You have to remember we have a very different culture here, and it's rare for government to be any good at any level.
We also don't have the regional identities that Spain has. We have Londonandthesoutheast, Up North, and Wessex, which is a bit odd.
So the idea of regionalisation confuses people. It doesn't fit into anything they have experience of, and - unlike Scotland and Wales - it's not a natural trend.
One thing that puzzles me is that the West Lothian question never posed itself in Spain, despite the fact that the plan that the framers of the Constitution of 1978 had in mind was basically for the peripheral regions (Galicia, Basque Country, Catalonia, and maybe Navarra, Andalucia and the islands) to get regional assemblies and having the rest under the National Parliament. In actuality, it took less than 10 years for the entire country to get carved up into 17 regional governments (plus Ceuta and Melilla).
Why was it that all of "Greater Castille" didn't just constitute itself into a single autonomous unit (like the putative English parliament) and instead organised itself into 10 regions? Is it because the mechanism was explicitly bottom-up? Also, the existing Regional organisation from Franco's time greatly influenced (but differs in significant ways) from the current subdivisions. Also note that, just like the Spanish Autonomy Statutes are organic laws of the National Parliament (second only to the Constitution in rank) so the UK's regional assemblies have been created by act of the Westminster Parliament.
Also note that, just like the Spanish Autonomy Statutes are organic laws of the National Parliament (second only to the Constitution in rank) so the UK's regional assemblies have been created by act of the Westminster Parliament.
With the exception of about 4 people in cornwall, the english only speak english. There are regional variations of some words but they don't even make it to the status of a dialect. We just have a wide variety of accents, but they're blurring.
So regionalism confuses us, we can't even decide where the Midlands are or The North starts. keep to the Fen Causeway
With the exception of about 4 people in cornwall, the english only speak english.
Often, not even that.
Snark aside, there would be a lot more interest in a split along racial and religious lines. Little Englanders don't much like brown people, and - realistically - sometimes vice versa. We already have areas of London with strong racial and cultural characteristics but - luckily - there's no precedent for them to try to act independently.
Practically, they really couldn't anyway, not even if they put up barricades. But if we ever had a BNP-type government I wouldn't be even slightly surprised to see the bigger cities splitting up spontaneously into racial ghettos. That would be a very bad thing, but it's a lot easier for people here to imagine that than an England split into
Traditional English regional colour is often really just a fabrication of the heritage and tourism industries. Areas like the Cotswolds have a distinct flavour, but there's nothing political about it - it's about the physical countryside and different kinds of pubs and cottages, not about dialect and identity.
