If Boris Johnson wants to avoid being the Prime Minister who loses the union, then this isn’t a great start. The future of the United Kingdom is beginning to look like No 10’s biggest blind spot.
https://twitter.com/steven_swinford/status/1362820563429978114
The greatest challenge Boris Johnson will face - post lockdown - is reinvigorating enthusiasm for the union when the pandemic has done much to erode it. Not just in Scotland, but in NI & Wales where identities are shifting perhaps faster than at any time in the history of the UK.
There is much polling out there to demonstrate that. But allow me one lazy anecdote...a family member who once balked at even calling themselves Welsh (as opposed to British) recently told me they would now vote to leave the UK if there was a referendum. It is a live discussion.
Until recently Welsh independence was in all honesty an irrelevance, something even Plaid Cymru once buried deep in manifestos. Wales remains the most loyal of all the Celtic fringes so when independence is being serious discussed you know the union really is at its most fragile.
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