Shrill voices of division still a threat to the UK
political unions between nations in world history. Her speech is being seen in Downing Street as the beginning of a hard-fought campaign to defend the Union against separatists. “She expects ministers to make the case for the Union every single day,” the source added.
LABOUR’S collapse in Scotland – losing all but one of its Commons seats at the last general election – has drastically weakened the potential for a cross-party “No” campaign in the run-up to a second independence referendum. Labour politicians such as Alistair Darling and Gordon Brown, who played key roles in the 2014 “No” campaign, would speak with less authority as figures from a party in ruins.
And while Ms Davidson is one of the most effective and popular politicians in Scotland, a Tory-led campaign against independence could prove dangerously polarising in an already deeply divided country.
In the era of Donald Trump’s US presidency and the rise of insurgent politics across the West, the outcome of another Scottish poll appears unpredictable. Economic scaremongering tactics won in Scotland in 2014 but failed in the EU referendum two years later. Union supporters would surely be nervous about attempting to launch Project Fear for a third time.
On her first day as Prime Minister Mrs May declared that preserving the United Kingdom was a cornerstone of her political credo. “That word ‘unionist’ is very important to me,” she said. Her closest allies suspect the Prime Minister is about to get the chance to show just how much that word does mean to her.