I am well aware that there are English nationalists who decry the Union with what they see as the bloodsucking parasites on the periphery. I am not one of them.

I am British. I recognise that the Union has been immensely successful for its component nations. England brought industrial might, Wales some of our finest politicians, Scotland an empire expanding entrepeneurial class, and Ireland some of our finest literature.

But this is a family, and requires public commitment, not public spite to make it work.
I don't blame the SNP, I blame the Scottish Unionist parties (Cons & Lab & Lib-Dem) for a refusing a referendum on Scottish independence, where such a declaration of commitment to the family might be made, and as long as that is denied we are left with the acid drip-drip of spite which weakens the family commitment of all members.

And the junior partners need to remember what allowed Britain (as a whole) to make such a good fist of the sovereign nation state (when our continetal neighbours have made such a balls of it), is its inviolable island geography, which is partly the reason the Union exists in the first place; because England would not tolerate peripheral territories not under its sovereign control to be used as a spring-board for invasion by competing powers.