Can Boris Johnson find a pro-Union, pro-Brexit message?

In yesterday’s Evening Blend newsletter – to which you should sign up – Katy Balls concluded that ‘If the Conservative party is going to continue to prosper in Scotland’ Boris Johnson and Ruth Davidson must, between them, ‘find a way to pitch a pro-Union, pro-Brexit message – and fast.’

Well, indeed. The problem, though, is that outside a relatively small number of fishing communities, there is no obvious pro-Union, pro-Brexit message to be deployed and certainly none that seems likely to prove persuasive. The results of the Brexit referendum rather confirm this. Scotland, as you may have heard, rejected Brexit.

True, this was a pan-UK referendum in which the overall result was all that mattered. In that sense there was little distinction to be drawn between a Remain vote in Edinburgh and one in Bristol. Each found themselves on the losing side. We voted as one country and we shall leave the European Union as one country and if any of the nations of the UK dislike that then so be it.