Alex Massie Alex Massie

The impossibility of separating Scotland from Britain

The survival of Scotland as an idea is a Unionist achievement from which the SNP now benefits

(Photo: Getty) 
issue 23 July 2022

Most histories of the United Kingdom fail to account for, or even acknowledge, just how unusual a country it is. One of the strengths of a history of Scotland within the United Kingdom is that it cannot avoid emphasising the sheer strangeness of Britain. It is a country quite unlike other European nations for it is, at heart, a composite state: a Union of four other nations creating a fifth which exists alongside – and sometimes above – its constituent parts.

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