The Party Politics of the ‘New English Regionalism’

Abstract

This article explores the potential that ongoing regional devolution in England might transform the so-called ‘party politics of Englishness’, complicating and potentially compromising the emergence of a nascent English political nationalism. It provides a primary examination of the extent to which conceptual and normative intersections between nationalism and regionalism are reordering both the constitutional architecture and the party political landscape of England. The article argues that politicised manifestations of ‘new English regionalism’ raise new and important challenges to how the two main Union-wide political parties, the Conservatives and Labour, frame and articulate issues of English national party organisation, policy development and identity. The article concludes by noting that the emergence of national and regional forms of identity politics in England is undermining the plurinational organisation and political unity of both parties.