I’d like to talk today about why Boris Johnson may finally have got it right on the subject of a second independence referendum, but I’d also like to talk about something called The Book of Fallacies which was written 200 years ago. Bear with me: the two subjects are related. They also reveal an interesting truth about modern Scottish politics: the mess we’re in just now may look new, but it isn’t really. It’s just a different version of the past.

But first, the Prime Minister’s comments on another referendum. Until now, his response has always been “no, you had a referendum in 2014”. But at the Scottish Conservative conference yesterday, he subtly adjusted his position. A second referendum, he argued, would be irresponsible as we try to recover from the pandemic. He was still saying “no”, but it was a different kind of no. It suggested, for the first time really, that the UK Government’s position might change in the foreseeable future. It was more of a “we’ll see” than a “no”.

The background to the change is simple: for a while, the “union unit”, led by the former Vote Leave strategist Oliver Lewis, thought the best thing to do with the SNP was come down hard. But then Mr Lewis left and now the plan is to soften the language and imply that things might change in the future. The hope is this will make sense to people still living with restrictions and create a contrast between a reasonable UK Government saying “not right now” and the likes of Ian Blackford who says a referendum could happen this year.

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Whether the strategy works remains to be seen, but the political landscape is interesting: the polls are showing a consistent drop in support for independence and the possibility of the SNP falling short of a majority in May. What that suggests is the middle ground is shifting and changeable, and the question is how best to get through to those voters. The Tories’ calculation is that repeatedly shouting “no” may not be the best option and so instead what the PM said yesterday was that, post-pandemic, people want time to renew their lives and rebuild relationships and therefore a referendum is the last thing we need right now.

This shift in strategy may be a sign that the UK Government is starting to see sense and think in a more mature way about what’s going on here. Don’t get me wrong: they want to stop the SNP and another referendum – that’s what all of this is ultimately about – but if they show a better understanding of the subtleties, leave the shrieking and shouting to the SNP, and look less like a blockage to change and reform (including reform short of independence), there may be more chance of them getting through to the middle ground.

We also need to appreciate the bigger picture here, which brings me to The Book of Fallacies. The book was written by Jeremy Bentham in 1809, but it’s only recently been published in complete form as part of a project by University College, London. Bentham’s aim with the book was to tackle the fallacious arguments governments sometimes use to block reform and there are some fascinating modern echoes in there. For example, he pretty much pre-figured what we would now call “confirmation bias”, or the tendency to process and remember information that backs up your values and beliefs – something that social media and the independence debate has made a good deal worse.

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However, the fallacy that’s particularly relevant here is what Bentham calls the Posterity-Chainer’s Device. This is essentially the argument that something must be done in a particular way because that’s the way it’s always been done and Bentham cited the Act of Union as an example. The Act requires every sovereign of the UK to take an oath to maintain the Church of Scotland and the Church of England but Bentham says binding future generations in this way means that “the living are enslaved by the dead”. If a system no longer works for us, we must have the right to change it.

Two hundreds years on, you can still see what Bentham was on about because some unionists have used the Posterity-Chainer’s Device to defend the Union. We mustn’t break it up, they say, because it was established a long time ago and has worked for hundreds of years, and there was even a remnant of it in the PM’s speech when he said the response to the pandemic demonstrated that the “great British spirit that saw us through so much in the past still lives with us today”. But the past doesn’t really have anything to do with it, does it? The more relevant question is: does the Union work for us right now?

I think, in the long run, this is much more fertile ground for unionists. Undoubtedly, some Scots value the Union because of its sense of history, and its past achievements – and some of the support for independence is based in the past in a similar way. But most Scots will make a decision on independence based on whether the Union works right now, in 2021. Many voters also don’t appreciate the idea, or the impression, that they are chained to a Union and cannot get out if they want to. As Bentham says, the current generation is not bound by decisions made by the generations of the past.

I think it’s in this kind of area that sophisticated unionism needs to operate from now on, and perhaps Boris Johnson’s speech yesterday is an indication that he, or his advisors, understand that. If nationalists are screaming “yes!”, the answer isn’t to scream “no!” without any kind of context or nuance. The answer is to put a different argument, calmly and reasonably. The premise of modern unionism is that Scotland is not bound to stay in the Union if it doesn’t want to. Scots have a choice to stay or to go, but here are the arguments – the modern arguments – for staying. If posterity says Yes, then so be it, but here is the case for No.

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