National Britain Day

It is reported that ministers are proposing a ‘National Britain Day’. What they fail to realise is that this sort of gesture politics does nothing to reverse the divides which widen by the day due to their own faulty policies.

The developing separation between England and Scotland is due to the constitutional anomaly of devolution. Some pedants are inclined to point out that, technically, ‘Britain’ excludes Northern Ireland,* but I don’t believe this is true in people’s minds. The problem is that the people running the country are not actually unionists at heart, so don’t consider the effects of what they do on the bond between the partners of the union.

Would anyone in government hesitate to sign NI over to the separatists? The same would be true of Scotland were it not for the fact that many of them are representatives of Scottish constituencies. The current situation suits these most of all because they can enforce unpopular measures on the English with no electoral impact on themselves. All this damages English people’s commitment to the union, as they feel they are second-class members in a union of which they form a numerical majority.

An annual flag-waving day does nothing to change day-to-day realities.

*The full name of the country is The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, but United Kingdom and Great britain are generally used interchangably.

~ by yorksdevil on June 5, 2007.