We English need a debate like the Scots

I’m envious of my Scottish friends.

From my limited connection to politics north of the border, the debate between politicians seems a clash between rival empty words. A coalition of dramatically different parties, there are good reason why the No campaign can’t tell a concrete story about what the United kingdom will stay together to do.

But the Yes side rallies vagueness as much as hope. The SNP can’t answer basic questions about the institutions they’ll rule with. Alex Salmond demands powers from Westminster he already possesses, and blames London for things that are in his control. I’m puzzled by the difference between independence (within the EU and a British currency union) and Devo Max. Any self-respecting twentieth century movement for national liberation would have seen keeping the Crown and pound as the most abject form of imperialist humiliation.

As ever in contemporary politics, the symbolism doesn’t match reality. The rhetoric of politicians seems to have cut adrift from the capacity they have to make things happen.

But no matter. Something remarkable has happened. A political argument has become a real national conversation. People are talking about Scotland’s future in homes and workplaces, shops and bus-stops as well as meeting halls. This is an election where opinions are shifted by people talking to their friends and neighbours. It’s that public debate, not politicians hectoring each other on TV, which will drive such a high turnout.

The debate seems to have spilt far beyond the narrow constitutional question asked on the referendum ballot paper. It’s about work and education and public services, about the way for small businesses can thrive or renewable energy flourish; about the nature of the political traditions Scotland inherits from its past and how those can be projected into the future. It’s real, and it’s well-informed. It’s an argument about the kind of place Scotland wants to be and how it can get there.

Most importantly, it’s about institutions not identity – it’s about the way people are connected and who has power over whom.

Whatever the outcome of the Scottish referendum, the genie is out of the bottle. The distribution of power in Scotland will change. People are more engaged, more passionate, better mobilised to insist that institutions have what they see as a clearer Scottish character.

England needs to have the same debate, even if we need to come up with different answers. Most of England’s citizens suffer from the same conditions which fuel Scottish interest in independence – a sense of being voiceless in the face of distant elites, mistrust in our big institutions, public and private, an insecure future, work which doesn’t pay and which isn’t fulfilling.

We English (like most ordinary Scots) have a more diffuse, complex range of targets, from the European Union to the big banks. But the problem, throughout, is not where power is concentrated but how it is exercised: beyond closed doors, without conversation, through bureaucratic processes only interested in rules and numbers not dialogue with real people.

On both sides of the border, the national question has become a way of talking about reforming our institutions so they’re more human, and allow people to have more of a sense of dignity and power. With different, albeit connected political traditions, we need to come up with our own different answers.

Yet too often these are questions that politicians in England try to avoid asking.

And when they do tackle it, the English question becomes merely a matter of culture, not hard politics. Politicians believe it can be dealt with simply by sticking up the national flag and having a debate about the national anthem. Both are important. But on their own they trivialise our complex, contested national past. Worse, they imply being English means one thing, creating a false consensus.

We need to recognise what the Scots have done in the last few years: that having a debate about the future of our country means arguing about its past.

For the right, the history of England has been a story of order and capital, about the steady exercise of power in stable, hierarchical institutions.

Labour needs to patriotically contest that narrative. We need to connect instead with a radical English tradition of thinking about power as something dispersed not concentrated, always needing to be exercised in balance with other forces, exercised by self-governing communities in towns and cities, guilds and trade unions not by faceless national bureaucrats. It’s the tradition of William Cobbett, George Orwell, E.P. Thompson.

Whatever happens the English question won’t go away. It can only be answered in a conversation about how the citizens of England exercise power. Drawing the lessons from Scotland, we need to make it an argument we all have.