THEY think it will just go away. English Tories, and maybe some of their Scottish colleagues too – seem to believe that demand for independence will just evaporate.

It’s as if they view Scottish nationalists as overexcited pre-schoolers who’ll soon tire themselves out. They might be right; stranger things have happened. After all, support for a sovereign Scottish state has proven pretty fickle over decades, even centuries.

It has been at its current altitudes, with half the country or so backing it in the polls, several times before. That includes on the eve of Devolution and a year before the SNP’s 2007 Holyrood breakthrough. Yet Scotland remains part of the UK. Hence the complacency that political gravity applies to independence as much as it does to everything else, that what goes up must go down.

Read more by David Leask: https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/18563303.british-nationalism-taking-place-traditional-unionism/

These last few weeks have seen Tory leadership hopefuls clamour to say how much they value the Union. Mostly by saying the current constitution should not be put to a democratic test any time soon. Penny Mordaunt vowed to smash what she called the Yellow Wall, the SNP’s electoral grip on Scotland, but did not say how.

The fact that she did so by tweaking a narrative about English provincial politics, about the old Labour seats of the North, was maybe telling, but not fatally so for her electorate, the largely southern membership of the Conservative party.

Tories down south are all for the Union. As long as all that means is saying “No”, or “Not now”, to indyref2 and not making any kind of meaningful compromise, say ditching Brexit, to keep Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. There will be a good few staunch unionists north of the border, and even more lip-service pro-UK voters down south, for whom that is enough.

It is surely not, not for anybody who really values the British state. Would actual unionists not have more of a plan? Some kind of solution that doesn’t depend on blocking a referendum long enough for their opponent to tire out?

It seems not. There’s a question the Conservative wannabes are not being asked: what is your long-term strategy for keeping the three not-English nations in the UK? Indyref-blocking isn’t a strategy. It’s a delaying tactic, a throw-of-the-dice gamble that “not now” will hold for a year or two, maybe a little longer.

We would know that English Tories were serious about the Union if their leadership candidates (all potential future PMs) were being badgered, in detail, about Union strategy at every interview and hustings. And if nobody tolerated a response that amounted to kicking indyref2 in to the long grass.

At least one candidate, Tom Tugendhat, rehearsed some classic unionist talking points.

The half-French former Remainer last week in eight paragraphs in The Times essentially said the UK was a great “nation” because it was “four nations”. Crucially, he faced no meaningful pressure to elaborate on what this should mean for strategy.

His old school pro-UK patter was once the established theology of the union state, of a nation of nations, at least in Scotland. Now it feels noteworthy enough to record for print. At least for me. His milquetoast unionism, of course, counters a more muscular, more nationalistic proposition of the UK as a “nation state” currently being pushed by some of his rivals and their followers.

Ciarin Martin, the former very senior civil servant who helped fix the Edinburgh Agreement for Indyref1, came up with a memorable line about that new trend. “Unionists need to decide whether they want to save the Union by convincing enough people to support and cherish it or by hardline legal tactics,” he wrote last year. “It’s one or the other. This new ‘muscular’ unionism feels more like ‘know-your-place’ unionism.”

Pro-UK politics, reeling from the end of old certainties and the rise of the SNP, has been in an intellectual crisis for more than a decade. There may be signs of recovery, of new thinking from those, for example, around Labour’s Gordon Brown, the former UK premier. (Yeah, sure, many Scottish nationalists will groan when they read that name. They should not; their complacency is misplaced.)

Maybe unionist thinkers will use legal and court delays to an referendum to come up with a smart way to reimagine Britain? It won’t be easy. Brainboxes aren’t kidding when they say that leaving the EU poses an existential threat to the UK union.

So far it does not look like new ideas to save the Union will emerge from Tory leadership hopefuls. Too may of them remain wrapped in their flag, appealing to their base rather than trying to get their heads around SNP or Green voters.

Read more by David Leask: https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/19118720.independence-support-independence-changed-face-unionism/

Muscular unionists want everybody to be British. The reality of three out of five Scottish residents identifying as Scottish-only should put an end to that fantasy. And yet they cling to it. Which brings me to the question that is never asked in Tory circles: How does the UK state make those who do not feel very British content to be its citizens? This should not be impossible. It has worked before, here and elsewhere. Multi-national states can survive.

In Ireland there is tentative, careful talk about how, if there is ever re-unification, the Republic would accommodate, nurture and respect northern unionists. In England, as Conservatives choose a new PM, why is there no conversation about how they do the same for northern nationalists?