Brexit

After much confusion and delay the United Kingdom finally and formally left the European Union at 23:00 31 January 2020 after a turbulent marriage of 47 years. After repeated assertions by the SNP that Scotland would not be taken out of Europe against it's will, here we are. The event itself was not the apocalypse predicted, unless of course you were catching or selling fish and shellfish. However the ill-effects are going to be slow and long-lasting. It's probably too soon to tell how much Brexit has weakened the Union. The Conservative government is making an effort to bind the devolved parliaments into "an ever closer union" but the scale of the changes to the UK economy mean that the success of that effort is more or less left to chance. Most likely the process of centralisation to the South-east of England and London in particular, started under Thatcher, will continue with the outlying regions either let go or left to slowly decay. Maybe in fifty year the outcome will be clear but right now it's not looking that great for Scotland.