The psychological impact on Number 10 would be devastating. Imagine the optics: the Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland facing a wall of First Ministers all demanding, in one form or another, to dismantle the union he leads. Starmer’s constitutional toolkit is bare. He can say ‘no’ to a Scottish referendum, as the Tories did, but that only fuels the grievance narrative and pushes support for independence higher. He can try to bribe the nations with “levelling up” cash, but the Treasury is skint. The Union has held together for over three hundred years largely on the back of shared prosperity and a common British identity. Both of those pillars are wobbling. If the ballot boxes in May return the nationalist trinity, we will have entered a new, dangerous phase of the UK’s existence: Break-Up Britain. And there’s no easy way to put those pieces back together again.
Advertisement
