Farewell disUnited Kingdom

Isuppose we should call it the second English revolution. Just as you thought the events of the first English revolution mid-17th Century were ancient history, they come right back into focus.

How astonishing that something so important should have crept up on us.

Like seeing a zombie apocalypse break out beyond the plate glass windows of your local supermarket.

A can of beans in hand, we look amazed at the chaos beyond, slowly realising that all bets are off.

Amid the predictability of post-war politics, England has become the most populist, angry, revolutionary country in the developed world.

Forget racists in the Netherlands, turmoil in Greece or the fascistic tendencies of Hungary – it’s England that wins the prize for nutty extremity.

This revolution is supposedly about parliament versus the people.

The roundheads of MPs pitted against the cavaliers of Brexit who claim the title of the people.

Or is it the other way round? People like Boris and the Brexiteers, but as a revolution in power it doesn’t feel like the common folk will win.

Instead, it has the air of a rich man’s coup – using the emotion of the people to engineer a profiteering regime.

For all the polling information that sees Boris enjoying a lead over Labour, which he uses to justify his reckless strategy, it’s only pertinent in England.

There is no sign of this in Scotland.

Polling here shows overwhelming support against Boris.

The SNP are up, the Tories are down. What’s more, tally the anti-Tory and anti-Brexit vote up and it’s around 75%.

South of the border, it’s quite different – add the Tories and the Brexit Party polling figures together and you get close to 50% of the electorate.

Though not quite so dramatic, a shift is also occurring in Northern Ireland where the latest polls suggest the DUP would lose one seat and have a tight race in two others they hold.

England is going one way, Scotland and Northern Ireland the other.

It’s not just the polls – the media story, the national debate, are different.

In Scotland, Westminster is a bizarre spectacle, like staring through that supermarket window at the unprecedented events.

Down south, the chaos is owned, it is theirs. They are in the car park, fighting. South of the border there is real anger that politicians have stopped Brexit, and genuine concern for the state of governance.

English newspapers whip up nationalist anger, goading readers into seeing parliamentary chaos as a direct insult to them. It is confused – Boris is one of the people who stopped Brexit under Theresa May, yet now he is the champion of the people for, presumably, delivering something very close to May’s deal.

English politics and Scottish politics are markedly different on a matter of UK importance.

That has seemed like the story since the 1980s, but has never been so solid as now. It is new that the English political story should appear foreign.

This can only increase if the rumours of the backstop being drawn down the Irish Sea are true.

In Theresa May’s original plan – honouring her red line that Northern Irish peace should not be jeopardised by Brexit – she had NI still in the customs union while the rest of the UK was out. The intent was to prevent a hard border on the island of Ireland.

She changed this to include all of the UK in the customs union in a transition period, a nod to the DUP who were alarmed that treating NI differently to other parts of the UK, making it more similar to southern Ireland, would hasten the unification of Ireland.

Boris Johnson is said to be considering the old option again, as it would be acceptable to the EU and of little concern to his voters in England.

Talk of a bridge between NI and Scotland is a smokescreen, a Bojo bluff to divert attention from the betrayal of the DUP. If Johnson carries through on shifting the customs union border, he will have satisfied English electors while profoundly unsettling the Union. Of this, he doesn’t seem to care.

In an interesting historical reverse, in the first English revolution Cromwell was a champion of parliament against the Crown, and the man who led the New Model Army on a bloody march conquering Ireland.

Johnson instead claims the title of champion of the people against parliament, and might do more to unravel Cromwell’s Irish legacy than any PM to date.

If that’s a bit academic, the link between England’s modern revolution and a weakening Union is not.

Latest polling suggests over 50% of people in Northern Ireland would support reunification, and a poll earlier this year put support in the Republic of Ireland at two thirds.

In Scotland, support for independence is solid and rising.

Only a matter of years ago we talked of Britain, a Union and a shared future.

With England unhinged, we talk only of division.

The political wrecking spree in England has served to promote support for Scottish independence.