The main threat to the union no longer comes from the nationalisms of the periphery but from the attempt by unionism to monopolise universal values and dress them with the nationalising language of Britishness.
Nation-states are based on the coincidence of the key elements of demos (who are the people), telos (what the state is for), ethos (values) and sovereignty. In a union, on the other hand, these may be contested and never resolved. Indeed, if a union is to work, they may best be left in abeyance, rather than digging down to find common foundations and agreement all the way back up. This is the secret of the European Union and has long been the British way. Constitutions in such a state are not about demonstrating fundamental agreement but about managing disagreements, for example about the final destination or telos. The Northern Ireland settlement is prime example of such a strategy, encouraging both unionists and nationalists to choose their own identity, giving these institutional expression and leaving the final status of the province open. On the other hand, when unionism seeks to impose its own meaning on all these elements, it becomes a nationalism in its own right and risks undermining the union....
While appropriating universal values for themselves, unionists have tried to argue that nationalists of the smaller nations do espouse a different ethos, that they are inward looking and isolationist. Michael Gove defines unionism as being about liberty, institutions and the rule of law, and based on individuals, in contrast to ‘identity politics’ of the peripheral nationalisms. Nationalists make similar criticisms of unionists, especially in the light of Brexit....
Historically, the differences in attitudes to EU membership differed rather little across the United Kingdom, although there were significant differences between nationalists and unionists in Northern Ireland. As unionists often point out, nearly a third of those Scots who voted to remain within the UK in the independence referendum of 2014 then voted to leave the European Union. This has now shifted, so that there is a closer association between Scottish independence and support for the EU. This is not about a sudden change in values but a calculation of the institutional setting within which they can best be realised. Indeed, Our Scottish Future’s own survey demonstrates this quite starkly. It reports that three quarters of those they describe as ‘nationalists’ had voted Remain in 2016, as against just under half of ‘unionists’. This is hardly evidence that nationalists are motivated by inward-looking and isolationist values but rather that they are looking for new forms of political order to secure the shared values.
Unionism and nationalism in the United Kingdom increasing resemble each other as nationalising projects seeking to appropriate the same values but locked in an existential argument over demos and telos. This is not, as some have argued, an example of Freud’s narcissism of small differences. There may be few differences in values and attitudes but the others are more profound. Unionists seem to be more and more frustrated at the apparent paradox that so many Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish people share the same values as England yet vote for nationalist parties. In fact, it is not a paradox at all and liberal unionism and liberal nationalism have more in common than they would like to admit. The threat to liberal democracy comes from another quarter, notably from the populist and xenophobic extreme right, wherever it crops up.
We might even say that the main threat to the union no longer comes from the nationalisms of the periphery but from the attempt by unionism to monopolise universal values and dress them with the nationalising language of Britishness. The Union succeeded when it relaxed assumptions about the need for a unitary demos or telos and relegated discussions about sovereignty to the academic seminar. Britishness was a polyvalent idea, which took different forms in different parts of the Union, not a single thing above all the others. Neither unionism nor nationalism is going to go away any time soon and they will have to learn to co-exist, largely sharing social and economic values but differing on the form of the state.