Saving Britain means changing Britain

In the Autumn of 2024, just after Keir Starmer’s enormous victory, many political observers thought that the campaign for Scottish Independence had finally been suspended. The tenth anniversary of the referendum was still an important milestone, but many cultural devolutionists such as Kenny Farquharson and Bernard Ponsonby seemed to let their guard down. 

As I write, the union is back in the danger zone. Support for secession in Scotland started rising precipitously in the last months of 2024 and kept growing since them. Of the last 24 or so polls done in 2026, only 7 of them have recorded a pro-union majority. 

What is the cause of this opinion change? It’s hard to argue that the SNP’s revival can be attributed to administrative competence. Despite undeniably higher levels of public spending, Scottish public provision isn’t much better and economic growth has been just as tepid. While the standard of living in Scotland is noticeably higher than in most regions bar London and South East of England, Holyrood has long ceased being the poster child of devolution’s potential. That prize now goes to North West England. 

Despite their long–running failures, the 2026 Holyrood elections delivered the largest pro-independence majority yet. Even though the pro-union parties won the highest number of votes in more than a decade, vote-splitting had effectively robbed them of several seats that they should’ve won. The rise of Reform UK and the changing nature of Scottish politics had effectively destroyed the tactical voting machine that Scotland’s ageing unionist voters used to limit SNP dominance. The 2026 election was supposed to be the first one that was truly dedicated to the nitty gritty of good governance. The election campaign ended up pitting two pro-independence parties with expensive promises, three pro–union parties with slightly less dramatic spending commitments, and Reform UK. Keir Starmer then became the first British Prime Minister who had to deal with three secessionist administrations. What a difference eighteen months can make.

Many people, including myself, believed replacing the Tories with a sober Labour government would decrease support for separatism through competent governance and improved economic performance. While Keir Starmer was probably not going to engineer an economic and geopolitical renaissance, it seemed probable that his milquetoast personality would at least rob the SNP of a much-needed villainous figure. The fact that the opposite has happened forced us to rethink our assumptions. I, for one, have concluded that if a future Reform UK government is not careful, Farage and his cabinet will struggle to enact much needed structural reform and be bounced into another independence referendum that would be difficult to win.

The politics of devolution is fundamentally cultural. A generation of British citizens have now grown up marinating in a political culture that teaches them that the devolved parliaments ought to be the centre stage of Scottish, Welsh, and Northern Irish public life. Her Majesty’s Government in England may dole out block grant money and defend the realm but is obligated to play a secondary — if not minor — role in three of the four nations that make up the United Kingdom. Even the most conservative and right-wing Scots, Welsh, and Northern Irish don’t go about openly expressing what powers ought to be re-reserved to Westminster. Holyrood, the Senedd, and Stormont aren’t just part of the constitutional furniture, they are the mark and expression of someone’s strong identity. If incompetence, be it bloated public sector pay agreements or a slew of avoidable infections in Glasgow’s super hospital, were enough to change someone’s voting intention then the SNP would have lost power long ago. Individual ministers and their policies may be imperfect, but devolution itself is sacrosanct. If Reform UK cannot or will not understand this, it will jeopardize the chance of a successful first term in office. 

The second thing that Reform UK must understand is the current nature of the Scottish independence debate. This is not a grand dialogue about what level of government should wield what types of powers. It’s not even a passionate argument about economic models, voting systems, or diverging visions of what a society must provide its people. There are still some nodding dogs that believe the SNP make a valid argument for the moral necessity and material benefits of secession. These liberals who decried post-truth politics didn’t care that Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon nearly won a referendum by insisting with huffed breath that England would be forced to “share the pound” and that a “no” vote would result in the privatization of the NHS. The brazen propaganda was then punished with the undying devotion and deep admiration of England’s liberal class as well as a new tranche of powers. 

Labour’s agonisingly slow road to electability and the Conservative Party’s endless psychodramas had polished (though not created) a halo around Scottish nationalism. During the Brexit years, Nicola Sturgeon grew into an unapologetically progressive leader that embraced trans rights, mass migration, and the European Union. She was an effective speaker who knew how to scratch the psychological itches of alienated social democrats who had fallen out of love with Britain. The fact that she presided over an ever-growing budget deficit, a downward spiral in PISA scores, and an unconscionable rise in drug deaths did not matter. 

Since so much of Scottish public policy is affected by British public policy, and vice versa, it was easy to persuade the persuadable that the true cause of her failures lay at the hands of Whitehall and Westminster. Sturgeon captured lefty Britain’s zeitgeist in a way that no one else did and was probably right that she could ride that wave of Brexit–induced righteous indignation to independence. The fact that she didn’t succeed is probably more down to her luck finally running out by mid 2022 than the skill of her opponents or the genuinely strong case for continued union. 

Many distinguished journalists — from Kenny Farquharson to Alex Massie to Peter MacMahon to Bernard Ponsonby — have wondered aloud why the SNP haven’t been able to craft a credible prospectus for separation. While such questions are more rhetorical these days, your median Scottish voter really does believe that the SNP is either continuously refining an unimpeachably clear-eyed independence plan or is waiting for an opportune time to release it. The fact that working class voters who would lose the most after separation continue to trust the SNP and the independence movement should give Reform UK pause for thought. 

Why has support for secession increased dramatically since at least 2014 after so many years of deeply underwhelming governance? The raw truth is that support for independence is increasingly correlated with a strong Scottish identity, left wing politics, pro-EU sentiment, and having a libertarian social attitude. If you take that altogether, that’s a structural majority. There just aren’t many Scottish voters left who feel strongly British, are right wing, have Eurosceptic leanings, or are willing to flog drug dealers. Unfortunately, unionists have yet to accept that three decades of cultural and political change has resulted in a situation where the average person — especially the average person under 40 — in three of the four nations feels little attachment to Britain and increasingly holds the British state in contempt. To them, its presence is a humorous nuisance at best and an unwanted imposition at worst. They see the union the same way many in Middle England still see the European Union — a distant and malign entity that exacerbates their country’s problems and enables the mediocrity of their country’s elites. And they’re not unjustified in thinking that. Since at least 2008, British governance really has been defined by constant U-turns, poor justifications, and endless roads to nowhere. Can you honestly name a recent unmitigated policy success? Sure, the average member of the Westminster bubble is of a higher calibre than the average member of the Holyrood bubble, but that doesn’t really resonate much with a Glaswegian graphic artist or a Dundonian line cook. I can personally attest that highlighting Holyrood’s missteps ends any chance of a meaningful conversation. 

Some thinkers and political analysts sincerely believe that there is a hidden reservoir of nationalist yet conservative voters who simply vote left because there is no right. Murdo Fraser built two leadership campaigns based on trying to create a distinct centre-right party that would not be held back by any Tory government. Malcom Offord, Reform UK’s Scotland’s brilliant yet unconventional leader, constructed his entire election campaign trying to attract what he called “rational nationalists”. He went so far as to imply that a referendum could be held in 2036 once Scotland had become sufficiently prosperous enough to bear the costs of secession. Despite the intelligence and decency of both men, this strategy has failed thrice. As of 2026, such voters don’t exist in sufficiently large numbers, if they even exist at all. The independence referendum was held more than twelve years ago yet the national question continues to be debated as vociferously as it was on the final hours of polling day on September 18th, 2014. So, what does this mean for Reform UK and their potential first term in government? How could Prime Minister Farage, Chancellor Jenrick, and the cabinet prevent themselves from stumbling into another vote? 

If Reform UK does win the next general election, its first goal will be to finally reduce net migration to sustainable levels. Its second, equally important, goal will be to enact a wave of long–needed structural reforms to the economy. If the United Kingdom is to stand any chance at prospering amidst prolonged stagnation and global war, it will require the full force of genuine economic liberalisation and the creative destruction that comes with it. If Reform UK is to be worthy of its name, then it will need to let winners win and allow losers to lose. Far too many centre-right wonks and far right influences, still believe that the process of economic convergence will be a TikTok montage consisting of the glorious reconstruction of Greek Thomson’s and Rennie Mackintosh’s masterpieces, handsome 1930s style detached houses being constructed at break-neck speed all over new Metro-lands, and swaggering CEOs of homegrown trillion-dollar companies being unapologetically Oxonian. This is understandable. Nobody will want to remember the faces of those millions of citizens that will be suddenly laid off. Nobody wants to be the chartered accountant that liquidates hundreds of thousands of unproductive firms led by kindhearted mediocrities and staffed by the remarkably unremarkable. Nobody will be enthusiastic at seeing the tidy North Yorkshire exurbs become unrecognizable as mid-rises sprout up. 

The alternative to bitter medicine is … a humiliating breakup

The social consequences of long delayed economic restructuring will be a bigger challenge to the territorial integrity of the British state than ministers being perceived as disrespectful muscular unionists. Part of the reason why the SNP has prospered since 1999 is because of their ability to connect and empathise with the losers of liberalisation. Once ex–miners and laid off welders knew that Labour and the Liberal Democrats could not and would not fully insulate them from globalisation or restore a sense of cosmic justice, they started to believe there was nothing to lose from independence. This fact has not changed much since Alex Salmond won the 2007 election. The key difference is that journalists, maths teachers, and mixologists have become losers too.

Can you prevent half of Scotland and much of Britain from rebelling against long delayed creative destruction? Is there really no way to persuade an unhappy nation with a genuine and deliverable promise of a better tomorrow? As I am writing this, I think not. However, that only makes economic re-convergence a greater imperative. Britishness has eroded too much for any UK government, even a Labour one, to be given the benefit of the doubt. As more ageing Britons pass away and more Anglo-sceptic teenagers are enfranchised, it becomes ever more incumbent on successive British governments to end the stagnation that is making people’s lives needlessly difficult and keeping ever growing numbers of twenty–somethings in their childhood bedrooms. The alternative to bitter medicine is not some consensus-driven path to a loose union of contented civic republics, it’s a humiliating breakup that will be underwritten with the liquidated assets of what is left of the British frontier economy.