Because in days gone by the main business of English politics was holding the multi­national UK together, the majority English suppressed an explicitly English nationalism so as not to provoke the others. Indeed they encouraged and patronised Irish, Welsh and Scottish culture – so long as it did not take a politically separatist form.

This has left English self-consciousness the most uncertain. I endorse a growing paradox: that the English should no longer suppress their Englishness and should see what it means to be both English and British.