Seems that British nationalism runs pretty deep too, no? How else would you explain brexit?
What makes the UK very complex is the coexistence of two layers of national identity – British layered over English, Scottish, Welsh, (Northern) Irish. Which layer a person identifies with is very often determined by their politics, and sometimes also by religious/cultural background. (British vs Irish identity in Northern Ireland tends to correspond with Protestant vs Catholic religious background, albeit there are exceptions to that generalisation.) At the same time, given England is 85% of the population, the boundary between "British nationalism" and "English nationalism" is often quite vague. Its boundaries with Scottish nationalism, Welsh nationalism, Irish nationalism, tend to be more clearly cut.
The idea it is purely an English phenomenon is divisive and pernicious.
Many of the residents of Wales who voted for Brexit are English: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/sep/22/english-peop...
The areas of Wales which identify the most strongly as Welsh had the some of the lowest votes for Brexit.
This is just more pernicious divisiveness. Those areas that are most Welsh also voted in significant numbers for Brexit.
The people of the UK, in various proportions in various places, voted to leave the EU. It may suck, but pretending it’s purely an English problem is delusion.
If you want someone to blame, blame the people that voted for Brexit everywhere. This exoneration of particular regions is bizarre. How can it be all about English Nationalism when a third of Scots voted that way too?
When did I ever say it was all about English nationalism? I think I only said that in your head.
“‘Cor tea and digestives on a rainy day, what could be more british”
National identity precludes other nationalities, which is largely the impetus for Brexit. Brits are not ever blamed for being unBritish, even if they don’t like football.
Supporting football's not really 'British', and a fairly modern phenomenon. In the 80s it was deemed uncouth and heavily associated with hooliganism, but rehabilitated in the 90s, and is already falling out of fashion again.
Football support is heavily wrapped up in the complicated British classes, in the 90s/00s it was cool to pretend to be working class when you were middle class, and supporting football was a visible way of doing that.
The economy. I'm sure there's an undercurrent of xenophobia and "little England"-ism which explains it, but it's not the full picture. Probably the biggest factor is that neoliberalism has been fucking working class people over since Thatcher. It's (sadly) empirically demonstrated that economic hardship pushes people to right-wing populism (see the 1930s, and the 2010s).
Marx was right, history is moved by the material conditions of people (not fully, but in large part).