There were two stories yesterday which go
to the very heart of the position of the UK government in relation to the
future of the UK. The first was this
one, in which the UK Cabinet Secretary is reported as saying that the
government has put preventing the breakup of the UK “at the forefront of
policy making in Whitehall”. And the second was this
one, covering the problems with the trade deal with Australia, in which the
International Trade Secretary is determined to push through terms which could
seriously damage agriculture, and which would at the same time, other ministers fear, boost the cause
of Welsh and Scottish independence. She obviously didn’t get the Cabinet Secretary's memo, because
joined-up thinking this is most definitely not. The disregard for Wales and
Scotland in relation to the trade deal serves only to demonstrate why a
government determined to preserve the union would indeed need to put the issue
at the very heart of its thinking. It also demonstrates that claiming to have
done so is just another bit of meaningless verbiage from the UK’s liar-in-chief.
And talking of Johnson, it seems that nobody
involved in the trade deal yet knows which way he will jump. That unsurprising
fact (how could they know when the man himself almost certainly doesn’t) does
have the advantage of proving that the claim of the Cabinet Secretary that Boris
Johnson will be “front and centre” in trying to save the union is
accurate; but in typical civil service fashion, it’s incomplete. What he really
meant to say is that Johnson will be front, centre, back, left, right, up and
down all at the same time. All over the place, in fact, in accordance with his
usual approach.
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