Michael Knowles, chairman of the Campaign for an English Parliament, on how Labour's policies have led to "Englishness" rising again...
Gisela Stuart says she is worried by the number of her constituents who now claim to be English first and foremost rather than British.
Wheres she been the last eight years? Its the devolution policies of her own Labour Government which have brought about this historic renewal of our sense of a distinct English identity.
It was Gordon Brown at the 1997 Labour conference, arguing for a separate parliament for his own country of Scotland, who first used the phrase the nations of Britain rather than the British nation.
It was Tony Blair in his preface to the Scottish Devolution White Paper who spoke of Scotland as a proud historic nation within the UK.
It is Ms Stuarts Government that has been vigorously promoting separate Scottish and Welsh identities, while trying to abolish England by obliterating its ancient counties and balkanising it into EU regions.
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This Blair-Brown-Prescott government is a very anti-English government indeed. But the fightback has begun. National identity is something people feel very passionately about indeed. Millions of people in England now are drawing the very obvious conclusion from the Governments devolution programme namely, if the UK government can declare the Scots and the Welsh to be constitutionally distinct nations, it should do the same for England.
And as David Blunkett has said so powerfully in a very recent lecture, the next step for the people of England is to have their renewed sense of Englishness given political expression.
And why not? The people of England have good reason to be very proud of being English.
Ms Stuart says: British identity is based on and anchored in its political and legal institutions.
She seems ignorant of the fact that British identity is a mere 300 years old, dating back only to the Act of Union 1707.
Whereas our English identity is 1,200 years old going back to the historic declaration of the Venerable Bede writing from Northumberland in the eighth century.
England is the oldest unified nation in Europe. The English identity is based on our long history, the land we live in, the seas around us, our language, and our whole way of life. We are all one people sharing a common home, no matter what our differing ethnicity might be, or culture, or politics, or religion. Englands history, traditions, achievements and institutions exist for everyone.
And the second thing Ms Stuart does not realise is that the very political and legal institutions she calls British are not British at all. They were, in fact, created by the people of England centuries before the 1707 Act of Union created the British State.
Our legal system is the English Common Law founded and developed in the Middle Ages as is our jury system and such fundamental legal principles as Habeas Corpus.
The English Parliament, tragically abolished in 1707, the Mother of all Parliaments, first met in the tenth century in pre-Norman times.
Representative democracy is an English achievement. In other words, contrary to what Ms Stuart says, it is English identity which is based on and anchored in this countrys political and legal institutions.
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