A couple of posts worth highlighting from different points on the political spectrum.
From the left, Socialist Unity on the Raise the Flag campaign:
The importance of fan culture is very big in England, because Sports Patriotism is the only legitimised expression of the English national consciousness. Many socialists forget that national consciousness is – for the vast majority of people - their dominant form of self-identity, and can co-exist with other forms of identity, such as class consciousness. It is important that we contest the political content of the national consciousness, so that people’s sense of self-identity is associated with progressive and not reactionary values.
On the right, Mick Fealty's Brassneck points us to The Croydonian and some interesting remarks by Matthew Parris at a Conservative Way Forward meeting:
A split, perhaps deliberately engineered, between the Scottish Tories and the Tories in the rest of the country would best serve Conservatism in Scotland (What I would call the Germany / Bavaria model. C), as otherwise English nationalism could be the accomplice of Scottish nationalism. A Scottish and rest of the UK Conservative parties could be good for both, and there are plenty of areas where a Scottish Conservative party could act alone an in the interests of Scotland rather than the UK, so the final question is whether the Conservatives can successfully pursue an approach between what we have now and prospective Scottish independence.
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