[Menydh]

Britain as a political entity is the spawn of England. You may argue about Scottish or Welsh involvement from some point of history or another, but the point is that it was upon England's will that Britain was spawned.

I have argued for some time that it is precisely the construct of Britain which will be England's (and Scotland's and Wales' or any other nation 'assimilated' by it) graveyard. This is of course an analysis from an ethnic point of view. For me the idea of nationhood depends upon a certain degree of ethnic homogeneity and as such I understand Nationalism. In that respect British is a concept unrelated to nationhood since it assimilates a wide range of nations and other identity groups, be it [British] Scottish, [British] English, [British] Indian, [British] Afro-Caribbean, ... even [British] Australian or [British] Muslim. At any rate, British seems to mark the step at which ethnic nationhood stops being anymore a reality.

However, I am aware that there are people who understand the concept of nationhood differently, equating it to statehood. And, regardless of whether I believe that it is a misunderstanding or not, the word nation is sometimes used to identify states even when it is wrong. And here, again, Britain seems to be the graveyard for England judging from what you are saying. Although in this case this is not a shared problem with the other nations.

You point at the problem yourself when you say "Britain was a nation". Well, it was not. It was a state. If Britain had been a nation the separation of the different territories into states would not change things much with regards to nationhood. But because those territories are nations in their own right (or a part of a different nation as in the case of Northern Ireland), their move towards constituting their own states follows the total disintegration of Britain since it is not a nation and it is stopping being a state anymore.

How this affects to England is clear to me. Since England has been identifying itself with Britain through long centuries, it has come to a point where it has lost its identity to Britain. One might argue that Britain's identity is then England's and that it's been England which has molded Britain's identity. That would be true to a point. But then again, it would also be true that Britain has assimilated enough elements from other identities (and not just from the Islands) and that has obviously affected England's self identity.

This is reflected in your accounts which show a status of weakness in front the other national territories. It also reflects in the fact that Nationalism as such does not exist in England, but the closest to it is a racist group, the British National Party, adscribed in the so-called White Nationalist movement (which doesn't stand for any nation nor is it any real movement). In other words, not very close to what Nationalism is and represents.

It's always been my suspicion that if anything close to Nationalism came to existance in England, it would have to be still different to Nationalism elsewhere and probably come through a split in the Tories. I wouldn't dare to speculate about the details of this possible nationalist approach.

What's your opinion on the whole issue?