What Britishness Can And Does Do That Englishness Doesn't Is To Discriminate Against All Citizens Of England

"What Englishness can't do that Britishness can do is appeal unambiguously to people of different ethnic origins," notes Janan Ganesh, political correspondent for The Economist.

It's the BBC reporting again.

But Janeh Ganesh is talking cobblers.

Britishness is not and was never intended to be a blanket nationality simply aimed at everybody living in England.

It was intended to be the blanket nationality of everybody living in England, Scotland and Wales.

With the will to do so, the word "English" could be substituted for the word "British" and an inclusive, civic English nationality be developed very easily.

New arrivals in England have "Britishness" rammed down their threats. So do longstayers

Whilst the PC crowd waste no opportunity to demonise Englishness as a non-inclusive, racist mind set.

But the English have long been a "mongrel" nation.

And all the better for it.

For a start the 'Anglo Saxons' never called themselves that, and the newcomers married into the existing population to form the early English - as proven by DNA studies in places like Oakington. And a 'Celtic' fringe? There isn't one. DNA proves that too. Edward Lhuyd's 1707 'Celtic' linguistic label did not rewrite people's DNA. The Scots notion hopped over the water from Ireland, and the Bell Beaker People displaced around 90% of the island's Neanderthal population.

Insular? This island?

What Britishness does is place every man, woman and child in England at a serious disadvantage when compared to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The West Lothian Question, the Barnett Formula and devolution have seen to that.

A lot of this disadvantage comes from the 1707 linguistic label 'Celtic', applied to the Welsh language and other 'insular' languages by Edward Lhuyd (the 'insular' label also being a Welsh invention although the English language, with its all its quirks and richness was created in England but doesn't qualify for the 'insular' label) and later expanded into a fake ethnicity for the Welsh, Scots and Irish. 

Wasn't Wales a web of competing factions and kingdoms, slugging it out internally, not a peaceful, united polity? Yep. Wasn't Ireland partitioned by a Welsh PM with avid backing of Protestant Scots? Yep. 

Didn't Scotland attempt its own colonisation project at Darien, blame the English (as always) for its failure, then enter the Union, thus creating Britishness as a nationality and being disproportionately active in the British Empire, then blaming the English (as always) for the whole enterprise? Yep. Wasn't the Poll Tax invented by a Scotsman called Douglas Mason and implemented there a year early at the behest of its own Secretary of State - and then the English (as always) were blamed? Yep. Weren't the Scottish Clearances carried out by the Scots, and then the English (as always) were blamed? Yep.

And meanwhile the most ethnically diverse country, England, gets less per capita spending via the Barnett Formula (even declared unfair to England by its own creator, the late Lord Joel Barnett), meaning that those just above the poverty line in England pay nearly £10 per prescription item, while millionaires get then free in the far less ethnically diverse Scotland and Wales and Northern Ireland, money scooped largely from the tax payers in England.

Because everything historically was the fault of England, apparently.

And then there is the little question of the West Lothian Question, in which non-accountable MPs get to vote - and sometimes decisively - on legislation affecting only England.

You see what a mess the so-called UK is?