the union” simply adds insult to injury.
He sounds comically English. He is English (despite some cosmopolitan ancestry). And, more than
anything, he is turning his party into an English National Party, whatever he says. “Do or die” Brexit means
the most blatant disregard for the views of the Scottish people, who voted, lest we forget, to remain in the
EU. They do not want to be railroaded out of it by a Westminster parliament run by a minority of English
Conservative MPs, with a prime minister elected by 92,000 Tory party members, overwhelming, white,
male, rich – and English.
Even his own Scottish Conservative leader, Ruth Davidson, has made her frustrations with his policies and
style perfectly clear. In response, Johnson chose to sack her ally, the blameless Scottish secretary of state
David Mundell. Not since Margaret Thatcher inflicted mass unemployment and the poll tax on the long-
suffering Scottish people has there been such a mutual incomprehension between No 10 and the Queen’s
subjects north of the border. They’ve even gone back to the old device of appointing an English MP sitting
for an English seat (Worcester Man himself, Robin Walker MP). Expect to see him modelling a kilt soon
enough.
What a fankle!
Like an unhappy marriage, no union can survive such abuse of a partner. It should, then, be no surprise that
in the latest polling there seems a decisive tilt towards independence, were a referendum to be run in
Scotland on the issue – 52-48 per cent in favour of leaving the UK, funnily enough.
Back in 2014 the vote in favour of staying in the UK was 55.3 per cent to 44.7 per cent, hardly
overwhelming anyway. Since then the Scots have found themselves on the thick end of austerity, ignored
over Brexit and patronised, yet again, by a UK government run by and for the interests of the English.
So the next referendum should signal the end of the three-centuries-old union of Scotland and England?
Maybe not yet.
They might hate the English (understandable), but would they want their
cars and lorries stuck on the new international EU (Scotland)-England
border from days on end? Do they want tariffs on Scotch? Does anyone in
their right mind?
First, the decision to hold a referendum rests in London, not Edinburgh. It is a “reserved matter”, as the
saying goes, meaning that Scotland cannot unilaterally declare independence or run an official referendum
on its own account that would be, in Nicola Sturgeon’s words, “beyond doubt or challenge”.
Ms Sturgeon says she wants another referendum – indyref2 – by 2021, but she will find some difficulty in
getting London to agree. To do so she would have the repeat the same sort of process that occurred over
2012-14, when a series of agitations, including legal moves and a threat to hold a unilateral referendum,
forced David Cameron to agree to the 2014 vote.
Ms Sturgeon is careful, at the moment, to say she wants a vote during the term of the current Scottish
parliament, which means before May 2021. There is a big problem with this, however – Brexit.
On the one hand, Brexit, particularly a no-deal version, would enrage the Scots and create a very powerful
patriotic feeling about what was being done against their will. The emotional case couldn’t be put more
strongly, or humiliatingly, for Scotland to be treated in the same way as, say, Bath or London – as just