If anything, May has been even more churlish in her handling of the union with Scotland. In her relations with Nicola Sturgeon’s Scottish government, she has been an uncompromising centraliser. Scotland’s 62% vote for remain has been consistently ignored. So have Sturgeon’s various ideas – some of which were moderate and reasonable – about mitigating Brexit in Scotland. Instead, some Scottish devolution powers have been suspended and the UK government has fought a court case against the Scots: a curiously tough form of love.
To be fair to May, dealing with this Scottish government is not easy. The SNP wants out of the union altogether. It uses any and every issue to leverage the case for separation. To make a Brexit deal with a party trying to use Brexit to advance the separatist cause would test even a skilful negotiator, which May is not.
Nevertheless, Sturgeon made a telling point on Tuesday when she compared the receptivity of the EU to Ireland’s special concerns in the Brexit negotiations with the hostility of the UK government to the special concerns of Scotland. May has been unbending towards a part of the UK that – never forget – voted decisively in 2016 to remain in the EU. The result, as Brown put it in June, is that there will be “long-term consequences” from May’s approach. And those consequences directly threaten the stability of the UK.[...]
May’s approach to Brexit has never had space for compromise with the 48% of the UK that voted remain. But she has consistently made compromises with a section of the Tory party that cultivates a particularly reactionary form of Anglo-Britishness, and which regards Brexit as much more important than the preservation of the union. Polling this week showed that 77% of English Tory members would rather see Scottish independence than abandon Brexit; much the same proportion of May’s party say they would sacrifice the Irish peace process too.
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