of the English. Those small nations have inevitably sought expression by a very explicit idea of nationhood."

Some 10 times bigger and very self-confident, England, said Mr Straw, had not needed to be so explicit about its expression. However, he added: "I think as we move into this new century people's sense of Englishness will become more articulated, and that's partly because of the mirror that devolution provides us with and because we're becoming more European at the same time."

Some Conservative commentators were quick to discern an offence to unionist Ulster. And the shadow leader of the Commons, Sir George Young, condemned Mr Straw for "an amazing insult to England".

It is doubtful if the Home Secretary, an English MP, intended any offence to his fellow-countrymen. Nor do his words constitute a prophecy of the Thames foaming with much blood.

That said, this intervention by one of the ministers believed most sceptical about the whole enterprise has dramatically underlined the outstanding fact that Mr Blair's devolved agenda leaves unresolved the question of England.

At various stages - during the referendum campaigns, the passage of the devolution legislation and the devolved election campaigns last summer - it was widely remarked that the English appeared unaware of, or indifferent to, the profound changes unfolding across the British political landscape. It seems this is no longer so.

Certainly, the sense of this unanswered English question was brought home to The Irish Times in the week before Christmas. Collecting opinion on the potential significance of the newly-formed British Irish Council - it brings together the British and Irish governments, the devolved leaders from Belfast, Edinburgh and Cardiff and the representatives of the Channel Islands - one of Westminster's best informed commentators asked quite seriously: "But who will speak for England?"

Nor is the question merely exercising Cornish nationalists. The campaign for an assembly in the north-east is gathering pace, underlining in the process not simply the north-south but also the Scottish-English divide.

According to one close observer there is evidence that what he calls "the magnetic pull" of Edinburgh is exerting itself over any natural feelings of kinship for London.

And from the east midlands there are reports of incipient regionalism. This is fuelled by the seemingly growing belief that it is no longer acceptable that Scotland and Wales (and Northern Ireland) should enjoy higher levels of public expenditure per head of population than England.

Last April the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, made the most considered ministerial effort to date to define New Labour's New Unionism. His vision was of a New Britishness, no longer disabled by nostalgia for story-book uniformity, for things lost or things that never were, but rooted in enduring British values of enterprise and hard work, outward-looking tolerance and fairness in a newly pluralist and decentralised democracy.

It was a compelling vision. But as they are largely left to find their own answers to Mr Blair's constitutional conundrum, it is one plainly not yet shared by all of Mr Brown's "New Britain of Citizens".