Boris Johnson and the Tories are making a massive blunder if they fail to support the Scottish National Party and embrace Scottish independence:
Already this morning the Twittersphere buzzes with talk of a renewed Scottish independence campaign, while the SNP yesterday announced its support for another referendum if a “material change in circumstances” arose between Scotland and the greater union. Surely a landslide victory by the Tories — who are widely disliked by the Scots — and a flashing green light for a deeply unpopular Brexit represent exactly such a change.
Scotland and England are not magically joined at the hip. If the Scots don’t want Brexit, don’t want Boris Johnson, and don’t want the Tories, who says the current political makeup of the UK is forever and unchanging? Political arrangements are not something to impose on reluctant, disbelieving people. If we favor independence and political self-determination only when we like the results, the only liberty on offer is the liberty to agree. But political universalism is an abstraction, and an arrogant one at that.
If Scots choose Holyrood over Westminster, or even Brussels over Holyrood, who are we to object?
Given the way in which the Scots have been the primary engine of left-wing power in the United Kingdom, Boris Johnson can secure not only the restoration of British sovereignty, but a multi-generational defeat of the Labour Left by excising the Scottish nation from the British crown.
This will, of course, mark the penultimate stage in the end of the British empire, but the empire has been shrinking steadily since the beginning of WWII. And there is absolutely no point fighting the nationalist trend in favor of a dying and discredited imperialism.
The Scots deserve to rule themselves. Let Scotland go!