Richard Wyn Jones

England, Englishness and Brexit

In the 1975 referendum England provided the strongest support for European integration, with a much smaller margin for membership in Scotland and Northern Ireland. By 2015 the rank order of ‘national’ attitudes to European integration had reversed. Now, England is the UKs most eurosceptic nation and may vote ‘Leave’, while Scotland seems set to generate a clear margin for ‘Remain’. The UK as a whole is a Brexit marginal. To understand the campaign, we need to make sense of the dynamics of public attitudes in each nation. We take an ‘archaeological’ approach to a limited evidence-base, to trace the development of attitudes to Europe in England since 1975. We find evidence of a link between English nationalism and euroscepticism. Whatever the result in 2016, contrasting outcomes in England and Scotland will exacerbate tensions in the UKs territorial constitution and could lead to the break-up of Britain.

Turnout, Participation and Legitimacy in Post-Devolution Wales

Low levels of voter turnout in the first election to the National Assembly for Wales in May 1999 brought into question both the ability of devolution to revitalize representative democracy and the legitimacy of the Assembly itself. But drawing wider implications from turnout requires that we understand why electoral abstention was so widespread. We examine three hypotheses about voter turnout in 1999: that non-participation simply reflected a general apathy towards politics; that it was based on a specific apathy towards the new Assembly; or that low voter turnout reflected antipathy towards an unwanted political institution. We find support for the first two hypotheses, but little evidence for the third. Devolution has failed to engage the interest and support of many in Wales, but low turnout has not been prompted by fundamental antagonism to the devolved institution among the Welsh electorate.

The marine podocopid Ostracoda of Easter Island: a paradox in zoogeography and evolution

Abstract From a total of 20 samples, of which 8 were collected in the eulittoral and 12 by SCUBA diving in the sublittoral, more than 11,000 ostracods were recovered. These comprise 30 species belonging to 20 genera. Of the 30 species, one is a cladocopid, one a platycopid and the remainder podocopids, of which three are bairdiids, three cyprids and the remainder (22) are cytherids. Twenty-one of the species are both new and endemic as are two new subspecies. Only four species have been described from elsewhere (Peripontocypris magnafurcata, Neonesidea tenera, Triebelina bradyi, Dentibythere dentata), although two others (Cytherelloidea keiji, and Loxoconchella honoluluensis) are represented at the island by new subspecies. However, an additional three species are known elsewhere only in manuscript; two of these are only known from the nearest inhabited land, the Pitcairn/Henderson group some 1400 miles to the west. The remaining 22 are endemic to Easter Island and are monographed elsewhere. There are no species common with the Galapagos Islands nor with the South or Central American coast or Clipperton Island. The three described species and the four known, but as yet undescribed species, all occur to the west and it is in the Indo-Pacific and Australasia that the closest relatives of the endemic species are encountered. The Easter Island fauna seems clearly to be the product of a migration or series of migrations from the west. However, that this or these events were not simple is attested to by the fact that, although the seven species known at Easter Island and elsewhere are all from tropical environments, none of the pan-tropical Tethyan taxa are recorded there. Three of this group occur at Pitcairn/Henderson, however, although none are among the four species common to Pitcairn/Henderson and Easter islands. Easter Island and the other volcanic islands to the west and west-northwest are all situated on a submarine ridge together with numerous guyots. Many of these today have relatively shallow summits and all flat-topped seamounts must have been emergent at times in their history. It is suggested that the eastwards migration (migrations) took place at those times of lowest sea level and greatest emergence of the summits by normal island-hopping sweepstakes routes.

Wales in the World : Intergovernmental Relations and Sub-state Diplomacy

This article explores intergovernmental relations between the devolved Welsh Assembly Government and the central UK government through the prism of two case studies focusing on examples of Welsh sub-state diplomacy, the first being international activity aimed at promoting trade and investment and the second the ‘Wales for Africa’ programme. The article focuses in particular on the implications for Wales–UK relations of partial party incongruence brought about by the formation of the Labour–Plaid Cymru coalition government in Cardiff in the summer of 2007. The authors also examine the early indications of the impact of full party incongruence following the formation of the Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition government in London in June 2010.

'Coming Home to Labour'? The 2003 Welsh Assembly Election

May 1st 2003 saw the second election to the National Assembly for Wales (NAW). The election lacked the novelty-value of the first election to the devolved chamber four years previously; it also lacked some of the interest. A generally uninspiring campaign was followed by a low turnout, and by results that were somewhat less dramatic than those of 1999. As with most elections, when the dust had settled afterwards, some parties and individuals were pleased with the outcome, others much less so. In this report we discuss the background to the elections, outline the final results, and offer an initial assessment of why the election produced the result it did and what the implications of that result might prove to be.

How Brexit was made in England

The Leave majority recorded in England was decisive in determining the UK-wide referendum result. Brexit was made in England. We take this as a prompt to challenge the conventional Anglo-British mindset that animates most studies of ‘British politics’ and has shaped public attitudes research on the United Kingdom. We explore the persistence of distinctive Eurosceptic views in England and their relationship to English national identity prior to the referendum. We then model referendum vote choice using data from the Future of England Survey. Our analysis shows that immigration concerns played a major role in the Brexit referendum, alongside a general willingness to take risks, right-wing views, older age, and English national identity. Therefore, Brexit was not just made in England, but Englishness was also a significant driver of the choice for Leave.

Introduction: Europe, Regions, and European Regionalism

Europe’s regions. To the extent that this phrase conjures up any images at all among the wider public — those men and women whom the English fondly imagine as traveling on the apocryphal Clapham Omnibus — then it is surely a series of images from those parts of Europe whose obvious, confident sense of their own identity and importance sets them apart from mere ‘localities’, even while they lack the trappings of sovereign statehood. This is the Europe of Catalonia and Scotland, two regions whose capital cities exude an almost palpable sense of status that far surpasses that cramped and slighting designation of ‘provincial’ sometimes bestowed upon them by their respective metropolitan centers. This is a Europe of deep roots and ancient tradition: the Europe, above all perhaps, of burgerlische Gesellschaft, of bourgeois society. This is a solid, occasionally stolid, Europe which can pride itself in real and lasting civic achievement. Enterprise is another key bourgeois virtue and to invoke regional Europe is also to invoke the dynamic Europe implied by the use of the prefix ‘motor’ to describe a grouping of four of the most successful regions — Baden-Wurttemberg, Rhone-Alpes, Lombardy, as well as Catalonia.1 This is a Europe that takes pride in its past achievements and looks to the future with confidence.

The public legitimacy of the National Assembly for Wales

This article examines the public legitimacy of the National Assembly for Wales. Both the Assembly and the broader system of devolved government for Wales initially enjoyed very limited public support. It is shown that support for devolution in general has risen substantially, while some elements of public attitudes towards the Assembly itself now appear distinctly positive. However, it is also demonstrated that public legitimacy, defined as ‘diffuse support’ for the Assembly, remains limited. The article then examines what factors explain levels of diffuse support for the National Assembly. It is found that variation in such support is best accounted for by factors associated with ‘non-material consequentialism’: perceptions of the impact of the Assembly on the process of government. The conclusion assesses the implications of the findings for the National Assembly, as well as for the study of devolution and political institutions more generally.

England’s Dissatisfactions and the Conservative Dilemma

In the immediate aftermath of the Scottish independence referendum, Prime Minister David Cameron raised the ‘English Question’ by advocating English Votes for English Laws in the House of Commons. This article explains why. It uses findings from the 2014 Future of England Survey of attitudes to constitutional issues in England. It reveals a group of interlinked concerns in England: about the advantages Scotland is perceived to have in the UK Union, about the absence of institutional recognition of England in the UK political system, and about the European Union and immigration. It shows that these concerns are distinctively English, held in a broadly uniform way across England and held most strongly by people in England who identify themselves as English, and not British. These concerns, and their linkage to and by English identity, differentiate the supporters of different political parties. They are held least strongly by Labour and Liberal Democrat supporters, and more strongly by Conservative and, especially, UKIP supporters. Cameron’s move on the English Question – and subsequent profiling of English issues in the 2015 UK general election – recognised a territorially distinctive electoral battleground in England on which the Conservatives are now competing with UKIP to articulate a new English nationalism, perhaps at the expense of the Conservative Party’s unionist heritage.

Minor Tremor but Several Casualties: the 2003 Welsh Election

Scully, R., Wyn Jones, R. (2004) Minor Tremor but Several Casualties: the 2003 Welsh Election. British Elections and Parties Review, 14, pp.191-210.