Earlier this week I found myself, after midnight, in the senior common room of an Oxford college. Drink had been taken and, predictably, discussion among the few remaining stragglers had turned to Brexit.
There were three opposed, including me, and one Leaver, a confident, gangling fellow in a flowing black gown who might have been hand-knitted by CP Snow. At one point we got on to the possible consequences for the Union, and here he was adamant: Scottish independence was done for; Brexit made the idea unthinkable, economically, strategically, electorally. I said I wasn’t sure about that, that the perils of insisting the logical path – as you saw it – would be the one taken had rather been exposed by the election of President Donald Trump, the popularity of Jeremy Corbyn and the Brexit vote itself.
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