ENGLAND rather than Scotland may be the “leading assassin” of the Union, Scotland’s leading historian Professor Sir Tom Devine has said.

Writing in the Seven Days section of today’s Sunday National, Devine devotes the second of two exclusive articles to giving his predictions for the year ahead and forecasts that English nationalism may be a crucial force in the coming months and years, with “Unionsceptics” perhaps becoming the “heirs to Eurosceptics”.

Devine writes: “The Unionist parties seem currently to be in considerable disarray. While Scottish Labour remains a peripheral player, Scottish Tories have defenestrated their former leader in customary fashion but his successor still seems to be struggling to gain name recognition across the country. 

“That new leader, Douglas Ross, is in the challenging position of knowing that his boss in Downing Street is more likely to trigger further increases in the Yes vote whenever he speaks out on the Scottish Question. So for Douglas the silence of Boris is  indeed golden. 

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“Yet his problems run much deeper than keeping a very unpopular PM in Scotland quiet on Scottish issues. The Tory party branches south of the Border, crammed as they now are with English nationalists, have become increasingly disenchanted with the Union and fed up to the back teeth with ‘subsidising’ parasitic and  ungrateful Scots.

“The break with Europe is now a done deal; their next objective might very well be the end of the Anglo-Scottish Union. ‘Unionsceptics’ may become the heirs of Eurosceptics.”

He continues: “Douglas Ross admitted in a brave and frank admission at a fringe meeting at the Conservative Party conference in October last year that the attitude of English Tories ‘…is making the case for separatism more effectively than the SNP.

Many Tories see Scotland leaving the UK as inevitable and now want a UK Government focused on England’.

“A number of years ago, I penned a newspaper article which speculated that if the Union did end, England rather than Scotland might be the leading assassin. That may no longer be mere speculation.”

Devine also addresses the question of populism and especially the end of the presidency of Donald Trump.

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He adds: “By the end of January, Trump will no longer be president of the United States. That is indeed a very welcome and sweet start to the new year.

"I see him to be the most disreputable and reckless president in American history, showing little or no concern for decent and traditional norms, humanity or the law, and making pronouncements which some have denounced as little other than racist diatribe. 

“We can therefore only hope fervently we have seen the last of him in any high political office, though he has not yet ruled out standing again for the presidency in four years’ time.

"But even if he quickly vanishes into history, Trumpism, or Trumpery as I prefer to call it, will still endure into 2021 and probably more than likely for much longer.” 

READ THE FULL PIECE HERE: Tom Devine: Looking ahead to 2021, a potentially momentous year for independence