England is so often the country not allowed to speak its name. It was the country the EU did not want on its maps. It is the country the European establishment and Opposition parties here at home wish to break up into regions.
It is also the country that did so much to pioneer democratic government, that opened up free trade, that has gone in the past to rescue Europe from autocrats invading countries to fashion a European empire in their own image. Three times in the last 500 years we had to resist invasion of ourselves and others, from Spain, France then Germany. Three times we allied with the forces of national self determination and greater freedom, sacrificing lives and treasure for victory. Twice we fought as a United Kingdom.
England has offered the world the language of Shakespeare and the Industrial Revolution, great services and many innovations. We should celebrate today in the knowledge that world is freer and more prosperous for the exertions of our ancestors.
April 23, 2023
Our ancestors did a great job, just a shame that so many now have lost the plot.
England, with the rest of the UK has given the world so much, now it seems they want our soul as well!
April 24, 2023
The problem is that now most of those in power are NOT English!
But foreign intruders!
April 23, 2023
Happy St George’s Day to you all, and of course God Bless St George who killed the dragon in the marketplace of Alnwick, Northumberland. You should go and stand in the place he stood. Also the land of Harry Hotspur, a Percy who led his army into battle aged 12! The great kingdom of Oswald who printed money of base metal and whose word was enough for the coin to hold value! Topped by the true Christianity brought from Ireland by Aiden.
Nothing can besmirch the fantastic record of our people.
April 23, 2023
John Milton ‘Let not England forget her precedence of teaching nations how to live’, 1643.
It is unfortunate that it took so long for the English to realise (or to be forced to realise) that other nations did not care for its tutelage.
April 24, 2023
Even you cannot besmirch the record of the unparalleled English no matter how many lemons you suck.
April 27, 2023
Indeed, UK/Britain/England has a great past. What about its future?
April 23, 2023
Nice, but very late in the day.
What should we DO? What are you going to DO Sir John? Apart from writing some few words. Are you going to DEMAND change? Of course not.
April 23, 2023
Ramadan & Eid all over the BBC and my local council social media ….St.George Day – Nothing
April 23, 2023
The liberal left elite and the WOKE lot don’t like England full stop.
I am wearing my red and white tie today
April 23, 2023
No one has ever not allowed England to speak its name. The EU had it on all of its maps. The European establishment and Opposition parties here at home have never wished, tried or even suggested to break it up into regions. Your paranoia really should trouble you
April 23, 2023
A long time ago the EU removed England entirely from its maps. Fact.
April 23, 2023
You seem to have forgotten the attempts to introduce regional government In England only. And must have failed to see the EU map that had part of England joined to France as SE region of the EU.
Perhaps you didn’t hear John Prescott say “there is no such nationality as English” Or Jack straw stating “The English are potentially very aggressive, very violent” and “The English as a race are not worth saving!”
April 24, 2023
@Old Albion:
Both John Prescot and Jack Straw are UK citizens, so not “the EU” as an institution.
April 23, 2023
So True.
Well said John. 👍🏴
April 23, 2023
Blah blah blah…………………..and the English still have no representation of its own and other Nations can vote on its issues in the combined British Parliament, although we have no voice in their devolved administrations. It’s a disgrace. Shame on the legacies. The legacies do not represent us and we want Reform!!!
April 23, 2023
+1 and shame on Gove and the Tory party for taking away the one and only crumb England was ever offered – EVEL. It seems even that was too good for England. Totally agree. Time for Reform.
April 23, 2023
But of course there won’t be any celebration for that would go against the narrative of our governing establishment, where England and English people are the worst of the worst. We are the most racist country in the world. We were disgusting slavers. Our wealth was built on robbing and exploiting the world. We have no culture to speak of, and what ever we have is only made tolerable by ‘enrichment’. There will only be celebration when all sense of Englishness has been eradicated, which they are well on course to achieving.
April 23, 2023
Happy St George’s Day.
My local pub used to celebrate it with a beer festival and Morris dancers. Unfortunately its difficult times for pubs now.
April 23, 2023
Weren’t Morris Dancers declared racist by the social media with the support of our own government
April 24, 2023
Yes!
April 23, 2023
A Happy St Georges Day to you . Today there is a marked division between those who believe in the UK, complete with all it’s faults; faults we are aware of because we live with them daily , and those who see almost everything they associate with the UK to be abhorant. Strangely the anties still opt to live in the UK. It is a bit of a cup half full or a cup half empty situation. The former wish to improve matters, the latter prefer to dine out on what they see as problems and in extremis take direct action, that further alienates them from the majority. Among the ruling classes there appears to be a growing sense of guilt about our past present and future. A guilt that inhibits our resolution of problems that will delineate our future. The electorate does not have these problems and becomes increasingly frustrated that what it knows require attention gets ignored or explained away in political platitudes. Witness the frustration of illegal immigration and the sheer joy that the brige bandits of Dartford got five years. Alternatively we see a weak PM bending to a civil service, disempowered by Brexit, who have conspired to serve their own agenda in conflict with a democratically elected Parliament. Our government needs to grow some cohones and start slaying the dragons that the majority can see beset us.
April 23, 2023
Some of us are celebrating today Sir john, probably not the Blob however?
April 23, 2023
I cannot remember when this zero-England policy was introduced but I do believe over 20 years ago, one Scottish Labour MP, Robin Cook, said there was no English just Scottish, Welsh, Irish and British.
Why would anyone want to deny the birth right of 81% of the population of Great Britain and what are their vested interests in doing so?
Neither England nor the English have anything to be ashamed about as as been demonstrated in the SJ article above.
April 23, 2023
Derek. Obviously some who have commented on this subject hate us. They know who they are.
April 24, 2023
The English are a race. They are drawn from Angles, Jutes and Saxons. All from NW Europe.
April 24, 2023
The English are NOT a race, they are a nation – I.e all interrelated. There are 5 or 6 races on earth. We are of the Caucasian race.
April 24, 2023
A race? Do not the English came from a country called England and therefore become specific Nationalities? Exactly the same as Scottish, Welsh, Irish, Italian, Russian, Chinese et al….
April 23, 2023
LOVELY!
Happy St. George’s Day!
April 23, 2023
“We should celebrate today in the knowledge that world is freer and more prosperous for the exertions of our ancestors.”
Indeed and the exertions of the Scots, Irish and Welsh working together with and mixing with the English and others. We can easily be as prosperous as the Swiss but not with dire Consocialists, Labour/SNP/Libdem socialist and crony capitalism, corruption, endless over regulation and the absurd & expensive intermittent energy agenda.
April 23, 2023
Boris says the Industrial Revolution was a mistake, and as we instituted it, that is why we must be punished for it by having Net Zero foisted upon us. Most MPs seem to agree with him.
April 23, 2023
Many of us do celebrate our great achievements, despite the fact that we are continually told that our Country is of no account, and our sacrifices are not of interest. We know better.
I wish you, Sir John, and everyone on on here a very happy St. George’s Day.
April 23, 2023
We should indeed celebrate today in the knowledge that world is freer and more prosperous for the exertions of our ancestors.
Alas we have been going backward certainly since Heath took us into the “common market” now we have a choice between the consocialists and the even worse full blooded one who will tax/rob us even more than Sunak and Hunt have done.
April 23, 2023
Today, we are flying our Union flag (for Prince Louis’ birthday) with the St Georges Cross for England below it.
If we ever lose NI and Scotland from the Union, I hope we retain the Union Flag as it is the best rallying cry for England.
Everything has gone quiet but Labour seems determined to create so much more devolution that, like the EU before it, England will effectively cease to be the single entity it has been for more than 1,000 years. We need Westminster MPs to sit as the English Parliament now more than ever.
April 23, 2023
The only sad thing if the Scots ever pluck up the courage to go it alone is we might have to change our Union Jack.
April 24, 2023
Removing blue shreds the Union flag like a Sweeney Todd stitch-up with flies.
April 23, 2023
Key Stage I History looks like grooming. Having an impact on our history is about having brought about lasting change.
April 23, 2023
It would be a huge help for England’s identity if your fellow MP’s could learn to use the word, when discussing England. “this country” doesn’t cut it.
It would be even better if England was granted it’s own parliament just like the other three countries in this ludicrously named ‘United Kingdom’
April 23, 2023
No, don’t let’s have yet another parliament. Let’s dissolve the devolved ones, including the London Assembly.
No mention of St George on the Sunday programmme. Or Shakespeare.
April 24, 2023
Agreed
April 23, 2023
And hopefully not finished yet!
April 23, 2023
English folk are distinctive.
French, German, Spanish, Chinese and others are also distinctive.
People are what they are wherever they are born or live based on ancestry.
Everyone on Earth has many fine qualities; mostly good, some better than ours.
The Duke of Wellington was born in Ireland, but claimed he was not Irish.
Being born in a stable would not have made him a horse.
The English are different from many in the EU.
A Bulldog without a chain enjoys freedom.
What Shakespeare might have written in a different language would not be English
April 23, 2023
Seriously weird stuff. Wales and Scotland have not voted Tory for decades, but get an Tory governement because of English votes. England dominates the UK. Why do you claim to be the victim? What is your emotiona problem?
April 23, 2023
England NEVER votes for Socialism, but we get it from the Celtic fringe. And we pay for all. That’s our gripe, and unless politics redresses our grievances, they will be redressed by other more traditional means.
Isn’t it amazing that Diane Abbot thought the Jews had not suffered racial bias 😂🤣 6 million killed for what reason then Diane?
Atm the English are suffering racial bias even from ‘our’ King. Dangerous stuff.
April 23, 2023
Excuse me but the Tories have won the popular vote in England in every election since 2001 and yet it took until 2015 for England to get the Government of it’s choosing thanks to the devolved Nations also deciding who governs England, i.e. the U.K. Government and the only one England is allowed, before they then get to choose a totally different Government for themselves, something England is denied. (although the thanks England has received from the Tories for doing so is contemptible) And in that time although the Scots, Welsh & NI are allowed to make their own decisions on devolved matters with no interference from the U.K. Government they have imposed on England, they still get to meddle and vote on matters which have become English only, tuition fees being one of them. If it hadn’t been for the votes of these MPs, the introduction of fees in England would never have got through. I would hardly call that English domination.
April 24, 2023
They have their own devolved governments. The English do not.
April 24, 2023
Local Authorities are devolved Govt. Those served local people before Tony Blair interfered.
April 23, 2023
“England is so often the country not allowed to speak its name.”
Well it would be a good start if politicians could speak its name, especially those elected to English seats. Shame on them all for not doing so and not standing up for the blatant discrimination on a daily basis hurled at their constituents – Englands’s young, sick elderly. And thank you John for mentioning St. George’s Day, something your fellow Tory MPs appearing on TV today have failed to do. They’re doing a good job of achieving their aim of erasing England off the map. England no longer exists on the political map.
April 23, 2023
Very very well said.
It’s sad that so many people’s minds have been turned against our great heritage, and in doing so they are turning against themselves. That the EU should choose to wish us away, just indicates how inadequate the EU is; and in siding with the EU, how appalling our opposition parties are in diminishing their own people and country.
April 24, 2023
@Edwardm: “That the EU should choose to wish us away”
The EU never wished that, that is a simple mosconception of yours.
All the same, I enjoy that there is less and less you can blame the EU for.
The EU27 have moved on and for any problems that you now face you may have to find new scapegoats
(like the civil service, the opposition, the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, the Bank of England, etc.)
Politicians can’t allow themselves to be mistaken or wrong.
April 23, 2023
Why does the Dutch invasion of England in November 1688 not register among the menacing invasions of the last 500 years? Oops, it was a successful one, an invasion of 20,000 soldiers together with a political coup (the Protestant ‘Invitation to William’), but from then on only referred to as ‘The Glorious Revolution’, isn’t that a woke term before the time?
April 23, 2023
You forgot to mention both James II’s daughters sat on the throne.
April 24, 2023
It was a religious coup designed to remove King James by the nobility. Not quite and invasion.
April 24, 2023
@Hefner: isn’t it interesting to watch nations interprete or bend their history to allign with their preferred views about themselves
April 24, 2023
You are 😁 – a successful invasion is where the home team are beaten on the battlefield – see NATO v Russia in Ukraine.
Changing the Monarch voluntarily is an entirely different question and one we may have to address again.
April 23, 2023
The government deliberately instilled panic into the population to push everyone into unnecessary lockdown and multiple covid vaccinations they didn’t need which later were shown to be potentially extremely dangerous.
So why wouldn’t the government use ”Emergency Alerts” to instill panic into the population for another fake reason if it suited them?
Just think what it would have been like during covid. Everyone would have been herded around like sheep…….
”Alert! Covid in your area! Stay Home! Blah blah blah.. ”
So the whole ”Emergency Alert” thing is ghastly and dangerous and an obvious means of totalitarian control perfect for crazed megalomaniacs like Hancock.
April 24, 2023
It failed. 10 million ‘switched off’.
April 23, 2023
Not a single flag out in Wokingham town centre. Your local council isn’t very patriotic.
April 23, 2023
And England gets a UK parliament with 117 combined Welsh/Scottish and N.Irish politicians voting on purely English issues.
April 23, 2023
John, John, John, you really should fact-check what your ghost-writers do for you. In a map of the EU, England has no more special standing than the German Lander or the French Departments. It was the United Kingdom (which your party seems determined to force into dissolution by its behaviour towards its other member countries) that joined the EU, not England.
We did so much to pioneer democracy that we only granted the vote to all male adult citizens in 1918, and to women in 1929, decades later than most other democracies.
The free trade we opened up was largely supported by slavery.
Yes, we resisted three invasions in the last five hundred years but capitulated to the Dutch in 1688. Of course, that’s not what you would prefer the history books to say, instead calling it “the Glorious Revolution”.
Reply Why lie? I write this blog, not ghost writers.
Your other anti comments are also wrong. The EU did not recognise England in the way it recognised Scotland and Wales.
April 24, 2023
The Not-a-Conservative-Party is also carrying out a policy of regionalising England – with no mandate from the ENGLISH people to do it. At no point have the ENGLISH people demanded City-Region Mayors.
Devolution, for the ENGLISH, has been a one-way event: the Scots, Welsh and NI have been given the powers to largely run their own affairs, all predicated on the basis that ENGLISH taxpayers will underwrite their Socialist policies which they can’t vote against.
Meanwhile we ENGLISH are not allowed our own Parliament. Scots, Welsh and NI vote in a General Election to elect the Government which governs the ENGLISH. Scots, Welsh and NI MPs in the House of Commons vote on legislation which will only affect ENGLAND.
Regionalisation of ENGLAND is not devolution; It’s balkanisation. And the Not-a-Conservative-Party is (as usual) no different to Labour when it comes to denigrating England and the English.
April 24, 2023
England had a great past. What bout its future?
Who to blame if things don’t go according to plan?
April 24, 2023
P.S. The EU?
April 24, 2023
Peter nothing ever ‘goes according to plan’. That’s why we English beat the highly organized Germanic races with monotonous regularity. As soon as their plan is compromised they are lost, angry and give up. The secret of life is to ‘keep ***gering on’ as Churchill advised. Keep your eyes open and take every opportunity afforded. Make the best of yourself and your opportunities and when you can, create opportunities for others – mostly your own people. They are the ones you care for most if you are normal, the flesh demands it.
Don’t fret that others have had better or more opportunities and give up. The choice is not between perfection and what you have and are, it’s between what you can be and what you can be reduced to by your enemies, if you allow them.
We are out of the EU, that opinion is hardening. The U.K. will be just fine, you have your hands full. Good luck.
April 24, 2023
[…] Yesterday was St. Georges Day, England’s national day. Sir John Redwood, MP writes… […]
April 24, 2023
Bloggers arguing here should display a little grace for once.Remember people are literally dying to become British and making an almighty effort to get here.With our new cosmopoltanisation we now have invisible threads to all parts of the globe.This is the future.