The Union: is the end nigh?

A poll of Conservative members last month revealed a desire for Brexit so strong that 63% would happily sacrifice the Union with Scotland for it. It seems that their wishes may be fulfilled “sooner rather than later”, said Kevin McKenna in The Observer. Last week, Theresa May made her farewell visit to Scotland, where she breezily declared her confidence “that our Union is built on rock-solid foundations”. Her words caused some amusement north of the border, where the prospect of both a no-deal Brexit and Boris Johnson in No. 10 is causing a groundswell in favour of independence. May has played an important part, too – by trying to deliver a Brexit that Scotland voted decisively against, and a hard Brexit at that, without even properly consulting Edinburgh. During her premiership, monthly meetings of the Holyrood-Westminster Joint Ministerial Committee “were cancelled so often that Scottish ministers ran sweepstakes on the time of the cancellation text message”.

“England and Scotland have been drifting apart for decades,” said Bagehot in The Economist. The two great political parties have largely lost their Scottish dimensions. Labour, once known for its tartan mafia, has become “a London clique”. The Conservative Party is “on its way to becoming an English nationalist party rather than a unionist one”. A Johnson premiership may well be the final straw. He is “kryptonite” in Scotland: his approval ratings are worse than Nigel Farage’s. Scottish Tories were so horrified at the prospect that “they organised a stop-Boris plot, code-named Operation Arse”. (“We called it that so we’d all be clear who we were talking about,” explained one.) It seems that their plot has failed. Johnson “embodies a thoughtless, arrogant and disrespectful Englishness”, said The Guardian. It is hard to see how he can avoid “becoming the SNP’s recruiting sergeant”.

“Now Project Fear has a new rallying cry,” said Michael Forsyth in The Daily Telegraph: “a Johnson premiership will lead to the break-up of the UK.” Not since New Labour’s claim that devolution would kill nationalism stone dead has there been “a more fatuous proposition”. Polls still show most oppose independence, and as Nicola Sturgeon is well aware, a third of SNP supporters voted for Brexit. For many in Scotland, the idea of taking back control of fishing and agriculture is very attractive. Maybe so, but there’s no doubt relations between Westminster and Holyrood have reached a new low, said Ian Swanson in The Scotsman: May singled out the SNP for attack in her farewell speech, saying its “good faith” could not be relied upon. She leaves a Union “on the brink, and fewer doors open for discussion”.