No. 198 - 'The Union Unit' - All is Not Well Behind the Scenes.
Dear James,
While Boris glows in unaccustomed success courtesy of the coronavirus vaccine, all is not well behind the scenes. The rest of your government are fighting like ferrets in a bag. Oliver Lewis (Who?) is quitting as head of the government’s ‘Union Unit’ (What?) citing tensions in Number 10. Just in case you were unaware of these individuals and this Unit, Lewis is ex-Head of Research at Vote Leave and had been a key aide to Cummings and Lee Cain (remember them?). But what about the ‘Union Unit’?
`The ‘Union Unit’ is a new band of Brexiteer Brothers charged with keeping Scotland and those other naughty nations in the Union. Prior to Lewis, the head of that Unit was Luke Graham MP (again, Who?) who lasted for about a month after Johnson made another disastrous visit to Scotland to push his pro-union message. And as if all this hoohah were not enough, in the same week, the unelected Lord Frost elbowed his way into Cabinet and out-ferretted that arch-ferret Michael Gove from one of his key roles, negotiating with the EU on the Northern Ireland Protocol. Boris has clearly got the wind up and none of the ferrets know what to do about the threatening break-up of the UK! So what do you do when you don’t know what to do? Well, obviously, you create ‘A Unit’. In this case a ‘Union Unit’. They could have called it a, ‘Be Nice to the Union Unit? but that'd give the game away. ‘The Union Unit' is short, snappy and remarkably forgettable so that no one would notice it. As with its first leaders. Enter Mr Graham, followed by Mr Lewis. Exit both in short succession!
A few weeks before the Unit was set up, Boris Johnson went to Scotland to persuade the Scots of the benefits of the UK. Hermetically sealed against any possibility of meeting the Scottish public, Boris sang the praises of ‘his vaccine’. Downing Street hailed it as a ‘charm offensive’ seemingly unaware that what some English see as 'Boris Charm', is for the Scots, ‘Boris Buffoonery’. For them, this man, midwife to 120,000 deaths across the kingdom, sums up everything about England and English nationalism that they abhor. In Scotland, Boris Johnson is toxic. In that nation, Boris Johnson is the problem. And no ‘Union Unit’ can overcome that! By a recent poll, 54% of Scots would now vote for independence.
Great Britain, created by the union of English and Scottish parliaments in 1707 became the UK when Ireland joined in1801. The United Kingdom survived and indeed flourished over the centuries, despite the numerical advantage of the English (56m), by giving proportionally more power to the smaller nations (Scotland 5.5m. Wales 3.2m and N.Ireland 1.8m) in return for their political quiescence and the economic and political gains from all being together. That began to change with devolution in the1990s. The three smaller nations got their regional parliaments while England did not. Boris’s determination to hoard central authority added to the strains within the Union while English Nationalism thrived. Those ferrets in the sack are just a symptom of deep unease below as the Brexiteers begin to face the constitutional and economic impacts of Brexit. Watch his space!
Nationalism is a binary system of thinking applied to a multi-dimensional and complex world. It is the populist device par excellence since it hides complexity under an emotional and short-sighted fixes. It creates a ‘them and us’ scenario in which there are no nuances. The Tory Party’s obsession with being merely an equal with other EU nations and no longer the post-war ‘winners’, made them look inwards. Nigel Farage and later Boris Johnson, that foppish duo radiating the bluster of public school England, saw their chance but now the problem of identity politics is coming back to bite them. The Welsh are rediscovering their history as the original sole owners of these islands. The Scots remember that they were sovereign until the late 17th century. If we want our identity, why shouldn’t they have theirs?
James, beneath the current hoohah around Coronavirus, our nation is facing some existentialist issues that come directly from Brexit. Already the chickens are coming home to roost; already the boomerang is beginning its return journey. And that’s why the ferrets are fighting in their sack. No wonder Dominic Raab said a week ago that we will only be able to measure the ‘success’ of Brexit after a period of ten years. Why not twenty Dominic? Why not fifty? But we get your message. You’re preparing your fans for the worst. All those goodies promised in 2016 are going to be hard to find even after ten years. And central to all those goodies will be the fate of the Union.
Boris set up the ‘Union Unit’ as an act of desperation. He is scared of being remembered as the man who broke up the United Kingdom. But quick fixes only work for the populist mind. They will not solve the inherent problem of the Northern Ireland ’situation' or the mountains of paper work needed to continue trading with our largest markets or our isolation in the world of big power blocks. James, English Nationalism is a false road into the future but under this government there is no reverse gear. Solution? Simple! Set up another ‘Unit’ Boris!
Kind regards,
BH – Your Concerned Constituent.