My identity crisis has lasted almost a week now. It started when I was asked by an academic how I would define myself in terms of ethnicity and nationality. Six days later, I am, to quote the great modern English Lake poets Page and Plant, dazed and confused. Initially, I chose being Scottish over being Scottish and British, because, well, aren't we all experiencing those Saltire moments a little more frequently now? Then I considered my British passport and realised that I really ought to define myself as Scottish and British. There is, though, no getting away from the fact that I probably feel more Scottish now than at any other time in my life.

Then I was asked: to which social grouping do you think you belong? This simply confuses matters. I have long considered myself to be working class, yet am blessed with the accoutrements that you would normally associate with the middle class. It is possible here to observe a curious difference that exists between the middle classes of Scotland and England. In Scotland, the middle classes still like to pretend that they are working class. We are a little uncomfortable with the manifestations of affluence and comfort. In England, they embrace them. There is no question of the English middle classes ever feeling the desire to hang on to their working-class roots.

Then there is the Irish question. You can't be called Kevin Joseph Patrick Aloysius McKenna and not consider what the great Dublin lyricist Phil Lynott once asked his audiences: is there anybody out there with some Irish in them, and would anybody out there like a little more Irish in them? Phil would inquire this of us with a lascivious glint in his eye as if he wanted to have some concupiscence with us all there and then. But I have a problem with identifying myself as Scots/Irish, even if I do possess a name that feels as if it ought to be sung or declared rather than merely said.

I simply don't feel very Irish and, on my very few visits to the republic, I am always left feeling empty and underwhelmed and depart its shores with many questions unanswered such as: why do they violate so much of their beautiful countryside with big breezeblock Lego houses? And why can't I order a Guinness in a pub without being assaulted by the screeching and wailing of Catweazle and Worzel Gummidge in the corner as they deploy their violins and bhodráns with extreme prejudice? I'm sure that what Stradivari had in mind when he was making his instruments was not songs about fishing boat disasters and marching through the glens to besiege the forces of the crown.

In the 2011 census, I think I claimed my Irish ethnicity but let's just leave it at that. And anyway, when I'm doing Ireland I have always preferred Belfast to Dublin. So, though I will never renounce my Irish heritage and I will sing those songs about a long-lost love entering my life again, I will not be getting the boat back any time soon.

Having solved the Irish question, I need to address why I have always been proud to call myself British and why that pride is now on the wane. Declaring yourself to be British has been in recent times to risk a certain level of opprobrium among your friends. To declare support for the English national football team, as I always have, is to court physical confrontation. It's the sort of atavistic response worthy only of the appalling Tartan Army as they lurch from town to town singing Doe a Deer. Do they behave like this to take their minds off the fact that our international team plays football in the same manner as the Teletubbies might?

I love England and love the English people. What, up until now, has there not been to like? The English people I've worked with are unfailingly generous, good-humoured and patient in the face of weary taunts about their heritage by thick Scots who would be undermined and offended if they were subjected to something similar in an English workplace. After Glasgow, London is the greatest city on the planet. Scots have always thrived there and, because of England's mild and reasonable temperament, will continue to do so even if we do decide to go our separate ways in 2014.

Yet my sense of being British has diminished lately and this process has probably coincided with the tenure of Westminster's coalition government. I defy any Scot not to feel a little more nationalistic every time David Cameron and George Osborne and William Hague and Nick Clegg open their mouths. These people are from a different planet. They represent a world and they promote a set of values that is as different from Scotland's as it is possible to be. And when any of them venture north, as Cameron did last week, to talk about saving the Union, you feel a little bit more Scottish and you pull the Saltire around you a little tighter. When you witness him and his cabinet of Bullingdon millionaires cheerfully defend their wretched health reforms, which they know will cause more hardship, you realise, with sadness, that you have never felt more different from the English.

So, as the option is being offered, I shall claim my total and complete Scottishness. My Scotland remains a welcoming, inclusive and diverse country. Social justice is woven into the fabric of our two main political parties. Our motto might very well be: The More The Merrier. Yet there are some academic impostors in our midst who have conned the government out of hundreds of thousands in grants by claiming that we are not confident and that we are a pessimistic nation. They claim that we pass it on to our children. But this is a deliberate distortion of our finest national attributes. A bit of misery, pessimism and moral rectitude keeps everyone's feet on the ground and ensures that no one gets ahead of themselves.

Yet if there was a box marked simply "Glaswegian", I'd probably just tick that. And what the f*ck has it got to do with you, sunshine?