A democratic social contract binds people together in nations but their identity derives far more from their world view than from their passport. The Daily Mail is quite right. The left is not generally at ease with nationalism. The idea of Englishness makes the good liberal's flesh creep - and it's not just the hooligans with George crosses on their faces. Turn to the dictionary of quotations and apart from eulogies to the countryside there is barely a reference to England and the English that doesn't make you blush.
National pride is unsavoury stuff.
The reason is obvious. This has been embellished with dollops of ersatz folklore, most of it Victorian or later inventions - kilts, druids, eisteddfods, bagpipes, harps, shamrocks and by imposing dead languages on wretched children who should be learning live ones. But if that's what they want, so be it. As subjugated people, if this is what it takes to restore their self-confidence, far be it from the English to snigger. But the English do not have to follow suit.