As an old fan of the auld alliance, Talleyrand wishes only good things for Scotland on this Burns night. Gordon Brown’s rantings all day about the rumours of another independence vote only brightened the mood. Maybe once more he’ll declare himself the saviour of the Union. Maybe not. But readers of this column will recall the prediction ventured back in 2012 that Brown’s successor, Mr Cameron, was playing with fire with his two proposed referenda. He got lucky with the first on Scotland; now it looks as though his unluckiness with the second on the EU may toss what’s left of his reputation into the dustbin of history. Scotland voted to remain in the EU and polls are showing that many Scots would now leave the UK in order to rejoin it. To his credit, the current Prime Minister, Mr Johnson, saw fit to give away the store in his ‘divorce’ agreement with the EU in order to preserve the fiction of independence — so much so that the result is, as expected, more like a dependent cohabitation than a firm divorce. He cannot afford to do that with Scotland in order to preserve the fact or even the appearance of union. The Scots already hate him. If he loses the little English — those who draw no distinction between their interests and those of the UK — he’ll be done for.
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