THE GUARDIAN: Stephen Cottrell says it is time to ‘rediscover a national unity more fractured than I have ever known it’
The archbishop of York has called for a new “expansive” vision of what it means to be English to counter a “negative political discourse and a hopeless future”.
Courage and compassion should be the cornerstones of an Englishness that people could be proud of, said Stephen Cottrell, the second most senior cleric in the Church of England.
Many people in England felt left behind by “metropolitan elites” in London and the south-east and strengthened regional identities in Scotland and Wales, he said. “Their heartfelt cry to be heard is often disregarded, wilfully misunderstood or patronised as backwardly xenophobic.”
It was time to acknowledge “our strong regional identities going back centuries”, Cottrell wrote in an article in the Daily Telegraph. » | Harriet Sherwood | Saturday, August 7, 2021
