Article (Scots Herald): Scots independence could be what England needs

[...] In a terribly run-down estate near Rochdale, just off the M62, I encountered a compassionate and humane vicar who was in despair. His parish was beset by drug-taking, prostitution and vandalism, by squalor and misery. The unemployment rate among the young was more than 70%. He contrasted this with his previous parish in Dorset, one of the wealthiest in England. Nothing in his upbringing, his training or his culture had prepared him for what he had found in this bereft corner of Lancashire.

He believed that his national church, the Church of England, had "ratted" on his estate. He said that his church should have had at least seven or eight people serving in his parish, not just him. He despaired of his country. He could find no binding, cohesive force. England was divided and broken.

His anger was eloquent and profound and I was perhaps naive to seek in a benign and nascent English nationalism a possible answer to his hopelessness. The disparities and divisions he had experienced bedevil many countries, not just England. Yet I sensed that he was longing for some national force to help his people, and to build a bridge between the two different Englands he had experienced. Britishness would have been of no use to him, but a benign encompassing Englishness might. Read more