The United Kingdom is far more important than your crash-out Brexit, Boris Johnson

David Cameron once remarked that the union of England and Scotland was more valuable to him than the Brexit issue – Johnson needs to realise the same truth

The people of Northern Ireland and Scotland voted to stay in the EU and claim, rightly, there is no mandate to tear them out of it (AFP/Getty)

As when the eight territories of the former large and multicultural Federal Republic of Yugoslavia eventually shrunk to become just a confederation of Serbia and Montenegro, and then just Serbia, so the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland seems set to shrivel over the next few years to become England plus Wales – and no doubt in due course just England. At the rate things are developing, Boris Johnson will be lucky to hang on to Cornwall, assuming he would not be long gone from No 10 by then.

So much for the UK, which Mr Johnson is still pleased to call “the most successful political and economic union in history”. He may well prove to be the last prime minister of the United Kingdom as we know it, and it will, in very large part, be his own fault. Splashing £300m around some projects in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, styling himself as minister for the union and spewing out bombast about the “awesome foursome” will not be sufficient to save the UK from its imminent disintegration.

The country faces the most lethal threat since the partition of Ireland in 1922: Brexit, and the democratic challenges that throws up. It is hardly worth mentioning that it was Mr Johnson’s involvement in the 2016 referendum that has led us to this pass. The people of Northern Ireland and Scotland voted to stay in the EU and claim, rightly, there is no mandate to tear them out of it, and certainly not on the kind of no-deal terms now being canvassed as the “assumption” the government is proceeding on.