Lord Bew
Main Page: Lord Bew (Crossbench - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Bew's debates with the Leader of the House
(9 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Bew (CB)
My Lords, in 1997, Tom Nairn published a book called The Break-up of Britain, which hugely influenced my generation of academics. It has not broken up. One reason is that the economic facts of life have favoured the union, but the other reason is the existence of an effective imagined community in the devolved regions of the United Kingdom, still in favour of the United Kingdom. I agree with much of what has been said about the constitutional difficulties of this moment. I gave evidence to the McKay commission and I have a small flame in my heart for the gentle tweak that he offers.
The Government are right that the status quo is sustainable. I absolutely accept the sincerity of the Government’s belief in and support for the United Kingdom—I have no doubt about that—but the battle is beginning to be lost among young people in favour of that imagined community. The key point here is the Government’s mode of address, and how one best sustains the imagined community, which still exists for the United Kingdom. We cannot assume that that effective imagined community is going to persist, and the style of current debate in many respects is corrosive.