Contrary to the current talk of the British empire and the nostalgia around it, they are not Powellites. Their overriding concern instead is the restoration of the Westminster system. For them, our EU membership has been an historical parenthesis. Westminster is all. A century ago, ceding part of Ireland was a price worth paying for keeping the Westminster system intact. So was the loss of India, and the loss of the colonies in the 1950s and early 1960s. Today, next year, whenever, Northern Ireland will follow.
The more troubling question is whether the Brexiters see Scotland in the same way, and whether their view of Scottish independence is the same as that of Unionists south and north of the border. Scotland is a nation of the United Kingdom, not a province that can be snapped off and tacked on to another state. It can only become separate by becoming independent and sovereign. [...]
That project's mode of governance is not the centralised one the less intellectual Brexiters constantly moan about, but actually about subsidiarity - decisions being made at the most local feasible level. By contrast, the heart and distinctiveness of the Westminster system is centralisation. Scottish nationalists believe Scotland would be freer to act autonomously within a federal, decentralised European Union than they are with devolution inside a unitary state.
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