An announcement from the new Secretary of State for England:
Sadly, this is not real. It’s a work of fiction based on a blog post from Jim Murphy upon his appointment as Secretary of State for Scotland.
It’s almost impossible to imagine a politician talking about England in the terms Murphy does about Scotland, but it shouldn’t be.
The nation of England also deserves to be imagined and talked about as a political community with direction and a future.
In the absence of a First Minister for England, and with UK Prime Ministers reluctant to mention England in a political context, a Secretary of State for England is one way in which England’s political priorities and sense of nationhood could be articulated.
John Denham has suggested the creation of an English Office as way to coordinate English domestic policy:
The paradox of the UK state appearing English to the devolved nations yet failing England in domestic policy that was identified in the Dunlop and Brown reports remains a central problem. The resolution requires the delineation of the governance of England from that of the UK. In a paper for the Bennett Institute, Philip Rycroft and I set out the reforms needs to create a coherent system of governance for England and for the effective and discrete representation of England within the governance of the UK:
English Commonwealth 