Ask Lemmygrad

If it just disappeared in a puff of smoke? I'd be inconsolable as I've lived here my entire life. Everyone that's important to me, from my friends, to my partner, to my family, all live here. My dad's ashes have been scattered here. If England disappeared tomorrow, myself and my loved ones would immediately lose our homes and our history and immediately become stateless refugees, along with the 55.9 million other people that live here.

If you mean in the sense of some kind of Balkanisation, I'd still be extremely upset. At no point in modern history has a country ever benefited from being Balkanised; from Yugoslavia, to the collapse of the USSR, to the partition of India and the colonial carve up of China, none of these countries have materially benefitted from being divided up in this way. The people living in all of the examples cited experienced incredible suffering and instability as a direct result of Balkanisation. In England's (and more widely, the UK's) case, it would almost certainly be preyed upon by the US and the EU. Its hard enough for the British establishment to compete on a level playing field with the other imperialist powers as it is with Great Britain unified, let alone if it was split apart into several smaller and poorer independent states.

Does this mean England should exist as it does today? I don't think so, personally. I believe the UK's best future (beyond the scope of a socialist revolution, of course) is in forming a federative republic, within which England would need to be legislatively split into smaller administrative units so that it doesn't perpetuate the existing relationship between England and the rest of the UK. A federal division of the UK should be weighted primarily by population, with the aim being to ensure that each administrative unit is a similar size to Wales or Scotland, meaning a range of 3-5 million people. This means some regions of England, such as Yorkshire, the South West or the East Midlands, would translate well into such a federative system. Others would need to be redesignated, such as the North West or the South East.