I think the real question is that of national pride, who here honestly hand on heart considers themselves "British" before being English, Scottish, Welsh or whatever ? I doubt there's very many. That being the case if you were born in any of those countries then you are by nature British whether you like it or not. It's just most people consider themselve English, Scottish, Welsh as appropriate first and foremost. Because you can bet your last penny if this island ever errupted into war with each other again do you think anyone would be bothered about the fact that we all Brits n should stick together? Nah.
You do see the tribalism that still exists no matter what anyone says but obviously to a much lesser extent with the international football - else England,Scotland,Wales wouldn't exist there'd just be the 1 GB team. So really it doesn't matter who considers themselves British or not, because really when put into perspective it's a tiny island with tensions between the handful of countries living on it, all the British thing is really is a flag we can all look at and attempt to live peacefully by except history won't allow it so there'll always be that tribal divide between the individual countries. I'm English and proud of it, and I'm sure the Scottish and the Welsh feel just as much pride to be Scottish and Welsh respectively. In the grand scheme of things I think the British thing is just a smokescreen, plain and simple. Though it's 2010, we should all be able to let bygones be bygones and not judge each other by nationality in my view. Take people as they are not where they are from.
