ou’ve got to feel some sympathy for Boris Johnson holed up because of Covid-19, now broadcasting to the country from an upper room in Downing Street. But with this week’s outburst, claiming “devolution has been a disaster”, he became, yet again, the megaphone for the views of Dominic Cummings, who has spent 20 years opposing devolution in all its forms. Wherever Cummings is now – Islington or Barnard Castle – his influence lives on. In the week the prime minister’s entire set-up was exposed as dysfunctional and faction-ridden, and the centre of government was seen to be falling apart, pinning Britain’s ills on devolution is risible. For months Downing Street has been under fire for confused briefings, contradictory advice, U-turns, false dawns and now apparently dodgy contracts, but the prime minister still does not get it. The pressure for devolution is increasing because, whether it is the chaos over lockdowns, furloughs or testing and tracing, the nations and regions feel they are not being consulted and that Westminster does not listen. A few days ago, 70% of Greater Manchester residents complained that the north was being treated less favourably than the south, echoing the metropolitan mayors who report that No 10 won’t give them the time of day. Ironically, the only government representative who northerners remember spending any time travelling amongst them is Cummings, albeit only to check out his eyesight. We have to worry for the unity of the country when the prime minister – who, as mayor of London, continuously argued for more devolution for the capital city – now fulminates against devolution for everyone else. And not only that, he is on record calling for the abolition of the spending arrangements that allocate resources to outlying communities in need. Within minutes of his remarks going public, No 10’s new spin doctors began an exercise in damage limitation. The prime minister was, they said, talking only of Scotland under the Scottish National party. And in prime minister’s questions on Wednesday, Johnson said the problem was the way the SNP had used devolution to “to constantly campaign for the breakup of our country”. Yet his hostility to Scotland is longstanding. Around the time I started in No 10, he wrote that no Scot should ever be allowed to become prime minister of the UK. Then, and since, I have laughed this off, saying that he was really commenting on the suitability of Michael Gove. But fighting a Scottish election or a referendum on the evils of devolution, or even on his party’s current mantra – “No to independence, no to a referendum, no to change” – simply plays into the hands of the SNP. It leaves the Conservatives defending an increasingly discredited status quo against an SNP that says there is now only one kind of change on offer: independence. And it takes the ground from under the feet of those who argue for greater devolved powers within the UK as the sensible way forward. The “no-change” camp has an ever-diminishing band of Scottish supporters – not because Scots are feeling so much more different from their southern neighbours, but because they share the same concerns. Like Wales and many English regions, they too feel forgotten within the Whitehall corridors of power, ignored by those dictating policy in No 10, and treated as second-class citizens in their own country. The majority of Scots – and I am one of them – are proud and patriotic, and progressive too. What moves the nation, the beating heart of Scotland, is not so much the demand for separation as the desire for social justice. And in this, Scots find common cause with friends in the north, the Midlands and Wales – indeed, in all regions and nations, including millions of Londoners – who also feel left out and left behind and have not seen any evidence of the “levelling up” they were promised. In spite of the Johnson provocations, 60% of Scots say the different nations of the UK “still have more in common than divides us”, a majority view not just from those close to the border but from the Highlands and the industrial central belt. Even more say they feel strong affinity with England’s north and Midlands, and with Wales. And a bigger proportion, 76%, say “the UK and Scottish governments should be better at cooperating on issues affecting my life”. Hardly a plea for separation, but for the kind of change within the UK that balances the local powers we desire with the cross-border cooperation we know we need. And so what Johnson would call “the Scottish problem” is, in fact, “the British problem”: that to accommodate the needs of all the nations and regions, we have to revise the terms on which we all work together. Such a root-and-branch rewriting of the UK constitution should start with citizens’ assemblies across the country and lead up to a unique event that has only previously happened when countries decide on a fresh start: a constitutional convention. For if we did not appreciate the scale of the challenge ahead, after Johnson’s intervention we know it now. The battle to come is not between change and the status quo, but between two forms of change: one that makes change work within the UK; and one that would regrettably lead to five million people leaving it.