ABSTRACT
Yet the dynamic that Brubaker observes in France and Germany is by no means absent from Britain. In recent decades the makeshift character and consequent weakness of British constitutional arrangements have become painfully obvious.2 At the same time, the fragility of British national identity has been cruelly exposed. There is a connection. Current debates on the need for a British Bill of Rights and devolution reflect questions about citizenship that are inextricably tied up with nationality, national identity and immigration. As Ann Dummett and Andrew Nicol have written:
We [the British] lack a clear-cut nationality, or citizenship with rights and duties attached to it which are easily ascertainable. This is partly because we do not have, as most countries do, a
single-document constitution or basic law listing rights and duties; partly because our constitutional theory does not envisage some British nation, or a sovereign people, of which individuals are members; partly because nationality in the British empire was handled in a haphazard and uncertain manner, leaving a legacy of confusion; and finally because nationality law since 1962 has been entangled with, and at last come to be based upon, the law of immigration.3
