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For Stanley Baldwin, Conservative prime minister of the 1920s and 1930s, Englishness was a sensibility, writes Anthony Painter. Its essence […]

“The long-term prospects for Britishness appear weak” wrote John Curtice this weekend. Historian Norman Davies, plugging his new book on lost Kingdoms from the past suggests that the United Kingdom will shortly become another, telling ‘Start the Week’ recently that he detects in the renewed interest in specifically English history an “anticipatory nostalgia” for a “future realm of England”, says Sunder Katwala.

In a letter to The Guardian, Sunder Katwala writes in response to a Demos report. “You report on new research from the thinktank Demos, where researchers “persuaded more than 10,000 followers of 14 parties and street organisations in 11 countries to fill in detailed questionnaires”(‘We’re at a crossroads in history: either we fight or hate and division will win’, 7 November).

This tells us more than ever before about what motivates online engagement with far-right movements, including the BNP and English Defence League, in the UK. But this innovative method of research does not – indeed cannot – reveal anything about whether their support generally is growing.

Sunder Katwala on the forms of migration the public would keep, and which they want to cut.

Sunder Katwala delves into the history of cricket in England and India, and is pleased to say he passes the Tebbit test.

Sunder Katwala thinks FIFA’s decision to ban the England football team from wearing the poppy is shameful and calls for it to be reversed.

England in effect is insular, she is maritime, she is linked through her exchanges, her markets, her supply lines to the most diverse and often the most distant countries; she pursues essentially industrial and commercial activities, and only slight agricultural ones. She has in all her doings very marked and very original habits and traditions.

In short, the nature, the structure, the very conjuncture that are Englands differ profoundly from those of the continentals. What is to be done in order that England, as she lives, produces and trades, can be incorporated into the Common Market, as it has been conceived and as it functions?

Some years ago a Council of Europe expert visiting Belfast as part of a study on cultural diversity was struck by a meeting with representatives of the small Chinese, Indian and Pakistani communities. Not only did his interlocutors feel that the overwhelming focus in Northern Ireland on the divide between the two main cultural ‘traditions’ left their identities marginalised, but also those in attendance who were drawn from the Protestant and Catholic communities felt that a broader approach to cultural diversity would be welcome for its own sake and in helping to lower the political intensity of sectarian debates.

Playwright Tim Price was born in the South Wales valleys, and has a strong sense of being Welsh as well as being a big fan of London, he tells Rachael Jolley.