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England is the only Home Nation in the United Kingdom without a Devolved National Assembly

Reader comment on item: An American in Search of the English National Character
in response to reader comment: England re-emerging as a distinct political entity? How so?

Submitted by Andrew Baldwin (Canada), Feb 1, 2021 at 12:32

Dong, like you, I didn't know what to make of Daniel Pipes' remark about England re-emerging as a distinct political entity. England is a distinct sporting entity, with its own national teams in football and so forth, but more than two decades after the Blair government started devolution to the Home Nations, only the English do not have their own national parliament. The Blair government did establish nine regional development agencies for England, which seemed to indicate that if the United Kingdom ever did become a fully federal union, similar to Australia or Canada, there would still not be an English province, although there would be provinces that respected English boundaries. I can see the dangers of a federation where one province was dominant, but that would not necessarily be a fatal obstacle. After all, Flanders has most of the population of Belgium, and that country is still a going concern. Anyway, this would seem to be more a question for the English to decide for themselves, and not for elites to decide for them.

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