The Politics of English Nationhood

Michael Kenny

Supplies a highly distinctive, new perspective upon Englishness
An accessible and critical account of existing interpretations of Englishness

The Politics of English Nationhood

Michael Kenny

Description

The Politics of English Nationhood supplies the first comprehensive overview of the evidence, research and major arguments relating to the revival of Englishness, exploring its varied, and often overlooked, political ramifications and dimensions. It examines the difficulties which the major political parties have encountered in dealing with 'the English question' against the backdrop of the diminishing hold of established ideas of British government and national identity in the final years of the last century. And it explores a range of factors--including insecurities generated by economic change, Euroscepticism, and a growing sense of cultural anxiety--which helped make the renewal of Englishness appealing and imperative, prior to the introduction of devolution by the first Blair government, a policy which also gave this process a further impetus.

The book therefore provides a powerful challenge to the two established orthodoxies in this area. These either maintain that the English are dispositionally unable to assert their own nationhood outside the framework of the British state, or point to the supposed resurgence of a resentful and reactive sense of English nationalism. This volume instead demonstrates that a renewed, resonant and internally divided sense of English nationhood is apparent across the lines of class, geography, age, and ethnicity. And it identifies several distinct strands of national identity that have emerged in this period, contrasting the appearance of populist and resentful forms of English nationalism with an embedded and deeply rooted sense of conservative Englishness and attempts to reconstruct a more liberal and civic idea of a multicultural England. This volume also includes a wide-ranging analysis of the culturally rooted revival of Englishness, drawing out the political dimensions and implications of this re-emerging form of national consciousness.

The Politics of English Nationhood

Michael Kenny

Introduction: England as an Imagined Community - Myths, Ideas and Politics
1. Crisis over Nationhood - the 1990s Reconsidered
2. Interpreting Englishness - Views from Right, Left and the British Centre
3. Englishness as a Mass Phenomenon -- Evidence and Interpretation
4. The Cultural Politics of Englishness
5. Answering "the English Question" - Party Politics, Public Policy and the Nationalist Fringe
6. Political Intimations of English Grievance - West Lothian and the Barnett Formula
Conclusions: Reconfiguring the Politics of English Nationhood

The Politics of English Nationhood

Michael Kenny

Author Information

Michael Kenny, Professor of Politics, Queen Mary, University of London

Michael Kenny is the recipient of a Major Research Fellowship awarded by the Leverhulme Trust, 2012-14. He has previously worked as Lecturer in Politics at Queen's University, Belfast, and was Professor, and Head of Department, in Politics at the University of Sheffield, and is currently a Research Associate at the Institute for Public Policy Research. He is a Professor of Politics at Queen Mary, University of London. He has published widely in the fields of modern political thought, political ideologies, the role of ideas in public policy, and is the author of The First New Left in Britain (1995) and The Politics of Identity (2004), and the joint editor of Rethinking British Decline (2000), The Idea of Global Civil Society (2004), The Oxford Handbook of British Politics (2009) and Reassessing New Labour (2011).

The Politics of English Nationhood

Michael Kenny

Reviews and Awards

WJM MacKenzie Prize for best book of 2014 by the Political Studies Association

"To what extent has there been a rise in English nationalism in recent years? What is its character, and its possible causes? Michael Kenny's subtle and suggestive study is unusual in stressing the importance of political traditions and ideologies, to complement the usual cultural analyses, in explaining recent developments. He draws upon a mass of recent survey research and combines this skilfully with historical and cultural accounts to conduct a thoughtful and illuminating inquiry that will be a major contribution to current debates about the future of the United Kingdom." --Krishan Kumar, University of Virginia

"The Politics of English Nationhood is a good example of political writing that is sufficiently flexible to allow for historical contingency. One of the strengths of The Politics of English Nationhood is its judicious weighing of the evidence. One senses that the heavily qualified case that Kenny makes, almost inclines him to proceed at a rarefied level of discussion." -Nations and Nationalism

"This is a sophisticated and historically rich analysis and a welcome counter-balance to some of the more simplistic writing about the English question." -Michael Keating

The Politics of English Nationhood

Michael Kenny

From Our Blog

The English question: a Burkean response?

The prospective award of substantial new powers to the Scottish Parliament, which is currently being debated by the Smith Commission, has engendered a growing unease about the constitutional position of many different parts of the UK. This issue is causing concern in Wales, still reeling at the rushed and unfortunate decision to rule the Barnett formula [...]

Posted on December 14, 2014

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