‘THE choice is basically this: Does Scotland want to be a small, independent nation, likely back in the EU but with new barriers to trade and travel with the rest of the UK; or does it wish to remain in the UK, with its own powers over some areas but subordinate to the will of the English majority on others?”
It’s a good question – you just don’t expect to hear a dyed in the wool civil servant with impeccable British state credentials asking it.
Ciaran Martin was constitution director in the Cabinet Office between 2011 and 2014, responsible for negotiating the rules for what became the Edinburgh Agreement with the Scottish Government, paving the way for the first independence referendum seven years ago. Last week – in his new role as Professor of Practice at the University of Oxford’s Blavanik School of Government – Martin offered a startlingly candid account of the state of the Union as he sees it and the serious jeopardy the UK Government now finds itself in as it attempts to address the little territorial difficulty which has emerged on its northern frontiers.