The one-sentence summary

The national story of England has been highjacked by The Right but it can be reclaimed because there is another version of the story that is dramatically more inclusive and forward-looking.

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WHAT THE BOOK SAYS

  • The author was the UK’s first Green Party MP in 2010 and served as party leader from 2008 to 2012, serving for 25 years until standing down by the 2024 election.
  • Having gained a PhD in English Literature, she delves deep into England’s literary history to sketch out alternative stories of who we are – ones that we can all embrace to build a greener, fairer future. She believes that by engaging with literature we can open up new possibilities.
  • Today, the only people who dare speak of Englishness are cheerleaders for Brexit, exceptionalism and imperial nostalgia. But there is another England hiding in plain sight.
  • First, we need to consider the distinction between England, Britain, Great Britain and the United Kingdom. In many discussions, the four descriptions are used interchangeably, but this disguises many issues. For example, what is England if Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales are removed from the equation – something that the author refers to as Nixit, Sexit and Wexit? All three scenarios are possible, so what would England be as a result?
  • Literature can shed a new light on our three greatest challenges:
    1. How to reform our political system so that accountability, fairness and respect are at the heart of how we govern ourselves.
    2. How we can all live well within the constraints of a finite planet.
    3. How we can be a more open and confident nation, celebrating difference rather than seeking to repress it.
  • Our national identity has always been a story as much as a reality, and it has been rewritten many times over the centuries to create all the myths that make up our conception of ‘Englishness’. Everything from Robin Hood to the Armada to Dunkirk can be packaged up to suggest that England might somehow be better off by isolating itself, whilst peddling fantasies about recreating the Empire.
  • EVEL stands for English Votes for English Laws – a concept that no government has had the inclination to implement, because they fear that on certain issues they would not prevail without, for example, the votes of Scottish MPs. But ignoring the possibility of reform ignores the potential effects of devolution, should it occur, leaving a solitary England with unclear powers over itself.
  • Rural England is idealized but England has been a mainly urban country for around 200 years. As Geroge Monbiot notes, one of the greatest threats to life on Earth is poetry, in which nature is made to serve a human purpose, often through nostalgia.
  • It is worth noting that, in the strict sense, we haven’t had an ethnically English king or queen since 1066.

WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT IT

  • To forge a new Englishness, we need to put our faith in democracy by making four constitutional changes:
    1. We need proportional representation because first past the post has a knack for producing perverse and undemocratic outcomes.
    2. We need to change our constitutional fabric. There are over a hundred ministers, and many of the roles are to reward party factions and buy loyalty.
    3. We need to remove elective dictatorship by creating a written constitution that clearly states the rights and responsibilities of government, courts, police and so on.
    4. We need to reexamine the role of the monarchy and institutions like the House of Lords and the Civil Service because none of them work as they should.
  • There is an old joke that politicians who fail to get elected think the answer is to change the electorate, but the message in it is that if you listen to the English people’s concerns, honour their most positive traditions, and give priority to the issues that matter most to them, the way in which the country is governed could be transformed.
  • Everyone knows about the 1215 Magna Carta that guaranteed English political liberties, but few know about the Charter of the Forest which was issued two years later and contained some of the most radical commitments on access rights to the commons ever to have been agreed. Since that time, the ruling classes have systematically stolen huge amounts of common land. As Gerard Winstanley said, ‘For what you call the Law is but a club of the rich over the lowest of men, sanctifying the conquest of the earth by a few and making their theft the way of things.’
  • Average earnings in the UK have hardly risen since 2008, while the amount of wealth held by the better-off has skyrocketed.
  • Despite overwhelming evidence that countries with greater equality are more likely to have less crime, less mental illness, longer life expectancy, and better social cohesion, capitalist societies such as England and the USA are repeatedly heading for greater inequality.
  • In a study by the Swedish Academy of Sciences on biodiversity, wellbeing and nature connectedness in 14 countries, the UK came bottom in all three.
  • The current version of Net Zero is based on magical thinking because there will still be plenty of climate gases being produced in the UK but offset by so-called negative emissions. But the country isn’t even big enough to plant enough trees to achieve this.
  • Prisoners now spend more time in the open air than most of our young people. Richard Louv calls this nature deficit disorder, which leads to everything from a diminished sense of self-worth to higher rates of physical and emotional illness and an inability to form relationships.

WHAT YOU HAVE TO WATCH

  • There is a fair amount of literary reference in the book, so it depends on the reader’s level of interest in the subject.