Cornwall does not need permission to feel different – it is different

Were people dancing in the narrow streets of Cornwall's towns and villages on Thursday as news filtered through that the government in distant London had finally agreed to grant the Cornish and their Brythonic Celtic language "national minority" status like the Scots and Welsh? Not that you'd notice. When a late Easter confirms the start of the main tourist season most locals are too busy making their living.

When I spotted the headline "It's official: the Cornish are Different" next to the black and white Cornish flag on the front page of the Western Morning News, my friendly St Ives newsagent broke into a broad smile. "My dad would have been so proud of this moment," she said. She was proud, too. It wouldn't change much, but it is a good moment.

So there may have been only one comment posted under the WMN's article celebrating a long-sought goal achieved (the posting complained that coalition ministers acted only because they are fearful of Ukip votes in the south-west on 22 May), but there were gleeful expressions of delight on social media and among Cornish VIPs – and glasses will be raised tonight after another tough year. "Proper job," as the local saying goes.

For once their fellow countrymen across the Tamar – which divides Cornwall from England or "the rest of England"– are aware of Cornwall's vulnerability, as more than a remote and (mostly) pretty holiday destination five hours' drive from London or Birmingham. The winter storms that destroyed Brunel's main rail route west at Dawlish in south Devon attracted worldwide attention. David Cameron even turned up to join praise of the Network Rail team which – for once the heroes of the hour – got the line repaired and open again by 4 April , just ahead of the Easter holiday rush.

How much did the pictures and alarmist media coverage damage the Devon and Cornwall economies? Views vary. "Every time Dawlish appeared on TV we had a few more summer cancellations," says one pub landlord. "Since the re-opening, bookings are higher than last year," says another. This week's edition of the Cornishman leads with a "record breaking" headline over a glorious photo of St Ives bathed in Easter sunshine. The paper is produced in rival Penzance, so what do they know?, mutter the sceptics of St Ives.

But one season, good or rained out, does not alter the hard facts. Long the poorest county in England, many of its citizens reliant on low wages and part-time seasonal work, Cornwall saw tin mining succumb to globalisation and cheaper rivals in the late 19th century. The pilchards – 900m a year exported during the industry's prime – were fished out dramatically in the 1920s, though fishing tenaciously lingers on.

Farming has always had it tough; there is barely a flat field in the county, though few fields with bad views either. Few moorland views are less than breathtaking either. Even if parts of this week's BBC TV production of Daphne du Maurier's Jamaica Inn were filmed in Cumbria, the ancient North Cornish pub on the A30 managed to cash in with a special big-screen viewing. You grab opportunities when you can – just as Cornwall's wreckers and smugglers once did.

As in other parts of un-Romanised Celtic Britain, the mysterious past has been confected into an ingredient of the tourist appeal – King Arthur at Tintagel, Joseph of Aramathea bringing Christ to Cornwall on a trading mission, the lost land of Lyonesse in the Atlantic deep beyond Penzance, Bishop Trelawney and assorted revolts against distant oppressors, including the excise men claiming taxes for the king in London.

Hostility to the gas and electricity companies and to the taxman remains deep. People ask: what do we get out of them? Our vegetables are shipped to Covent Garden and some even come back dearer. It is no use protesting that the EU-backed broadband rollout means St Ives now has fibre optic access – which is more than posh Notting Hill has – when few residents deem the expense worthwhile to their work or leisure. And EU scepticism runs deep. When Spanish and Canadian fishermen clashed over Newfoundland fishing rights a few years ago, Cornish fishing boats flew the maple leaf flag from their masts – in solidarity with non-EU brethren.

No wonder Ukip's London-bashing, Brussels-bashing agenda has some appeal. The Lib Dems used to be the party of protest when the county had five Tory MPs (occasionally a Labour one in industrial Falmouth). But now its forces are dominant, the appeal to the disaffected has weakened. Cornwall council – the county has been reduced from five to one unitary authority (plus the separately run Scillies) – is Lib Dem/Independent controlled.

So it was the Lib Dem chief secretary to the Treasury, Danny Alexander, on the eve of a Cornish visit, who announced the "national minority" concession – itself an EU-promoted concept, but as with Cornwall's extra millions from Brussels's "objective one" budget – aimed at regions with less than 75% of average EU income – it does not generate much gratitude. As a Highland Scot Alexander's sympathy and support for Cornish sensibilities is genuine (Lib Dem policy now supports a Cornish assembly), but as a London politician he gets as little credit as he would from Alex Salmond's SNP diehards.

Paradoxically Cornwall was always a royalist county when Cornish was still spoken until the late 18th century. Before the 1832 Reform Act the county boasted no less than 42 MPs, some of them from famous rotten boroughs like Grampound with its five voters. It was loyal to Charles I during the civil war, a safe haven for gentry and aristo-politicians until the democratic late 20th century when Cornwall's burdens (and its income) were enhanced by the arrival of retirees and second-home owners with large wallets. Even now, Prince Charles's extensive Duchy of Cornwall estates are a powerful force.

There were always pockets of posh (avid Cameron was a teen Hooray Henry at Rock) but the population has past the 500,000 mark and is as unequal as big cities. The contrasts can be painful now. Incomers and tourists – "emmets" or ants in Cornish slang – brought up the best houses or built on the best sites, and helped fill the wards at handsome Truro's Treliske hospital, this isolated county's only city and major hospital.

Defence-related industries tied to nearby Plymouth may have dwindled too, but it is not all bad news. A combined university of Cornwall – based on Camborne's Tech, its famous school of mines and Falmouth's art college – is finally in being. It is the last English county to get a uni.

Will national minority status have much practical effect beyond protecting cherished cultural traditions and the recovery of a near-lost language? After all, regional identity is reasserting itself against post-imperial London and its rich (in parts) cosmopolitan elite all over Britain, not just in the devolved parliaments or the ubiquity of the Cornish flag (which my Cornish father would probably not have recognised), but in inner England: Somerset produced a new flag this month.

Simon Parker, Cornwall editor of the WMN, wrote yesterday that the Cornish did not need London's permission to know they feel different in their remote peninsula – and are different. His message: "Give us some more state aid for our poor roads and struggling ambulance service to show you mean it, Danny."

On an adjoining page a letter writer makes the familiar case that the rights granted to Cornwall's ancient stannary parliament in 1508 gives it the right to veto unwanted legislation from Westminster. The sceptical Cornish are not easily impressed.