The most recent publication from the Future of England Study, The Shameful Conquest of England, builds on the authors’ previous work and nearly a decade and a half’s worth of data to paint a picture of the political and constitutional attitudes of the UK’s largest nation. As in previous FoES surveys, it explores the attitudes of the English to their neighbours in the UK, the mechanics of the Union, the UK’s relationship to the EU, and the governance of their own nation.
As in previous years, this edition of the survey once again finds that terms such as ‘scepticism’, ‘grievance’, ‘ambivalence’ and ‘dissatisfaction’ best describe the politics of Englishness. However, this year sees two new entrants into the lexicon of English – as distinct from British – politics: ‘Anger’ and ‘Fear’. The data suggest that clear majorities of voters who identify as primarily English are made both angry and fearful by contemporary political life. By contrast, under ten percent of the same group expressed hope or happiness about current political life in the UK.
The report’s authors, Prof Ailsa Henderson of the University of Edinburgh and Prof Richard Wyn Jones of Cardiff University, found little to give solace to Keir Starmer’s government. As they have found in previous surveys, the Union’s largest constituent offers little of the enthusiastic gravity that might hope to keep the Union’s smaller nations in orbit. Rather, among those English-identifiers, the authors found ambivalence towards the Union as a project and a commonly held sense of grievance about the perceived cost and political influence of the other nations.
Generally, English-identifiers skew towards the right of the political spectrum, particularly and increasingly focussed on support for Reform, as they were for the party's previous manifestations.
In terms of the UK’s former external union, the EU, Henderson and Wyn Jones found a striking difference between English- and British-identifiers. Those who think of themselves mainly or exclusively as English rather than British continue to be consistently Eurosceptic. However, they also found that while they see the relationship with the EU as settled, they remain deeply dissatisfied with the consequences. By contrast, those identifying as British rather than English, which overwhelmingly includes Labour voters, see the UK’s relationship with the EU as their top constitutional concern and are overwhelmingly Europhile in their attitudes. Among those who voted Labour in 2024, 77% see the relationship with the EU as not close enough, 80% would vote to rejoin, and 79% describe it as their top constitutional priority.
A new addition to the 2024 survey explored the identities prioritised by supporters of different parties. These, unsurprisingly, vary from each other but there appears to be an identifiable spectrum running from Reform at one end to Green at the other. One striking aside was that in no case, including Labour’s, did class identity make the top three.
Finally, on the survey’s core questions of the constitutional arrangements for the governance of England, the data suggest – as they have suggested in every edition since 2011 - that while the Labour government has continued with its predecessor’s enthusiasm for regional governance in England, that is not supported by the English electorate. Voters continue to prefer England-wide models for its future governance, although it will offer some comfort to Labour that a bare majority of its own supporters (54%) prefer meso-level solutions to any alternatives. However, the lack of support elsewhere does not bode well for firmly embedding an option that is often presented as a cure-all to everything that ails the body politic.
England remains a nation discontented with itself. Its relationship with its neighbours both within the UK and in the EU remains either unsatisfying or unsettled, depending on whether voters are on one side of the Remain / Leave divide or the other. There is a clear feeling among English-identifying voters that their nation has been hard done by and that its current appearance is a poor reflection of its former glories. The authors suggest that England’s overall attitudes to the Union as a continuing constitutional reality are ambivalent at best and, in the case of primarily English-identifying voters, 72% would say “so be it” if another constituent of the Union chose to go its own way.