The union is dying, and Boris Johnson’s One Nation Conservatism can’t save it

For all his talk of the ‘awesome foursome’, the prime minister cannot prevent the inevitable

Among the many unintended consequences of David Cameron’s decision to call the 2016 referendum on EU membership, the most significant – even more significant perhaps than the Leave victory itself – has been the threat to the union. Assumed to be safe after the Scottish independence referendum the year before, the integrity of the United Kingdom is now at greater risk than it has ever been. It is hard to see how the UK can survive another generation intact.

The danger is not lost on Boris Johnson, whose party still calls itself Conservative and Unionist. In the Queen’s Speech that followed his election landslide, the future of the union was the second point after the pledge to enact Brexit. “The integrity and prosperity of the United Kingdom is of the utmost importance to my government,” the Queen intoned.

In his introduction to the Conservative election manifesto, Johnson wrote in characteristically bullish style: “We will defend and protect our United Kingdom – the awesome foursome that make up the most successful political partnership in history.” The manifesto itself set out some of the ways he hoped to do this, all of which boiled down to throwing money at the problem.

There will be a “UK shared prosperity fund”, largely to replace lost EU cash; free ports will be planted everywhere; and the Northern Irish economy will be “turbo-charged” to improve infrastructure, enterprise and tourism, and reduce dependence on the public sector (good luck with that). Scotland is promised a post-Brexit fishing deal; a review of alcohol duty that could cut tax on whisky; and help for its oil and gas industry over the transition period to carbon net-zero (good luck with that, too).

Then there is that bridge project between Scotland and Northern Ireland – which should not be dismissed. There’s a place for grands projets on the French model, projects combining the practical and the symbolic. As it happens, the distance to be spanned – 12 miles (19km) – is about the same as the bridge that Russia built as a direct road route to Crimea, and Vladimir Putin got it done (to coin a phrase) in less than four years. If built, Britain’s bridge could just beat Russia’s to become the longest in Europe: how would that be for a Brexit Britain statement? Where there’s a will…

Yet it’s doubtful that barrel-loads of cash will be capable of preserving the union in the longer term; the forces of opposition seem just too strong.

This is not just because of Nicola Sturgeon’s determination to treat the Scottish Nationalist Party’s victories in December as a mandate for a new independence referendum. If Johnson and the UK parliament refuse to sanction one, we could end up with a nasty spat between Edinburgh and London, even something akin to Spain and Catalonia. But a stand-off could be postponed by any number of eventualities: if Sturgeon’s star started to fade, for instance; if the SNP did worse than expected at next year’s Scottish parliamentary elections; or if Johnson decided to play hardball with subsidies for Scotland’s energy sector (which he might: remember how he treated Tory Remainers).

The real threat to the union comes not from a Scottish leader bent upon independence, in other words. It comes from the geopolitical reality that the obvious way to keep the UK together – a federation on the German model – is simply not practicable. England is far too dominant in size, population and wealth – and will not, and should not, countenance being subdivided to allow for the appearance of a federation. Devolution, begun under Tony Blair, has been inconsistent and changeable, with different powers for different nations. But it is hard to see how, given the disparities between the nations, it could have been otherwise.

The only possible model – a federation in which one part was similarly dominant – is the Soviet Union, and we know what happened there. Not only was the federation a false one, and exposed as such once Mikhail Gorbachev tried to put it on a real federal footing with his doomed Union Treaty, but resentment had built up in Russia about the extent to which its income was subsidising the other republics, and its own sense of national identity went unacknowledged. While other republics enjoyed their own national Communist Parties and (mostly sham) legislatures, Russia did not have either until the USSR was on the verge of collapse.

The English question was the dog that mostly did not bark, either during the referendum campaign or since. But it will surely start to bark very loudly if Johnson appears to be piling largesse on the devolved governments in an effort to keep the union intact. When asked in a YouGov poll last summer whether they would still support Brexit if it meant the UK losing Scotland and/or Northern Ireland, a large majority of Conservative Party members said they would.

Even if a federated Britain were possible, it still would not solve the central problem. In all federated countries, core powers, including defence and foreign policy, remain centralised. But it is foreign policy – specifically membership of the EU – which is at the heart of the SNP’s desire for a new independence referendum, and something similar applies to Northern Ireland. Both Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to remain in the EU in 2016. More devolution, even a formal federation, will not give them the choice of staying in the EU.

Demographic trends are the other reason why break-up looks inevitable. For Remain to win in Northern Ireland in 2016, a part of the Protestant, Unionist electorate had to cross the sectarian divide. That trend was reinforced in December when non-Unionists won a majority for the first time. It may not be a question of whether, but of when, Northern Ireland will decide that the time has come for a vote on a unified Ireland.

The constitutional provision for such a vote is enshrined in the Good Friday Agreement, so there would be no reason for a quarrel with the UK government of the day. But demography could dictate what happens in Scotland, too. New data shows younger Scots voting for the (pro-EU) SNP in even greater numbers than their elders. Support for the union, this could suggest, is in terminal decline, with a “Yes” vote for independence becoming a real prospect within a generation, whether Sturgeon or a successor leads the way.

Now, you could argue that England and Wales would between them form a more cohesive and potentially prosperous state than the current UK; those Conservatives who said that the loss of Scotland and/or Northern Ireland was a price worth paying for Brexit would surely agree. How far would the separatist tendency go – Wales? Cornwall? – and when would London (for it would still be London) call a halt?

Alternatively, you could argue that Scotland will take a cold, hard look at its national and economic interests and opt, reluctantly, to stay, even if Northern Ireland departs (I wouldn’t bet on it, though). I just hope that the governments and civil servants of all of the “awesome foursome” are better prepared for a break-up than they were for Brexit, so that the inevitable is a gentle parting of the ways: more Czechs and Slovaks than Yugoslavia.