Section:GDN 1J PaGe:1 Edition Date:190801 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 31/7/2019 18:44 cYanmaGentaYellowbla
I
n a distant echo of a medieval monarch’s royal
progress around the realm, Boris Johnson
has been journeying on a prime ministerial
grand tour around the country to show his
new subjects who is boss. Last weekend it
was northern England ; on Monday, Scotland ;
Tuesday was Wales day and Wednesday was
the turn of Northern Ireland. These visits
contained none of the celebratory pageants that would
have been expected in the middle ages. Instead, the
new leader was whisked in and then out again. Much
of the tour has been controlled. Journalists were mostly
kept at a distance. In the streets, boos seem to have
been more common than cheers.
Like Theresa May did, Johnson talks the talk about
holding the United Kingdom together amid the
disruption of Brexit. He has even cast himself as minister
for the union. But it is hard to dispute the widening gulf
between current reality and the rhetoric of both May’s
“precious union” and Johnson’s “awesome foursome”.
Tours like Johnson’s only emphasise that this union is
increasingly divided – and perhaps even breaking apart.
Politically, by far the most urgent stop on Johnson’s
tour was in Northern Ireland. The most fraught of
the visits was probably the one to Scotland. But inmany ways the most telling trip was Johnson’s foray
into Wales on Tuesday, when he cuddled a chicken in
Newport, visited a retail company in Brecon and met
Wales’s Labour fi rst minister, Mark Drakeford , in Cardiff
before heading to Belfast.
Wales was not included in the Johnsonian progress
merely for completeness’s sake. It was also there
because of today’s byelection in the mid-Wales rural
constituency of Brecon and Radnorshire. The result
will test whether there is the Johnson bounce for the
Tory party , or whether Jo Swinson will be celebrating a
Liberal Democrat recapture of a seat that the old Liberal
party fi rst won in a famous 1985 byelection.
Yet Wales should never be overlooked. In discussions
about the UK’s constitutional and political distresses,
Wales is all too often treated as an afterthought. The
reasons are not hard to see. Modern Wales has endured
little of the existential pain of Northern Ireland. The
nationalist cause has never carved through Welsh
politics the way it has in Scotland. Wales has been
welded to England for far longer than the other nations.
And its support for devolution was often lukewarm.
Yet the old idea that nothing is likely
to change in the relationship between
Wales and England is looking lazy. That’sTo understand violent men, ask the women who know Joan Smith, page 3
I took a booze break, but I didn’t expect to be transformed Gay Alcorn, page 4
How the media framed the way we see the migrant crisis The long read, page 9
The Guardian
ILLUSTRATION:
SEBASTIEN THIBAULTThursday 1 August 2019
Martin
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How Johnson’s
Brexit could
tear the United
Kingdom apart
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