if Labour wants to foster a progressive Englishness, as urged by Andy Beckett (Brexit may spell the end of the tabloid version of Englishness. Can Labour redefine it?, 8 January), it will be pushing at an increasingly open door. Over the past decade, contrary to popular myth, Englishness as seen by the English has become markedly less defined by race, or by fears about immigration and diversity. That this more liberal Englishness still lags behind multicultural Britishness is in large part because the left has shunned English identity or promoted reactionary caricatures of it. Where British multiculturalism combined grassroots demands for inclusion with state endorsement, Englishness has had no such support. The surprise is not how little Englishness has changed, but how much. But it has too often been left to sports people – most recently Marcus Rashford, perhaps – to embody this developing Englishness. The engagement of political leaders and the state in shaping English identity – as Scotland’s leaders have done with Scottish identity – is long overdue. Prof John Denham Centre for English Identity and Politics, University of Southampton • Andy Beckett and other proponents of a leftwing Englishness ignore the big changes that have taken place across England itself, with many parts of the country rejecting a unified idea of “England” that he seems to want to revive. Where are the regions in this vision of “post-Brexit Englishness”? The north has had enough of being dominated by a centralised government rooted in London. If Labour wants to rebuild support in the “red wall” constituencies, it needs to develop a narrative that helps re-establish its credibility in northern communities that feel abandoned by London. Half-hearted devolution with elected mayors but no democratic oversight can only be a stepping stone towards democratic devolution, similar to that enjoyed by the devolved nations of the UK – with a fair voting system. Andy Burnham’s recent confrontation with Boris Johnson showed the latent support for an emergent “northern” politics; if Labour doesn’t capitalise on this, somebody else will. The newly formed Northern Independence party is already building strong support on social media and has pitched itself on the centre-left. Labour thought it was invincible in Scotland, but has been sidelined by the SNP. Are there lessons for it in the north? Prof Paul Salveson Hannah Mitchell Foundation • Andy Beckett is right that an alternative roadmap was drawn in 1997, but wrong to trace it to the “Cool Britannia” meeting between Noel Gallagher and Tony Blair. More crucial was the meeting between the Jamaican-born intellectual Stuart Hall and the home secretary Jack Straw. Hall, critical of what he called “fragile, beleaguered and defensive” Englishness, pressed for the implementation of the Runnymede Trust commission report The Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain, which had equality and diversity at its core. He recalled that Straw, who had initially backed the commission, then “publicly rubbished our work” and “went scurrying back to the writings of George Orwell – containing a sort of love letter to a certain version of Englishness – in order to establish the virtues of English nationalism”. Hopefully the Starmer leadership, which in Lisa Nandy includes the daughter of the Runnymede Trust’s founder, will take its inspiration from Hall rather than Straw. Robert Gildea Emeritus professor of modern history, University of Oxford