The future of the United Kingdom is in peril unless Boris Johnson abandons “muscular unionism”, according to the former senior official who engineered Brexit.
Philip Rycroft, permanent secretary at the Department for Exiting the European Union until 2019, said that the British state’s “imperious disregard” for devolved policies was fuelling support for Scottish independence and Irish reunification.
Rycroft, now a visiting professor at Cambridge University, has co-written a paper entitled Union at the Crossroads: Can the British State Handle the Challenges of Devolution? recommending greater engagement with the devolved administrations in UK policy.
The warnings were made after it was reported yesterday that senior Conservatives, including cabinet ministers, believe that Johnson’s opposition to a second independence referendum would be impossible to sustain, and the prime minister should consider a snap vote — amid pandemic job losses and economic turmoil — to emphasise the dangers of Scotland going it alone.
One senior minister told The Sunday Times: “I don’t see how we keep saying ‘no’ for ever. The time to do it would be in the middle of economic chaos, not when it’s all looking rosy.”
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Nicola Sturgeon told The Guardian last night: “If people in Scotland vote for a party saying ‘when the time is right, there should be an independence referendum’, you cannot stand in the way of that — and I don’t think that is what will happen.”
Polls show Scottish support for the Union ebbing away: the most recent suggests that nationalists and unionists are 50-50. Other polls have support for independence at 58 per cent.
The Cambridge research draws from Rycroft’s “close-up view of some of the decisions, events and mentalities” of the UK government and about 30 interviews with officials and politicians.
He said that “an increasingly sceptical current of opinion has gained ground at the top of the Conservative Party” that is suspicious of devolution — typified by Johnson’s recent remark that devolution to Scotland has been “a disaster”.
He compared Johnson’s “assertive and muscular style of unionism” to the Tories’ “hyper-unionist” opposition to Irish home rule, which ultimately failed to prevent the secession of the Republic of Ireland.
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A nationalist majority is “likely to transpire” in the Holyrood elections and will lead to amplified demands for a second independence referendum, he said.
Rycroft added: “The future of the UK is increasingly in doubt. Ever since the vote to leave the European Union in June 2016, Britain’s political institutions have been racked by the turbulence triggered by Brexit.”
He told Johnson to engage devolved administrations earlier in UK policies that affect their lives. English MPs should be given devolution awareness training to address the “low levels of understanding” about the culture of the devolved nations, he added. “These practical steps . . . are unlikely to be sufficient by themselves to save the Union, but they are necessary changes if it is to be rendered more stable over the medium-to-longer term.”
Brexit demonstrated “there is a little to stop” the opinions of the devolved nations being set aside in pursuit of the wider interests of the British state.
Rycroft said: “Brexit shattered some of the ambiguities associated with the constitutional standing and rights of the devolution settlements. A vote in favour of staying in the EU in Scotland and Northern Ireland was essentially of no consequence in the face of a majority in England and Wales.”
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Further divisions emerged during the pandemic when Johnson bowed to “increasing pressure from some Conservative MPs and parts of the media for a clear exit strategy” in early May without consulting the devolved administrations or making it clear his strategy only applied to England.
“Nicola Sturgeon’s presentational skills, and growing doubts about Johnson’s handling of the crisis, meant that her approval ratings improved while his diminished markedly in both Scotland and England,” Rycroft said.
“The pandemic has shone a harsh, unforgiving light upon the poorly developed, and often mistrustful, relationships between the devolved and UK governments, and set the scene for growing doubts about the future viability of the devolved Union.”
