There's several factors at play. I think the key thing to understand though is that, as with all cases in life where you've got a majority and minorities, those minorities are keenest to assert their individuality. Whereas if you're from a majority, and/or from a group that traditionally holds most of the power (whether that be white, male, straight, middle- or upper-class, or in this case simply English), as often as not you just don't have to focus on your identity so fiercely from day to day.

England is by far the largest constituent country of the UK, and makes up something like five-sixths of the population. And as you might expect where you've got one bigger and more powerful country with smaller neighbours, going back over many centuries it has most often sought to dominate those smaller neighbours, with many wars being fought by kings and princes going back to the Middle Ages.

So that breeds a certain... resentment from some residents of the other countries. And thus, stereotypically at least, people from Wales and Scotland (and Northern Ireland, though there's particular complications going on there) are – on average – generally keener to assert their identity as being from their individual country, as opposed to the nation state.

Notably, Wales was legally annexed by England in the Middle Ages (as opposed to forming a union with it), meaning it doesn't even get its own representation on the Union Flag – and when we talk about the later union of England with Scotland it was therefore actually that of England (oh-and-by-the-way-Wales) with Scotland.

So you can see how asserting one's Welshness or Scottishness is a understandable and quite natural part of wanting to push back against English hegemony.

I stress that this is painting in broad strokes here, and the same feelings don't apply to everyone. But, equally broadly, English people on average don't care so much whether you refer to them as English or British.

It's worth noting that in numerous places around the world, the names for 'England' and 'Britain' are literally the same thing. And of course many people in places like the USA routinely use "England" and "Great Britain" and "the UK" interchangeably. You can see why this would really annoy residents of the other constituent countries of the United Kingdom. Yet it was even something that many English people did too, common right up until probably the mid or even late 20th century – Winston Churchill for example regularly used "England" to mean Britain during the second world war. Again, this comes from being in a position where you have the luxury of perhaps not having to think that much about your identity.

The flip side of the Englishness thing is that it's maybe increasingly often expressed as a function of white Anglo-Saxon nationalism. (And, in parallel, there is a rising use of the English flag, St George's cross, in an overtly political fashion.) Once more, I don't wish to tar everyone with the same brush here, or suggest this is in any way universal. But it's fair to say that there's more undertones involved with asserting oneself as specifically English.

At the same time, naturally, there's many people who would prefer to call themselves English for entirely wholesome and personal reasons, simply because that's where they come from and they feel a particular affinity with the land, landscape, wildlife, culture, etc etc of (part of) that country.

Personally, I would always describe myself as British. I'm mostly English by blood, but a quarter Welsh (and a little bit Scottish), and grew up in England when I was small, yet I've lived the majority of my life in Wales. So I've very much got a foot in both camps, yet I don't belong to one or the other: I'm not (very) Welsh, but I'm not fully English either. Therefore, I'm British, because if not then what am I? And there's many people in the UK who will be in similar sorts of positions.

And, for what it's worth, I like being part of a nation made up of four countries. I think that's interesting. So I'm not a fan of balkanisation, or of the independence movement in Wales and Scotland. But I understand why some other people are, even if I don't share their sense of historical grievance etc.

Because you've got all these different points of view, though, and people with all these different backgrounds and cultural and political viewpoints, it's inevitable that you're always going to get different answers from different people when it comes to the subject of what they consider their nationality.