National Identity, Devolution Grievances, English Nationalism, Cultural Distinctiveness, and the Ongoing Negotiation Between Union and Autonomy
The Multinational State and Its Discontents
The United Kingdom is a multinational state — a political union of distinct nations with distinct identities, histories, languages (three of them), and political traditions. This is its strength: the pooling of resources, defence, and international influence that makes the UK more significant than its constituent parts would be separately. It is also its permanent constitutional challenge: managing the competing national identities, grievances, and aspirations within a single political framework that was designed in 1707 and modified incrementally without ever quite deciding whether Britain is a unitary state with devolved elements or a union of nations with a common Parliament.
The answer, characteristically, is both — depending on the question being asked and the political moment in which it is being answered. When Westminster wants to override a devolved decision, Britain is a unitary state. When Holyrood wants powers that Westminster is reluctant to devolve, the Scotland Act’s reserved matters list defines the boundary. When the Northern Ireland Protocol required Irish Sea regulatory checks, the unity of the UK single market was the frame. When Scottish independence polling shows majority support, the once-in-a-generation framing of 2014 is deployed. The multinational state manages its tensions through a flexibility of constitutional interpretation that would be described as inconsistency if it were applied by anyone other than a constitutional convention.
Scottish Identity: Nationalism, Civic Nationalism, and the Post-SNP Question
Scottish national identity is among the most politically mobilised in Europe — a civic nationalism built around distinct institutions (the legal system, the Church of Scotland, the education system, the NHS Scotland), distinct political culture, and a sustained democratic divergence from England that has produced consistently more left-leaning electoral outcomes and persistent majority opposition to Conservative Westminster governments that Scotland did not elect.
The SNP’s dominance of Scottish politics from 2007 to 2024 transformed Scottish independence from a minority aspiration to a mainstream political position, shifting the Overton window sufficiently that the question of whether Scotland should be independent is now asked routinely rather than occasionally. The SNP’s subsequent decline — governance controversies, leadership instability, police investigation — has not extinguished independence sentiment, which polling shows hovering around 45-50%, but has separated independence aspiration from SNP support in ways that the independence movement’s strategy must now accommodate. Independence is popular. The SNP, for a period, was less popular. These things can coexist, which is itself a constitutional observation about the maturity of Scottish nationalist politics.
Welsh Identity: Language, Labour, and the Long Road to Legislative Power
Welsh identity is shaped by a language — Welsh — spoken by approximately 28% of the population and subject to statutory protection and promotion through the Welsh Language Commissioner and bilingual public administration. The Welsh language is both a distinctive cultural marker and a political question: its promotion is broadly supported but its costs (bilingual signage, translation services, Welsh-medium education) are contested in terms of priority relative to other public spending.
Wales has been governed by Labour since devolution, first in coalition, then in majority, then again in coalition — a period of continuous Labour administration that reflects Wales’s political culture and raises the question of what devolution achieves when the governing party in Cardiff and the governing party in London are occasionally the same. The answer is that devolved administration has allowed policy divergence — free prescriptions, no tuition fees (later reintroduced at lower levels), free school meals — that reflects Welsh political choices rather than Westminster ones, which is what devolution was designed to enable.
Welsh independence — Cymru Am Byth — is supported by approximately 30-35% of Welsh voters, less than Scotland but increasing. Plaid Cymru has moved from cultural nationalism toward a more explicit independence platform. The conditions that produced the independence movement in Scotland — perceived democratic deficit, distinct political culture, Brexit — apply with variations in Wales, which voted Leave in 2016 despite being a significant net beneficiary of EU structural funds, in a decision that researchers have attributed to broadly the same conditions of economic marginalisation and institutional distrust that produced Leave votes across the UK.
English Nationalism: The Sleeping Giant That Woke Up and Is Not Sure What It Wants
English national identity — distinct from British identity — has become politically significant in ways that were not anticipated when devolution was designed. The 2011 census showed significant increases in people identifying as English rather than British, particularly in working class communities and areas of economic disadvantage. English nationalism’s political expression has been primarily through Brexit — understood by many Leave voters as an English nationalist project even when framed in UK-wide terms — and through Reform UK’s implicit appeal to English cultural identity.
The institutional expression of English identity is thin: no English Parliament, no English First Minister, no distinctive English governmental institutions below the metro mayor level. This is simultaneously England’s constitutional disadvantage (no dedicated voice for English interests within the UK’s devolution settlement) and its structural advantage (Westminster, where England’s 84% population share dominates, IS the English Parliament, functionally if not formally). The West Lothian Question — which has no satisfactory answer — is England’s most concrete constitutional grievance. Its persistence is both a reminder that asymmetric devolution creates structural unfairness and a demonstration that structural unfairness is politically manageable when those affected are the dominant majority.
Auf Wiedersehen, amigo!
The United Kingdom is a multinational state comprising England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, each with distinct national identities, histories, and political cultures. Scottish independence support polls at approximately 45-50% following the 2014 No vote; the Supreme Court ruled in 2022 that a second referendum requires Westminster consent. The SNP governed Scotland from 2007 to 2024 in various configurations before significant seat losses in the 2024 Westminster election. Welsh independence support stands at approximately 30-35%. Welsh is spoken by approximately 28% of the Welsh population and has statutory protection. English national identity — distinct from British identity — has grown in political salience since 2016. The West Lothian Question remains constitutionally unresolved following the abolition of English Votes for English Laws in 2021.
Alan Nafzger was born in Lubbock, Texas, the son Swiss immigrants. He grew up on a dairy in Windthorst, north central Texas. He earned degrees from Midwestern State University (B.A. 1985) and Texas State University (M.A. 1987). University College Dublin (Ph.D. 1991). Dr. Nafzger has entertained and educated young people in Texas colleges for 37 years. Nafzger is best known for his dark novels and experimental screenwriting. His best know scripts to date are Lenin’s Body, produced in Russia by A-Media and Sea and Sky produced in The Philippines in the Tagalog language. In 1986, Nafzger wrote the iconic feminist western novel, Gina of Quitaque. He currently lives in Holloway, North London. Contact: [email protected]
