LIBERAL DEMOCRACY

All the lurking existential questions about the future of our kingdom are about to burst into the open

ANDREW MARR

The future of the United Kingdom will be Britain’s main political conversation as soon as this pandemic recedes. Two mottos help in thinking about it. The fi rst is that nothing in politics is unthinkable. The end of the Union between Scotland and England could certainly happen. A centuries-old island experiment could vanish, and perhaps be swiftly followed by the reunifi - cation of Ireland

But a second motto, and the necessary corrective, is that in politics, absolutely nothing is inevitable. The future of the UK, today, remains a live fi ght between volatile electorates and fl awed political leaders, around which swirl myriad unresolved arguments. This isn’t over.

The existential argument about the UK is, however, very much under way (existential is an over-used term, but since we are talking about the existence of the UK it is accurate). It has taken London an astonishingly long time to start thinking seriously about the break-up of Britain. We have had many years of fi ngers in ears-eyes tight shut-a labial “la-la-la…” If Boris Johnson and his senior ministers are now urgently seized by the threat to the Union, all one can say is that they woke up late. The fi rst responses-let’s set up a new cabinet committee, have meetings of proper UK ministers in Edinburgh and proconsular visits-surely fall short in terms of winning hearts and minds. The swift departure of two “Union unit” chiefs in just a few weeks, part of silly Tory faction-fi ghting, does not suggest much strategic determination in Downing Street. Westminster seems to have had a psychological block so strong that it can’t see what’s in front of its eyes.

But the country can see. A YouGov poll in late January published in the Sunday Times indicated that voters in all four UK nations-in England just as much as Scotland- now expect Scottish independence within 10 years. (At the same time, support for Irish reunifi cation is growing.) The same polling also suggested that English voters are not hugely concerned. Forty fi ve per cent were not upset-17 per cent positively said they would be pleased if Scotland went, while 28 per cent were “not bothered.” Not bothered may be complacent. The end of the UK could produce changes likely to shock many English voters. Look ahead, and surprises might seem to be the only thing you can bank on. But one thing is already clear: notwithstanding the extraordinary convulsions in the SNP, this next political crisis will begin in earnest with the Scottish parliamentary elections this spring.

Grate Britain

The roots of the crisis go way back-through most of the 20th century. With the end of Empire and the fading of uniting wartime memory, Britishness has receded as something felt in the pulse, a hot, urgent value, and retreated into offi cial abstraction. This is, clearly, hard for politicians to reverse. Pollsters confi rm what everyday conversations suggest: being Scottish, Welsh, or even English is more likely to stir the blood than being British.

If the immediate problem for London is the headline drift in Scotland in favour of independence, the deeper concern is that the separatist view gets stronger, startlingly so, among the energised young, and it’s been hard to fi nd an emotional counterargument. Among the very youngest voters, pro-independence opinion is nearly 75 per cent. Across all ages, 20 of the last 20 polls have shown convincing majorities for it. Nothing is inevitable. But folks, that’s a big wave building out there.

It has to be said that predictions of the UK’s break-up have been around for a long time. I made a BBC series two decades ago called The Day Britain Died. In an accompanying book, I observed “that indefi nable, instantly recognisable, sense in Scotland that the country is drifting away from London rule.”

And that was still in the days when Labour enjoyed total dominance there. Left unionism has been like a grand sandstone façade, standing somewhere in the East End of Glasgow, with chiselled windowsills and Doric columns but no internal structure or steel buttresses to hold it up. It eventually went down with a sudden roar and a vast puff of pink dust. But even in the late 90s, not long after Labour’s George Robertson had unwisely predicted that devolution would “kill nationalism stone dead,” senior Labour fi gures were telling me in private that they knew the Union couldn’t last.