More devolution in England could save the Union

Tory MPs are already starting to talk about May’s various elections. Boris Johnson’s first post-Covid electoral test will take place on 6 May and will show the durability — or otherwise — of his 2019 electoral coalition now that Brexit is ‘done’ and Jeremy Corbyn is gone. Can the Tories hold on to the much-prized Teesside and West Midlands mayoralties? If the answer is yes, the party will feel it can face the future with confidence. If not, it will start to panic.

But the most significant result of the night will be the most predictable one: a Scottish National party victory in Holyrood. The SNP is currently polling comfortably, and consistently, at more than 50 per cent. Even normally optimistic Tories are downbeat about the prospects of denying the nationalists a majority. ‘On the election result front, pessimism is realism,’ one tells me.

An SNP majority means that Nicola Sturgeon will once again request a second independence referendum from Westminster. She will say that her party’s victory, won on the back of a manifesto commitment to another referendum, gives her a mandate. She will claim (not entirely unjustifiably) that denying her request would be denying democracy.

Inside the SNP there is a hungry army of activists who will insist that she makes an early demand for a vote. Ian Blackford, SNP leader at Westminster, has already said that the referendum must take place next year. In Whitehall, there is confidence that such a deadline can be rebuffed on the basis that ‘now is not the time’ and that both governments should instead focus on getting the economy going again post-Covid.

This line is plausible and, crucially, reasonable. But it is only a temporary fix. How can the UK government deal with the Scottish question in the medium term?

Johnson revealed too much of his own thinking on Monday night.