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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Gavin Esler
Read between
May 21 - May 25, 2021
The coach is of a 200-year-old design, yet it is just two years old, commissioned in 2012, completed in 2014, and by 2016 still newer than most cars on British roads.
The United Kingdom survived the attentions of Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin and his successors – although perhaps it is more accurate to say that it survived because of the attentions of Napoleon, Hitler and the others.
Historians, most notably Linda Colley, point out that for centuries the glue that held the United Kingdom together was a mixture of three powerful elements – Protestantism, empire and war.
The central argument of this book is that while the United Kingdom can survive Irish, Scottish and Welsh nationalisms it cannot survive English nationalism.
The English anthropologist Kate Fox claims that ‘the English are not usually given to patriotic boasting’. In itself this is a very English way of boasting, a humble-brag about English exceptionalism.1
English nationalism was the principal cause of Britain’s decision to leave the European Union.
The Scottish writer and broadcaster Ludovic Kennedy once described Scotland’s relationship with England as being ‘in bed with an elephant’.
‘An Englishman, Scotsman and Irishman walk into a bar. The Englishman wants to go home – so everyone else has to leave.’
‘Scotland has sent a very clear message – we don’t want a Boris Johnson government, we don’t want to leave the EU. Boris Johnson has a mandate to take England out of the EU but he must accept that I have a mandate to give Scotland a choice for an alternative future.’
That’s one of the reasons ‘Take Back Control’ was such a powerful slogan in the Brexit debate. It captured the idea that England’s own ‘democratic deficit’ and perceived loss of ‘control’ could be cured by leaving the European Union.
‘Unable to exit Britain, the English did the next best thing and told the EU to fuck off.’ Anthony Barnett, The Lure of Greatness
English nationalist sentiment blamed Brussels for imposing laws and rules against ‘our’ will, while Scottish nationalist sentiment blamed London and Westminster.
Smile at us, pay us, pass us; but do not quite forget; For we are the people of England, that never have spoken yet.
If you live in Darlington, Keighley, Barrow, Stockton, Walsall or Warrington, you probably know that your once-Labour town voted Leave in 2016 and now has a Conservative MP. You are even more likely to know something else. Your town has lost its Marks and Spencer. For some residents, the loss of their M&S is of little importance; for others it matters more than politics.8
When the Union of Parliaments act was signed the bells rang out a tune called ‘Why should I be sad on my wedding day?’
Worrying about some phantom dilution of a national identity within the EU is not a Scottish problem. But it is an English nationalist obsession.
History, as Napoleon Bonaparte once said, is a set of lies agreed upon. A
The phrase ‘in a country like Britain where institutions just evolved’ is simply nonsense. The Union of Crowns, the Union of Parliaments, the Revolution Settlement, the Protestant ascendancy, the Union with Ireland, the 1832 Reform Act, the Partition of Ireland, the agreement over power-sharing in Northern Ireland, the creation of devolved parliaments and assemblies and other institutions including the NHS did not ‘just evolve’.
They were the product of crises, in some cases of riots and bloodshed, or an attempt to forestall crises, riots and bloodshed.
The Hungarian humourist and émigré George Mikes observed: ‘A criminal may improve and become a decent member of society. A foreigner cannot improve… There is no way out for him. He may become British, he can never become English.’
In Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises one character asks another: ‘How did you go bankrupt?’ His friend answers: ‘Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.’
‘The news where you are comes after the news where we are. The news where we are is the news. It comes first.’ From ‘The News Where You Are’ James Robertson
England is and always will be Scotland’s biggest trading partner and biggest source of tourism and investment.
Always?? Look at Ireland.
My favourite version was the gentleman who wrote to me, very politely, as follows: ‘I would rather support Satan and all his minions gloriously arrayed than any England football team. I am not particularly proud of this. It is just the way I am.’
Sultan Bayezid II is credited with a withering response to courtiers who felt Spain had done the right thing by getting rid of people considered ‘of impure blood’. Bayezid said: ‘You venture to call Ferdinand a wise ruler – he who has impoverished his own country and enriched mine.’
there is nothing within the current political system that Scots can do about it, except complain. And when they do complain, they are ‘othered’.
Brexit was apparently an England-only affair. Scotland was being dragged along but not being kept informed.
But Ireland has historically always had an English Question: what on earth are the English playing at?
Boris Johnson is not a ‘One Nation’ Conservative but a ‘One Notion’ Conservative. His One Notion has always been to do whatever is best for Boris Johnson.
My country is Kiltartan Cross, My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor, No likely end could bring them loss Or leave them happier than before.
If general standards of good behaviour among senior UK politicians can no longer be taken for granted, then neither can the sustenance of key constitutional principles.6
Two of the most thoughtful constitutional experts in Britain are warning that the British uncodified constitution is potentially dangerous rather than glorious, and no one can guarantee that it can be sustained in the long term.
‘The English are not usually given to patriotic boasting.’21 This, frankly, is laughable, and is a humble-brag of Jonsonian (and indeed Johnsonian) proportions. But
Scotland, as Salmond says in the final lines of his book, will seek its independence because ‘everyone deserves a second chance. Every person, and every nation’.3
never to ‘let a serious crisis go to waste… it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before’.
But now that the United Kingdom is firmly attached, Brexit is drowning the union. They say that kelpies can be tamed, but only if you grab their bridle and take back control. Of course, that’s only a legend.
