1) a general and widely supported desire for the decentralisation/devolution of powers to a Cornish governmental body. Not nationalist in its own right it is certainly supported by all nationalists. Perhaps the other side of this is to have Cornwall given full EU regional status.

2) the desire for Cornwall to be recognised as not part of England, but rather as a home nation inline withs is de jure legal status.

3) related to 2, to have the Duchy fully revealed for what it is and then have it and its powers handed over to the Cornish public.

4) like the English, Scottish, Irish Travellers and other groups recognised by race relations case law have the Cornish recognised legally as a distinct group (national minority perhaps?) within the UK and perhaps even Cornwall.

A referendum tomorrow on full Cornish independence would probably be lost but address all the above give us ten years to stew and then ask the question again and perhaps.

I’ve argued on my National Conversation For England blog that if it’s accepted that Scotland has the right for a referendum on independence, then England, Wales and N. Ireland should also have a referendum at the same time on constitutional proposals for their status as nations inside or outside the UK. The same principle ought to apply to Cornwall, if you accept that Cornwall is a nation. The trouble is, it is not generally accepted to be one, not just by the English but by the British establishment. I think, so long as the present status quo of centralised, unitary (albeit in some cases devolved) rule by the British state applies, a referendum on independence will never be accorded to Cornwall. However, a federal or independent England, with real powers to determine its make up as a nation, could well come to the view that it was up to the people of Cornwall to decide whether they wanted to be part of it or not. So I genuinely think the best prospect for Cornish regional / national autonomy or independence would be federal autonomy or independence for England.

My own preference, if I had to lay my cards on the table, would be for a new federal state comprising England, Wales and Cornwall – Scotland having finally gone its own way. Wales and Cornwall would exercise autonomous government of their internal affairs, as would England; but matters in the mutual interest of all three nations (e.g. macro-economics, defence, international affairs) would be dealt with by a federal government and parliament, with built-in protection for the Welsh and Cornish minorities to prevent England overruling the wishes of people in those countries. Of course, if the people of Wales and Cornwall still wished to be fully independent, they should have the right to be so.

Once upon a time, there were four brothers called Andrew, David, George and Patrick who all lived with their parents, Mr and Mrs Britania. The four boys all had very different personalities, Andrew was a bit chippy and always telling his parents that he was going to move out but despite this he was clearly his parents favorite and they would bestow him with gifts to try to please him. David was smaller than Andrew but would always try to emulate his bigger brother but lacked Andrews self confidence. The smallest of the four boys was Patrick. He was a haunted individual who had lost a large part of himself many years ago and now had a split personality where part of himself didn’t feel part of the Britania family, but his other half was extremely loyal to them. Unfortunately for him this loyalty was not reciprocated by his siblings or his parents. The biggest brother was George. He had devoted his life to his family to the extent that his own personality had been completely smothered and he was thought of as being synomenous with the Britania family rather than an individual in his own right. He was very quiet and didn’t really speak for himself, in stark contrast to his smaller siblings.

One day George finally snapped. His parents constantly taking him for granted and his siblings holding him responsible for all that was wrong with the family had taken its toll and he’d had enough. He felt that there was no alternative other than killing Mr and Mrs Britania off. At first people wondered why George had done it and what it would mean for the smaller boys but George said it was a mercy killing and that now the four boys could stand on their own two feet. Eventually the other three boys and their neighbours began to understand why George had killed off Mr and Mrs Britania.

The boys now have their own lives and a much better relationship with each other as a consequence. They still love each other and hate each other all at the same time but there is a mutual respect now which wasn’t there when they lived under each others feet with the clunking fist of their repressive parents constantly hanging over them. George is re-asserting his personality, Andrew has got the independence that he has craved for so long, David has realised that he had nothing to worry about and is now standing tall as a grown up. Patrick meanwhile has gone overseas to try and find his lost self again.

And they all lived happily ever after………

Of course, they completely underestimated the strength of English-national sentiment, and the fact that devolution would be perceived by many in England as giving Wales and Scotland democratic and financial advantages that were being (and are in fact being) denied to England. Not only that, but the limited amount of self-rule that has been accorded to Scotland and Wales has provided the occasion for a whole renaissance of national self-confidence and self-affirmation for both countries (and good luck to you, I say), which is being completely excluded for England: the government (and Gordon Brown, in particular) can’t even acknowledge that it is only a government for England in most of what it does; and the real wishes and concerns of English people are ignored by a British government that is unaccountable to it.

Prior to 1997 Wales and Scotland had a form of administrative devolution which proved unsatisfactory. A referendum was held on whether to move to elective devolution. England had no such corresponding arrangements at that time.