The Archbishop of York has accused the London “metropolitan elite” of labelling people who are proud to be English as “backwardly xenophobic”.
The Most Rev Stephen Cottrell said many English people felt “left behind” and were making a “heartfelt cry to be heard”. He called for people to embrace “an expansive vision of what it means to be English” and to try to rediscover a sense of national unity.
Writing for The Daily Telegraph, Cottrell said: “Many English people feel left behind by metropolitan elites in London and the southeast, and by devolved governments and strengthened regional identities in Scotland and Wales. Their heartfelt cry to be heard is often disregarded, wilfully misunderstood or patronised as being backwardly xenophobic.
“But what if this is about the loss of identity? No longer British, temperamentally never really European, and definitely outside the wealth and opportunities of London, English people want to know what has happened to their country. These questions of identity and purpose have never really been addressed.”
The de facto head of the Church of England while the Archbishop of Canterbury is on sabbatical called for greater devolution to the English and the creation of “a more developed and strengthened regional government within England”.
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He was writing amid a renewed focus on Scottish independence as Boris Johnson visited the nation this week.
Cottrell suggested that English sports teams should sing their own anthem before matches instead of God Save The Queen.
He said that national unity was “more fractured than I have ever known it in my lifetime”. “Without strengthening regional identity, we will carry on defining ourselves against things — Europe, London, Westminster — leading to a negative political discourse and a hopeless future,” he added. “When our English and regional identities are strengthened, we take a proper pride and responsibility in our own self-determination, as part of something larger than ourselves.”
The archbishop said people should focus on institutions that bound them together such as the monarchy and the church. He also singled out the NHS and the BBC World Service.
“These two words seem to me to be the best ones to define the Englishness I long for: the courageous, entrepreneurial spirit of a trading, island nation; and the compassion of a nation slowly facing up to some of the failings of its colonial past; a pioneer of common suffrage and healthcare for all; the birthplace of the World Service. It is time to be proud to be English”, he said.
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•The government has spent more than £163,000 this year and last on British flags, figures showed. Spending on Union flags has risen in almost every department since Boris Johnson entered No 10, according to The Guardian.
