There can be no going back from devolution. But going forward from it could make the United Kingdom unrecognizable and project the old ‘British’ nations into a more modern and flexible relationship.
In the context of Brexit, it is easy to see Scottish government as a model of consistency and stability whilst the UK government displays the opposite.
This is a false impression, with Scottish politics dominated by the constitutional question. One view is that Scotland’s constitutional journey can end only with independence; that would be excessively teleological. Devolution has revived distinctive ‘European’ features in Scottish constitutional thinking as political relations between London and Edinburgh grow less consensual.
This is incompatible with the archaic English doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty, an inconsistency which hardly mattered until devolution. Harder to measure has been the quiet, continuing sundering of ‘Britishness’ in civil society. Independence, in short, remains a serious option. It is which the voters in 2014 chose not to select. But it is probable that they will be offered that choice again, in the not-distant future, in different circumstances. There can be no going back from devolution. But going forward from it could make the United Kingdom unrecognizable and project the old ‘British’ nations—England included—into a more modern and flexible relationship.