​England 'pushed towards stronger identity' amid left-wing nationalist plot to break up UK​

The nationalists agreed Scotland, Wales and Ireland should each have the right to determine their own future, raising fresh questions about what would be left for England if the Union began to unravel after centuries of success.

On Friday afternoon, John Swinney's plea for another referendum appeared to be shut down by the Makerfield MP as Andy Burnham said united nations were better in the face of rising geopolitical tensions.

He said: "I think unions of countries are better, because you can face a challenging world in a more confident and stronger way, in my view, when you collaborate and you work together."

Mr Burnham sought to shift the narrative and declared the UK must "move beyond the constitutional question", extending an offer to work with the SNP to make devolution "more localised" across the border in his first speech in Scotland since entering No10.

Stephen Flynn, a Scottish minister, said Mr Burnham, however, would be a hypocrite if he backed a second Brexit referendum - but shied away from an independent Scotland.

The SNP has always had a traditional stronghold in Scotland, while Northern Ireland is both culturally, historically and geographically separated from its neighbours. Wales became the final country to be held by a nationalist party after Labour's disastrous defeat in the Assembly back in May.

For centuries, each country has curated a distinct culture, language and political identity. But, while Scottish, Welsh and Irish nationalism have become powerful forces, England is yet to follow suit.

Professor John Denham, director of the Centre for English Identity and Politics at the University of Southampton and a former Labour minister, said England’s dominance within Britain historically meant it never needed to develop a separate political identity.

Prof Denham told GB News: “As the largest part of the Unions which were at the heart of the largest empire the world had seen, England needed no political identity; and many could think that England and Britain were the same.

“This was never true in Wales or Scotland, or Ireland.”

He said a stronger English political identity had begun to emerge since the fall of the British Empire, but had stopped well short of producing a serious independence movement.

Prof Denham added: “Some sense of English political identity has emerged since the end of Empire and the assertion of national interests, but it has not taken a significant independence expression - more a desire that English interests be protected, whether within the UK or, for some, from the EU."

The polling backs up the professor's assertion that English and British identities remain intertwined.

Some 45 per cent of people in England saw themselves as equally English and British, the 2023 British Social Attitudes survey showed.

Meanwhile, only 23 per cent considered themselves exclusively or predominantly English, while 22 per cent described themselves as exclusively or predominantly British.

A vastly different picture has been painted in Scotland, where 57 per cent said they were exclusively or predominantly Scottish and just 12 per cent exclusively or predominantly British.

And, unlike Scotland and Wales, England has never built a successful nationalist party around that identity.

Prof Denham said England’s lack of its own national political institutions could be one reason why Englishness has never developed in the same way.

He said: “It is at least possible that the emergence of a more distinct English identity is hampered by the lack of any distinct structures of government.

“But it is also significant that England itself is rarely represented publicly in politics, arts or culture - only in sport.”

The question of whether English identity itself has weakened is more complicated; at first glance, the Census figures appear dramatic.

In 2021, just 15.3 per cent of people in England described themselves as “English only”, down from 60.4 per cent in 2011. At the same time, the number identifying as “British only” soared from 19.2 per cent to 56.8 per cent.

But the Office for National Statistics has warned against treating that as evidence of a collapse in English identity.

The wording and ordering of the Census question changed between 2011 and 2021, with “British” appearing before “English” in the later survey, something the ONS said was likely to have had a major impact on the results.

The figures still come against a backdrop of major demographic change.

The 2021 Census found one in six people in England and Wales had been born outside the UK, with the non-UK-born population rising from 7.5 million in 2011 to 10 million a decade later. In London, more than four in 10 residents were born abroad.

Dr Rakib Ehsan, who specialises in immigration, integration and social cohesion, said the scale of that change had pushed English identity back into the political spotlight.

He told GB News: “In an era of industrial-scale immigration and remarkable cultural-demographic change, the matter of ‘Englishness’ is now at the forefront of national conversations on integration and identity.

“It is no surprise that English identity is increasingly being framed in terms of ethnicity and ancestry - especially when there are multiple cities and towns in England where natives are now very much in the minority.”

He also argued that English identity was treated differently from Scottish and Welsh identity.

Dr Ehsan said: “These sensitivities are heightened due to asymmetrical multiculturalism - while the culture, heritage, and traditions of minorities are all too often promoted, expressions of Englishness are treated as forms of xenophobia and bigotry.

“Meanwhile, symbols of ‘Scottishness’ and ‘Welshness’ tend to be looked upon more favourably - perhaps viewed as less ‘threatening’ to the British Union as they are considerably smaller home nations.”

Earlier this month, Suella Braverman suggested non-white people born in the UK could be British - but not English, igniting an identity row between Reform UK and the Conservatives.

Robert Jenrick, Nigel Farage's economic spokesman, waded into the fiery debate on what it actually means to be English after the Tories' Kemi Badenoch drew a dividing line between the right wing parties.

"Millions and millions" of people in England were not "culturally or ethnically" English, Mr Jenrick said, after Mrs Badenoch accused Mrs Braverman of "policing other people’s identity".

Insisting identity was a "personal" matter, the North West Essex MP said: “If that’s how she feels about herself, I think that’s fine, but what I’m worried about is, you know, politicians running around telling some people that they are not English."

Mrs Badenoch added: "I think that we need to be very careful with this sort of conversation.

“What are my children hearing when they’re listening to things like that? My children, they are half-white and half-black. We are a multiracial country. I think we should be proud of that."

On the whole, polling suggests most people in England do not see English identity as something restricted by ethnicity.

Data from More in Common has found that 74 per cent believed someone could be English regardless of their skin colour or ethnic background. Just 17 per cent said race or ethnicity was important in determining whether someone could be English.

Prof Denham also pushed back against the idea that changes to English identity were necessarily unusual.

He said: “National identities always and inevitably change with demographic and cultural change and always have done. There is always debate about how much and how quickly.

"But the process is pretty irresistible over time.”

Prof Denham said English voters generally wanted the Union to survive - but were not necessarily willing to stop other nations leaving.

He explained: “Obviously there is a wide range of views, but the median position of English voters tends to be that they would like the Union to be maintained, but if the Scots, or Welsh or Northern Ireland, want to leave they should be able to.”

Dr Ehsan suggested that could eventually lead to a major shift in who feels most attached to Britain.

He said: “Based on the current social and political trajectory, it is plausible that support for the Union within disaffected elements of England’s indigenous majority may decrease, while integrated ethnic-minority Britons who keep a certain distance from English symbolism could become its staunchest supporters.”

But questions linger over what exactly will happen if the Union itself starts to fall apart.

As separate sovereign nations, each country would preside over matters of border control, their economies and defence as well as their wider international standing on the world stage.

The move would catapult countless decisions at regional leaders, with Wales and Scotland devoutly tied to the British pound. Northern Ireland, if absorbed into its neigbour, would appear to automatically adopt the euro by being returned into the EU.

England, however, would benefit from dropping its neighbours from the British pound, the Institute for Fiscal Studies revealed. The IFS said 10.9 per cent of Scotland’s GDP comes in fiscal benefits, compared to the UK’s 4.2 per cent as a whole.

Essentially, England would become 6.7 per cent richer if Scotland were to break up the Union - but the real-case scenario is far more complicated, the think tank warned.

But the idea of an independent England in practice is often brushed away as a mere thought experiment by academic pundits and constitutional theorists - as the majority of Britons cast doubt on whether the UK would actually break apart in the next few years.

Polling published by Ipsos this month found 55 per cent of Britons believed the UK would still exist in its current form in five years. But confidence dropped sharply over a longer period.

Only 35 per cent believed the Union would still exist in its current form in 10 years, while just 24 per cent thought it would survive unchanged for another 20.

There are already signs that English identity matters politically.

In recent years, patriotic movements have run rampant in parts of England. During the summer of 2025, thousands of St George flags were hoisted on streetlamps and homes across the nation in what celebrants described as a show of patriotism.

But the movement faced backlash from left-wing activists, some of whom dragged down the English flag in retaliation. Campaigners from "Brummies United Against Racism", for instance, demanded that the city council sought an injunction against the group.

"We've been lobbying the council continuously to remove the flags and they've been really dragging their heels about it," one told The Guardian.

Back in 2024, More in Common analysis around the General Election found Reform UK drew disproportionately from voters who placed greater emphasis on their English identity, while Labour performed more strongly among those who leaned towards British identity.

For centuries, England has been able to blur the line between being English and being British. If Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland eventually choose to dismantle the Union, England may no longer have that luxury.

The same break-up of Britain so feared by unionists could, then, end up creating a far stronger sense of Englishness than the Union ever did.