Boris doesn’t understand the Union

Boris Johnson’s statement that ‘there is no such thing as a border between England and Scotland’ is born of ignorance and neglect. In a legal sense, there is and always has been a jurisdictional boundary separating the two nations. It is what has made a separate legal system possible and the divergent laws and regulations that come with it. It is why homosexuality was still a criminal offence in Scotland until 1981, 14 years after decriminalisation in England and Wales, and why Gretna Green became an improbable destination for eloping English teenagers. The Prime Minister may have been speaking rhetorically — he does that a lot — and rejecting the notion of Scotland and England being separate sovereign entities but it’s another example of Boris turning up for a tutorial without having done the reading.

His remarks have enraged Scottish nationalists, or at least the few who don’t exist in a permanent state of rage, and that will endear him to committed Unionists.