There's something stirring in the English soul

There was much agonising in England this week at the findings of a survey which claimed to show that the English have no coherent sense of their own identity.

The symbols associated with England, they said - Big Ben, fish and chips, Wimbledon and the rest "do not add up to a national identity that connects with people, inspires them and makes them feel proud".

To which I say, well of course they don't. Ask a silly question and you get a silly answer.

By comparison, the survey said (based on all of 40 interviews) the Welsh and the Scots have a more positive sense of their own identity. Well, of course they do. There is a government in London throwing money at them precisely because they aren't English: the average Scot gets more back for his taxes than the average Englishman, has more Westminster MPs per head of the population, and is shortly to have his own parliament in Edinburgh to reinforce his sense of separateness.

Vast amounts of money were and will be spent in Scotland and Wales to persuade people living there that the solution to their problems is to have yet more politicians. So it's hardly earth-shattering to hear that some London brand agency is impressed by the fact that they have a clearer sense of their identity than the poor old English, saddled with a lot of English tourist board whimsy about thatched cottages, Beefeaters and warm beer.

But the deeper reason the Scots and Welsh have a clearer sense of themselves is precisely that they are not English. As one woman from Glasgow told the company: "My sons is very anti-English. Since he has seen Braveheart, he's more anti-English."

The issue has begun to be more urgent for the English for three reasons. Firstly, in May the Scots and Welsh will vote for their local parliaments. Secondly, the end of the British Empire has made the Scots and Welsh increasingly question whether there is benefit any longer in being associated with the imperial project. Thirdly, the European Union offers each "nation" the chance to forge a new identity. Once a united states of Europe exists - or some loose federation - the United Kingdom will become redundant.

For now, the model is Ireland, which has managed in the space of 20 years to throw off its image as a place of pastoral poverty and reinvent itself as a young, energetic and forward-looking nation. The independent-minded Scots and Welsh see there is no longer any need for them to define themselves by relation to their fat neighbour.

The English have watched all these developments with their usual indifference. There are perfectly understandable reasons for the English to be distrustful of continental Europe: our history tells us it is always a place of intrigue and war, and the hundreds of thousands laid in war graves provide ample recent evidence of the dangers there.

It is only recently, indeed, that they have begun to understand that the new institutions of Europe change the game completely. As long as they remained the dominant culture in a United Kingdom which ruled an Empire on which the sun never set, they hardly needed to think about what it is that makes them who they are.

Now, the English just find themselves stuck with the nasty residue of Britishness, the Union Jack shorts on the sunburned back of football hooligans. The symbols of their identify, the Church of England, the royal family, have lost their lustre.

But something is beginning to stir out there. At Euro '96 and the 1998 World Cup, for the first time the flag of St George began to outnumber the union flags waved by England supporters. The English rugby team is grumbling about the need for a new national song to replace that old unionist dirge God Save the Queen. There are even a few people aware that April 23rd is the National Day.

I don't suggest that we shall have parades to match the St Patrick's Day march in New York, or even binges like a good Burns Night. Indeed, the challenge to the English is to find a way of rediscovering their identity without falling into the arms of the Little Englanders and bigots.

If only they would have the courage to embrace it, the English have a ready reservoir of symbols to hand, to show them who they are. These need not be the pastiche of the tourist board, any more than Ireland is the country of Paddy McGinty's goat.

The history of England is the assertion of the rights of the individual against the rights of the state. The contrast is with France, where you can argue the reverse is true - which is why Frenchness is about about l'etat and the pretensions of its political class.

The English, by contrast, have developed a fiercely independent tradition of thought, with a bricks-and-mortar expression in property rights and the most idiosyncratic intellectuals in Europe. What I love most about them is their simple cussedness.

These surveys, however well-intentioned, are never going to tell us anything about the state of the English mind, for they look at the wrong things. As I look around me, I see a country bursting with creativity, exuberant in its youth culture, yet retaining the small civilities of everyday life. There is an old story about an American and an Englishmen surveying the same scene of catastrophe. The American, in true can-do spirit reported back that "the situation is serious but it's not hopeless".

The Englishman said: "It's hopeless. But it's not serious."

I don't think we need to worry too much.

Jeremy Paxman is a presenter with BBC TV's Newsnight. His latest book, The English, is published by Michael Joseph (£20 sterling).