Public attitudes on the state of the state
The Shameful Conquest of England
The Future of England Study 2024-25 builds on nearly a decade and a half of fieldwork. This most recent report once again offers an unrivalled perspective on the political and constitutional attitudes of the UK’s most populous nation.
It is striking that, throughout this edition of the FoES survey, we once again find language such as ‘scepticism’, ‘grievance’, ‘ambivalence’ and ‘dissatisfaction’ best suited to describe the politics of Englishness. In this survey, we also explored two new entrants into the lexicon of English – as distinct from British – politics: ‘Anger’ and ‘Fear’. They did not disappoint. ​​
​We found that those voters in England who identify primarily as English rather than British are made both angry and fearful by contemporary political life.
As in previous surveys, we explored the English attitudes to their neighbours in the UK, the mechanics of the Union, the UK’s relationship to the EU and the governance of England itself.
We found little to give solace to Keir Starmer’s government. As we have found in previous surveys, the Union’s largest member offers little of the enthusiastic gravity that might hope to keep the UK’s smaller nations in orbit. Rather, among those English-identifiers, we found ambivalence towards the Union as a project and a commonly-held sense of grievance about the perceived cost and political influence of the other nations.
The political Englishness that made its presence known most visibly in Britain's decision to leave the European Union is still a formidable force, now focussed in growing strength on Reform. Labour's 'offer' of a greater role for city-area regions continues to garner only lacklustre support among an electorate that has expressed a remarkably consistent preference for England-wide, rather than regional, solutions to the failings of English governance since we first asked them their views back in 2011.
The Union Survey Project and Resources
The project and this website will provide a home for data, analysis and a network of researchers and others with an interest in the relationships between the UK's component parts.
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The Union Survey project brings together two previous bodies of work, both led by Profs Ailsa Henderson and Richard Wyn Jones - The Future of England Study and the State of the Union Survey.
These two projects alternate between a deep dive into the political and constitutional attitudes of the UK's most populous nation with a 360Ëš view of each territory's attitudes to its own governance and that of its neighbours.
In addition to the most recent FoES report, we have also provided the underpinning data and previous reports from both projects. Over the next few months, we will be making the data upon which those earlier reports are based freely available.
Over time, we plan to add further resources to the site to as well as future data sets as they become available.
Building a Network
Insights into the changing face of the Union come from a wide range of professional perspectives - academics spanning many disciplines, journalists, officials, politicians, and others in the UK and beyond.
We hope that this project can become a focus for that community of interest and practice. Towards that end, we would invite you to sign up to updates and occasional opportunities to connect with members of the team and with each other.
The Changing Face of English Identity
One of the most intriguing findings in the 2024-25 report explored how supporters of different political parties prioritise the various aspects of their own identities. ​​We asked respondents to choose three characteristics they considered ‘important for their identity’, selecting from the following long and comprehensive list.
​For supporters of the Conservatives and Reform, the two national identity options were both among the top three choices, with almost half of Reform supporters emphasising the centrality of their sense of their Englishness.
On the other side of the political spectrum, it was only among Liberal Democrat supporters that national identity (in this case ‘being British’) featured in the top three, and – as can be seen – even in this case the focus on national identity was less emphatic. Not only are patterns of national identity different across the political spectrum in England, but national identity also matters more to those who cleave to an English rather than a British identity.
There are other notable findings, the prevalence of hometown for Green supporters, and the absence of emphasis on class identity among supporters any party, including Labour among them.
