A new constitutional settlement for England is needed, argued former ministers Michael Wills and John Denham.

Speakers: John Denham, Martin Kettle, Fuad Nahdi, Tom Nairn, Michael Wills

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John Denham and Michael Wills told the Fabian Britishness conference that it was right for the public and political focus to be on Britishnes as 'the identity of the state of which we are citizens' as John Denham put it. But they also agreed with session chair Martin Kettle that 'the English question seems to lurk underneath this British question' and Scottish writer Tom Nairn that 'the majority will need to be devolved one way or another'.

'We need to express Englishness constitutionally in some way. That is one of the bits of unfinished business', said Michael Wills, who has worked closely with Gordon Brown on the Britishness agenda. 'How you do that is difficult, particularly when England is itself a very diverse nation, if you compare, for example, the south-west and the north-east of England'. John Denham, Chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee and a member of the Fabian Executive, said that 'we can be fairly clear that where we are now won't be where we are in twenty years time. But the government's answer was based on an assumption about regional government in England which the no vote in the north-east threw right back into the melting pot. I suspect we are looking at a much more diverse pattern of local devolution than we previously thought.'

Wills did not support an English Parliament: 'If you believe that there is a value in being part of the United Kingdom, then we need to recognise that England is much bigger than the other parts of the UK and to create constitutional relationships which reflect that, which reflect the special nature of Englishness in some way while protecting the rights of minority nations within the UK.'

Deborah Mattinson of Opinion Leader Research said there was little public enthusiasm for an English parliament and that polling evidence across Britain showed that 'English is the weakest of the national identities, compared to how much people feel Scottish or Welsh. The English are more likely to identify with being British rather than English. While a passionate vocal minority want an English parliament, it is a minority view. There is a general lack of enthusiasm for more layers of democracy.'

Scottish writer Tom Nairn said that 'there is no easy solution of British federalism because of the disparities in size of population.' For Nairn, this meant that the only solution is confederal, 'to shift the centre of gravity to the parts rather than the whole.' Nairn argued that renewing citizenship was a non-starter without electoral reform. 'Identity can not be effectively changed as long as this see-saw grotesque ancient first past the post system remains. The starting point must be a political and electoral system which allows new voices to appear and contribute what they have to say to the new identity deal.'

Michael Wills argued that the renewed focus on Britishness was essential: 'It is important that this is about Britishness. We all have different levels of identity. But the nation state is the United Kingdom. We are a Union. That is a plural identity which is very precious. Whatever the origins of the Union, it does work. It has been going for 300 years and I think it is a precious settlement which is valued.' This role of Britishness meant that 'it's not pick and mix: we must work out what it is that is essentially common and which everybody must sign up to', said Wills. John Denham said that 'one central question here is between a formal citizenship approach – where we agree the legal obligations we will all have and mostly leave it at that – or whether we need for a national story as well. But if you look around the world, very few people have built a strong civic identity from purely formal basis. Successful citizenships are built in part from successful stories.'

Fuad Nahdi, founder of the Muslim magazine Q-News, agreed that defining an inclusive British identity was important and overdue – 'some of us were crying wolf a long time ago' - but warned against an inward-looking debate: 'Are we saying that other people don't want to be fair? Don't want liberty? Are these somehow uniquely British. We seem to talk about it as if we are reinventing the wheel. There have been experiments in identity and co-existence in multicultural societies across 5000 years. Why don't we talk about the long history of identity and integration in India, in China and in the Ottoman states?', asked Nahdi. Tom Nairn stressed that 'concern about national identity is not confined to Britain, it is a global debate going on all over the world. I was relieved when Gordon Brown said that in the last minute or so, because he had finally said something that I agreed with', said Nairn, arguing that Brown's speech was 'a perfect presentation of what is a minority point of view of Scottish British identity. Scots, like many minorities within later states, tend to compensate by over-exaggerating. That was a marvellous expression of it'.

Wills acknowledged that plural identities are far from unique to the United Kingdom but that 'the particular nature of Britain's constitutional arrangements by which four distinct nations with cultural identities have been bound together in a United Kingdom' meant there was something distinctively British in the centrality of plural allegiances in shaping much of our national life. However, this was obscured by the lack of formal constitutional expression.

Speaking from the floor, Welsh Assembly member Leighton Andrews said there must be clarity about terms 'Britishness is not a national identity. We must have a supranational story of Britishness. My national identity is Welsh. My civic identity is British'. Ending the English appropriation of British symbols would help to make this clear and also create the space to define Englishness positively. 'Either God Save the Queen is a United Kingdom anthem or it is the English national anthem but it can not be both', said Andrews, with Martin Kettle agreeing that the English should adopt Jerusalem as an English anthem. Another delegate said that renaming the Bank of England as the United Kingdom Central Bank would be an important clarification of its role.

Nahdi said the British needed a more rooted sense of their history. 'I came here 23 years ago as an addict of Hardy and Dickens. How dissappointed I was to find that nobody wanted to talk about Dickens', he said, endorsing George Bernard Shaw's argument that 'Irish history is something no Englishman should forget and no Irishman should remember'. It was time for Britishness debate 'to come out in public' said Nahdi. 'We want to engage and it has to be broader and more inclusive: this has to be a process rather than outcomes and goals'.

Deborah Mattinson had warned that the public felt strongly that a top-down identity formation would fail, like Cool Britannia. Jude Kelly, contributing from the floor, said that there was a practical urgency to creating this 'more inclusive' Britishness. 'People outside power must be able to tell the story to those in power. Power excludes you from the lapping tide until it is too late', she said pointing to how the 1951 Festival of Britain was the creation of refugees and asylum seekers who had fled from pogroms across Europe. 'We have made a vow to the world for 2012. The Olympics are the only non-religious celebration of culture and humanity. We are looking for the first non-xenophobic way to present out country … We should ask what is the story that we would most like to have told about us after people have been here – and to move backwards from there.'

John Denham said of the proposal for a new British Day that 'how far any event can be symbolic depends enormously on the process that goes around it'. Denham used the example of the move twenty years ago to make Remembrance Day in Southampton a multi-faith event: 'We had to involve people – in fact, there was a massive row – but it was educational and it has shown over time that Remembrance Day could be turned into an event of broader significance, which represents the role that Commonwealth troops played for example, though it could also have been quite an exclusive event'. Challenged by a delegate who claimed that a 'new national story' would necessarily be told from one dominant perspective, Denham said 'I don't agree. But how do you tell a national story that isn't told from one viewpoint is the new challenge we face. Because if it ends up being told from one viewpoint, and everybody is told that they have to share it, then it simply isn't going to work'.

'Ties that bind: What do we need Britishness for?' with John Denham MP, Fuad Nahdi (Q-News), Tom Nairn, Michael Wills MP. Chair: Martin Kettle (the Guardian). This panel debate took part at the Fabian New Year Conference 'Who do we want to be? The Future of Britishness' on January 14, 2006, at Imperial College London.