Thread by @pmdfoster

NEW: If you had asked me, before it happened, whether a Global pandemic would bring the UK together, or divide us, I would have said "unite us".

But that isn't what happened. Here is what did happen via @ft -
how #COVID19 strained the Union 1/

ft.com/content/05bcde…

@FT I cannot think of a story in my 25 years as a journalist that has so foregrounded the realities of devolution - not least because #COVID19 as a *health* crisis meant that Scottish, Welsh and NI govts did have a lot of control. /2

@FT So when it came to decisions on quarantine from abroad, test and trace and locking/unlocking, time and again Westminster was confronted by the limits of its power/2

@FT Sure, it did not help that one part of the country is run by a party whose raison d'etre is to secede from the Union, but it is too crude to accuse @NicolaSturgeon of playing politics with a crisis - even if the polls show her demeanour played better than that of @BorisJohnson /4

@FT @NicolaSturgeon @BorisJohnson But what crisis did, undeniably, was give the leaders of the devolved governments a platform, on an almost daily basis, that I can't remember the like of. If I had time I'd count how many times Ms Sturgeon was on the BBC News at 10 in 2020 compared with other years in office/5

@FT @NicolaSturgeon @BorisJohnson A platform has - as we've seen this week - been given to regional politicians like @AndyBurnhamGM but without the policy independence to match. As he tells us, the UK 'unlocked' in July without his advice/consultation, when the stock of the virus in the north remained high/6

@FT @NicolaSturgeon @BorisJohnson @AndyBurnhamGM So when London had come well through its peak southern business interests were clamouring to unlock. And they seem to have won the day at the expense - we now see - of the north, where the Reproduction (R) number was not nearly so depressed. /7

@FT @NicolaSturgeon @BorisJohnson @AndyBurnhamGM All this has proved a stormy curtain-raiser for what is coming in 2021 - #Brexit (for real) and the Holyrood elections that may well give Ms Sturgeon the platform to demand another independence referendum. When #COVID19 subsides, the Union will be the issue/8

@FT @NicolaSturgeon @BorisJohnson @AndyBurnhamGM And Brexit is material, because all those power that are being repatriated from Brussels need to be dished out - and this government has chosen to do it in a way that is pretty much as abrasive as possible, hence the hullabaloo round the UK Internal Market bill /9

@FT @NicolaSturgeon @BorisJohnson @AndyBurnhamGM All the furore round the law-breaking clauses on #Brexit have obscured the bitterness that the UK govt's approach has taken - if you have time read this report from the Centre On Constitutional Change - I will thread it another day. /10

https://twitter.com/CCC_Research/status/1318941478597595137?s=20

@FT @NicolaSturgeon @BorisJohnson @AndyBurnhamGM But it gets to the nub of why #Brexit will see an English government (re)asserting itself - on food standards, on discretionary spending, on state aid - over the devolved governments at a moment of constitutional volatility that has been highlighted by #COVID19 /11

@FT @NicolaSturgeon @BorisJohnson @AndyBurnhamGM This piece we've done - a real team effort led by @robertshrimsley with me and @AndyBounds @PickardJE @MureDickie @ChrisTigheFT @bethanstaton @SarahNev @RKWinvisibleman - is a tale from the front line of the UK's coming constitutional crunch. ENDS

ft.com/content/05bcde…