One evening in December I had a drink in an Oxford pub with the founding head of the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre, Professor Ciaran Martin. I felt a bit like George Smiley, because we were talking about a looming threat to the very existence of this realm. But the menace isn’t digital. The mortal danger to the United Kingdom comes from its own peoples.
Martin knows all about that because, as a constitution adviser in David Cameron’s Cabinet Office, he helped set up the 2014 Scottish independence referendum. And he’s in no doubt about how serious things have now become. His recent press comment about the Supreme Court’s ruling on a second independence referendum would be striking coming from any UK mandarin; it’s doubly so because this mandarin hails from rural County Tyrone, a largely Catholic part of Northern Ireland and a hot spot for sectarian violence during the Troubles: “There is nowhere for a lawful, peaceful and constitutional movement like Scottish nationalism to go.”
Content from our partners
