LAST Thursday the Daily Mail’s front page headline trumpeted: “Who will speak for England?” The paper was demanding that someone from the craven ranks of the Tory leadership should be prepared to put their head above the parapet and lead the campaign for a No vote in the soon-to-be EU referendum. The Mail’s emotive use of the word "England" – rather than Britain or the UK – was redolent of the paper’s editorial mind-set. On the same day, the Scottish edition led on an entirely different subject.

The use of the word England – when referring to the whole UK – is rare these days. A generation ago it was the norm. Back then, England, Britain or United Kingdom were used interchangeably – with England as shorthand. Irritating to Scottish ears, that usage remains common abroad. Also, referring to England as an island remains the norm – I heard in at Westminster last week – while demonstrably it is not.

Why have references to Britain as England diminished? Partly due to the rise of a political Scottish nationalism. Partly, the post-war period saw a great loss of self-confidence in the English middle class and therefore a loss of what it meant to be English. It is the English, I fear, who have seemed less at ease with their separate history and wonderful contributions to global culture – political liberalism, accent on the rule of law, and the power and range of the English language itself.

One aspect of this retreat from Englishness reflected the globalisation of the City of London, and its transformation into the world’s paramount banking centre. The financial elites who run the City are disdainful of the rest of England – of its industrial towns, of its working-class culture, and of its seditious commitment to social solidarity. To a degree, the City elites were happy to shed the England label, which they associate (erroneously) with parochialism and the plebeian mob.

However, there is one grand institution of the modern British state that continues to bear the name of England, unalloyed and without equivocation: the central bank. The Bank of England has been a dominant force in Britain’s post-war economic and political history – and is now more than ever. Nationalised in 1946 as the first act of the incoming Labour government, the Bank of England has been at the heart of the UK’s economic journey since then.

The mighty German and US central banks are known prosaically as the Federal Bank or (in the American case) Federal Reserve. Other countries stick to the national brand: Bank of France or Bank of Japan. But there is no Bank of the United Kingdom, only the Bank of England – a title redolent of Empire, of a Golden Age, of tradition, and of permanence. The latter conservative values are, of course, quite useful for reinforcing the image of a central bank, whose primary duty is to ensure the integrity and stability of the financial system.

On the other hand, the modern Bank of England is tasked with supervising a City of London that is the equivalent of the Wild West of the global financial system. We are in the land of cowboy banking, mis-selling, money laundering, and the yet-to-be resolved experiment with printing money on an industrial scale known as Quantitative Easing. An old-fashioned name, on the Bank’s Threadneedle Street HQ, serves as reassurance of a kind. The name goes back to long before the Bank of England became Britain’s nationalised bank of banks. It was founded pre-Union (1694) to raise money for William of Orange’s desperate plan to rearm against the French. It has remained the government’s own banker ever since. However, just which partner in this relationship had the upper hand has varied through the centuries. More than one Labour Chancellor has, on arrival, had a visit from the Bank to say the party’s manifesto will have to be put in the bucket.

The modern Bank of England emerged between the wars, under the governorship (for 24 years) of the eccentric but dapper Montague Norman, who reputedly hated all Scots and all accountants. He certainly shafted Beardmore’s, Scotland’s biggest engineering company, by refusing them an emergency loan, while secretly offering similar financial lifelines to southern companies. Norman’s judgment became increasingly open to question: he approved the transfer of Czech gold to the Nazi regime two months after the outbreak of the Second World War. Fortunately, the UK Government intervened to block the move.

These days, the Bank of England is held in higher regard. The 2007-2008 financial crisis has led to a massive restructuring of global financial regulation. Much of this is the handiwork of Mark Carney, former head of the Canadian central bank and now supremo at the Bank of England. Carney is a moderniser. He has restructured the internal operations of the Bank, promoting women and streamlining fusty internal ways of doing things. A new Bill is going through parliament this month to give legal force to some of these changes. The SNP will be proposing a few more.

For starters, it is now time to rename the Bank of England and give it a title that signals to the rest of the world that the modern, devolved UK represents four vibrant and distinct nations. Several suggestions have been put forward including the obvious (but boring) Bank of the United Kingdom. Another possibility is the Sterling Central Bank, which might be useful if an independent Scotland were again to seek a common currency with England.

However, my proposal is to tweak the name to become: the Bank of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Gordon Brown suggests a variation of this idea in his autobiography. He puts Wales before Scotland, while I list in order of population size. This new name may look unwieldy and inelegant. But it keeps the historical association with the old name while explicitly recognising the other nations of the UK. I suspect Bank of England would continue in usage as shorthand, but a point would have been made.

However, a mere name change like this would be cosmetic. We need to go further and ensure the Bank of England is responsive to the economic needs of the other devolved nations and the rest of England beyond the City of London. That’s why the SNP will be putting down amendments to affect the composition of the controlling board of the Bank, known as the Court. We want to place a legal obligation on the Chancellor of the Exchequer (who does the appointing) to ensure the membership of the Court reflects all the nations and regions of the UK.

This is hardly a novel suggestion. In 1997, Gordon Brown told parliament he wanted to have every nation and region of the UK represented on the Court. But he never delivered on that promise.

The SNP amendment will ensure the Court reflects not just the diversity of modern Britain, but in doing so will ensure at long last that vital manufacturing regions are given a direct say in monetary policy-making.

This debate is about more than names. It is about ensuring the Bank of England presides over a banking system that supports genuine enterprise and manufacturing investment across the entire British Isles.