In an attempt to return to the topic, I think there is something special about being from the British Isles and being one of the British nations and tribes, but there's something especially special about being English. There is something different about us, something that sets us apart from everybody else, even from our island neighbours. Most civilisation in the form we recognise it today is based on ideas that came out of England, or that England made its own, and most of the best things in the world today started in England and were thought up by an Englishman. Even if you are not a particularly impressive person yourself, simply being English still carries with it a certain cachet and kudos than other nationalities do not.
Unfortunately - or fortunately, depending on how you look at it - English civilisation is inimitable. It can only be spread, cloned and practiced by English and British people. Others, whether German-American, or high caste Indian, or Malaysian, will always produce imperfect facsimiles, no matter how diligently they try. The English language itself, the most powerful expression of English predominance due to its global currency as a lingua franca, has become heterogeneous with a multitude of forms and no longer belongs exclusively to the English themselves. I think Steve is right to say we should have some pride in our English identity, which can only come from our uniqueness and exclusivity, which I think have suffered due to the dominance of English ways and culture over everything else.
Yes, other countries and civilisations and cultures have had analogous things before England did. There have been older parliaments. Althing and Tynwald are older than the Lords and Commons, but there is only one Mother of Parliaments that the civilised world looks to as a model, or at least, did look to. Other cultures have had stable systems of law, but there is only one culture that could have sustained freedom under the rule of law using common law. Even when the English haven't invented something, they still seem to carry it out better than everybody else before and since. We're just the greatest. Maybe we should take more pride in this and our national achievements, and even look to restore some of this old world in which we led and all others followed? I think Roch is wrong to call for a re-branding, if by that he means something new. It is England anew we want, not new.
