It’s St George’s Day today, the anniversary of Queen Anne being crowned at Westminster Abbey (1702), and of the chartering of Connecticut as an English colony in 1662. And, coincidentally, on this day in 1516, Duke Wilhelm IV of Bavaria endorsed “The German Beer Purity Law”, which I think we could all support.

I’ve been spending the weekend celebrating a significant anniversary, and clearly you’ve all been outside enjoying the fine weather (except our Scottish colleagues, who’ve been at their Conference), or campaigning for elections, as we’ve got precious little in the kitty for publication today. So, I’ll be winging it rather today.

But coming back to St George’s Day, I find myself wondering what being English means to liberals, so we’ll have some thoughts on that, I suspect.

It was a tough week for Brexiteers in the Lords, as the forces of reason struck two potentially significant blows, and there will doubtless be more this week, with two more days of debate on the European Union Withdrawal Bill.

And, astonishingly, despite the shambles that of that press release in Brussels, we’re still members of the ALDE Party. This coming weekend, the ALDE Party Council will be meeting in Sofia, Bulgaria, and I’ll be previewing the event.

So, we’ll end with some poetry on England’s national day. In fact, it’s more of a song lyric, from Howard Blake’s 1974 “New National Songbook”;

The Germans live in Germany,
The Romans live in Rome.
The Russians live in Russia
But the English live at home…

Good morning and welcome to Monday…