... Polls show repeatedly how strongly Conservative members and voters prefer achieving Brexit over supporting Scotland and Northern Ireland. That upends the renewed support for the union expressed by Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt who compete to lead the party. Johnson especially alienates Scottish political activists of all hues based on his previous disregard for their interests and his evident English home counties appeal. Despite his pledges to union-proof policy for fair treatment, the deeper strain of English nationalism coming through the campaign and from future Conservative competition with Nigel Farage’s Brexit party is likely to win out.

Labour members and voters are more unionist in their solidarities. But the growing fragmentation of English politics between the Conservatives, Labour, Liberal Democrats and the Brexit party will dampen that effect. So would any Labour search for Scottish National Party support after a general election, since the SNP would demand a second independence referendum and/or a differentiated deal allowing Scotland to remain closer to the EU.

By the same token, it would be difficult for Labour to resist supporting a second EU referendum. Were it to be held and reverse Brexit, how much would it resolve these deepening fissures in the UK’s constitutional order?

There is little sign of a will or capacity to conduct the root-and-branch reform many legal and political analysts say is needed to avoid break-up – by reforming, differentiating or federalising the UK in a more codified way. Calls for a UK-wide constitutional convention, citizens’ assembly or new foundational Act of union lack cross-party support and citizen interest, and are rejected by the dominant SNP in Scotland. The ignorance and indifference about Brexit’s consequences for the UK’s peripheries among politicians and officials in London reinforces pessimism among these analysts as to whether such reform is possible...

https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/world-view-brexit-is-about-disintegration-of-uk-not-irish-unity-1.3947714