We will know soon enough the Tory party leader to succeed Boris Johnson. We know already the horrendous list of challenges that they will face: the Ukraine war, climate change, cost of living crisis, fuel costs, levelling up, NHS collapse. But there is one more. This might beguilingly look as if it can be ignored for the time being. But, it can’t. The future constitution of the UK is in play—whether we like it or not.
The English are particularly obtuse at understanding that the UK is not synonymous with them. By contrast, I have a particular sensitivity on this issue. I spent five years of my school life in endless re-enactments of a selective view of the great Anglo-Scottish battles of the past. I represented the invading and invariably defeated English. Somehow, the school bell always rang before we could get to the bloody defeats of Flodden and Culloden. All this was fuelled by classroom drawings of Robbie the Bruce watching the intrepid spider that was his inspiration for unmitigated hostility to the English.
