"A 'Ninety-Minute Englishman'"

"Hobsbawm asks why so many were drawn to this project. A large part of the answer, he suggests, is that it 'filled the void left by failure, impotence and the apparent inability of other ideologies, political projects and programmes to realise men’s hopes'. That was true then, and it is true now. John Denham may be right about the need for an English parliament. But no separate legislature, no sense of Englishness, will assuage the feeling of abandonment and loss of control that pervades much of politics in England. That requires a different kind of political project."

At The Guardian, Kenan Malik writes that he loves "the football team but can't get tribal about England."