Thread by @t0nyyates

I found this very entertaining and thought provoking. A few observations:

https://twitter.com/StewartWood/status/1478670146436796416

1. 1998's devolution settlement was popular. And it's at least as possible that support for independence could have been greater and more millitant had England denied it to the nations. Tom presents it as though we are sure it hastened rather than forestalled disintegration.

2. It could be a good thing that there might not exist a single sense of Britishness, and that multiple such identities can /do coexist; and that this can be a sign of national health. The piece's implicit hypothesis is that the lack of a single identity is an illness.

3. There is a lot of quantitative poli sci work on British/constituent nations/racial identity and changes over time. We can't diagnose the state of the nation and its future without reference to it.

4. Tom's piece asserts that Brexit has made indy more likely in the short term. Has it? That is what I expected, but the polling has tilted away somewhat. Partly because of the issues Tom raises, the greater economic costs now UK has left.

5. The centrifugal forces don't stop at the UK's constituent nations - there is a louder debate than ever I can remember about North/South, London / left behind injustices and devolution of power to resolve them. [That I despair at, incidentally].

6. Seems somewhat strong to assert that there is no active UK state in Scotland. Given its continued and historic receipt of the Barnet formula subsidy. £ counts for something!

7. If we are going to debate the Midlothian question, we have to discuss the attempt to operate English Votes for English Laws to solve it. And also that the Scottish say on English matters is the flip side/compensation for being otherwise always the partner 10*smaller than E.

8. Another issue that runs through this piece is that the coherence of the nation is affected by 1) potential polarization generally 2) the reshaping of dividing lines from old cleavages to new [eg, but not confined to Remain/Leave], that in turn due to societal changes....

...like the expansion of higher education; the march of house prices; techology and its effect or not on inequality and applicability of skills; new imperatives like climate change [a source of antagonism]; immigration.

9. Lurking also, behind this debate is the thorny issue of what rights majorities or multiple minorities have to insist/try to engineer coherence across other groups, and relatedly the normative issue of the right to devolution/self determination/secession.

Eg, if you took an extreme position that sub groups always have the right to choose their degree of self-determination/exploitation of colllective scale economies/synergies, then discussing how to promote common identities is at best for the birds and at worst, unethical.

[I don't take that extreme position. You can't have people proposing the Republic of Kentish Town and imposing trade and currency chaos on everyone; but it's equally extreme to assert that no group of any kind can ever secede or disentangle in part].

Final small point - Orkney and Shetland voted 67% and 63% against indy in 2014, so Tom spotting the absence of Scottish flags is not a coincidence. A point that reinforces that incoherence lurks even at the sub-nation level, and not just in England.

And a PS to that final small point. The multiple Scots Nats and unionist identities. Nats both progressive, fiscally fantasist, embracing and denying climate change [re implications for oil exploitation]. Unionists both Conservative and progressive.