Once lauded as the saviour of the Union, it is fabulously ironic that devolution could be the nail in its coffin. And, we’re all complicit.

You need look no further than the research reported by The Times, suggesting that a staggering majority of Leave voters would be happy for the Union to crumble if it meant Brexit could be delivered, to know the game is almost up.

The combination of a devolution design that better resembles a child’s finger painting, a contrived attempt at the project in England, and a lack of any compelling message as to what the whole thing is actually about has served to terminally weaken the concept of unionism at a time when the Prime Minister is desperately trying to unite the country.

It begs the question as to whether Unionism was ever alive in the minds of middle England.

At a recent talk, Gordon Brown’s answer to healing the constitutional divisions in the country, unsurprisingly, was more devolution. The obvious question is: “Why did you not do it right in the first place?”.

The actual institutional design of devolution, the relationship between those of us living in a devolved nation and the “centre”, shapes our national identities – it matters. The Treasury’s renowned institutional control freakery, poor communication and a spectacular lack of foresight means each of the devolved nations has a very different settlement to the other and, crucially, the centre.

As such, being a unionist in Scotland is an entirely different proposition to that in Northern Ireland or Wales. Moreover, the overarching value of the project has clearly not been articulated to the critical mass of people in England. In the context of lower public expenditure per head and the silly “anyone but England” psyche, you can understand why they might wonder what the point of it all is.

What’s worse is that there has been a plethora of opportunities to consider whether this was the best way to do things, the most recent being the blatantly lacklustre convening of the Joint Ministerial Committee (JMC) to discuss Brexit. It’s difficult to garner any sense of team spirit when each teammate doesn’t appear to give a fiddler’s about what the other thinks.

A more symmetrical design, with a strong overarching message, would have had more of a chance of fostering the “Team UK” the Prime Minister seeks.

Perhaps, to adapt the Nietzsche metaphor, Unionism is dying. And we’re killing it.

This article was originally published in The Times Scotland on 4 October 2018. You can find it here.