The train to the Scottish Highlands goes through some of Europe’s most rugged scenery. The mountains are snow capped. The river is running hard as deer graze in a field on the edge of a birch forest. This is Scotland as it has been for centuries.
But not quite.
The woman who checks me into my hotel is from eastern Europe. The waiter at dinner says he is from the Czech Republic. Two other staff members speak in Spanish and then switch to English to talk with one of the guests. Scotland, in other words, is a modern European country that offers opportunities to people – especially young people like these – who come to make a living and make a life. Even in the highland winter, it is tourist season with hill walkers wearing heavy boots and anoraks heading out for long walks. A few kilometres up the road in a skiing resort, I am told, businesses are building apartments to house the mostly foreign staff needed to make it all work.
The story of Scotland for many years has been like that of Ireland – emigration, a “brain drain” of some of the best workers to England, especially to London, and often to Canada, Australia, the US and the UAE. But the Scottish government based in Edinburgh is desperate to reverse that process offering incentives for companies to invest here, and going to great lengths to make foreign workers feel welcome. Refugees were also offered a warmer welcome in Scotland than many have experienced in England where the government in recent years tried to toughen the rules for asylum seekers.
That is just one area of friction between the administrations in Scotland and England.
Brexit overshadows that relationship, too. In January, the Scottish government led by First Minister Nicola Sturgeon wanted to offer new foreign workers after Brexit a Scottish work visa. The idea was torpedoed by UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government, even though Scotland’s need for young workers is very different from the situation in England.
For many Scots the Johnson government reaction is just another example of how politicians in London do not care about the three other nations of the UK: Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. And that sense of being at best ignored and at worst positively snubbed has created a new wave of discussions about Scottish independence.
I am in the Highlands to attend a big cultural event, and to speak at a public meeting where people talk openly about their hopes and fears for Scotland in the months ahead. One man, speaking for many I have been listening to, says he was against independence for Scotland when the country had its referendum in 2014. He wanted to maintain the centuries-old union of the UK – but now he has changed his mind because of events in England itself.
In the House of Commons, MPs from the Scottish National Party – who represent 47 out of the 59 Scottish seats – find that when they rise to speak, many Conservative MPs simply walk out in an act of calculated rudeness. Not surprisingly, the SNP wants another independence referendum and supporters are confident they can win. If that happens, the credit for breaking up the UK will be not so much because of the SNP's own efforts but because of the way Mr Johnson is alienating many previously unconvinced Scots.
There are other tensions, too, which undermine the UK that in one shape or another have existed since 1603.
Last week, Mr Johnson dismissed Julian Smith from his post as Northern Ireland Secretary. Mr Smith is very unusual for an English politician: he is admired and respected by all sides in Northern Ireland; he also earned praise from the Ireland’s Prime Minister Leo Varadkar for skillfully getting power-sharing politics in Belfast started again.
Mr Smith’s replacement immediately put his foot in his mouth by saying that Brexit means no customs border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. He is wrong. Britain and Ireland agreed such a customs border last year. And so people in Northern Ireland are beginning to wonder, like those in Scotland, whether Brexit means so much to Mr Johnson that he is prepared to break up the UK to achieve it.
Personally, I do not think Mr Johnson really has a coherent plan. Instead, he has a record of carelessness, and the UK is more in danger through incompetence than through considered decisions. As foreign secretary, Mr Johnson blundered in the case of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British-Iranian woman enduring a long time in an Iranian jail. In the case of dismissing Mr Smith, it appears Mr Johnson felt "blindsided" by Mr Smith's agreement to investigate historic killings that took place years ago during Northern Ireland's violent "Troubles". Westminster insiders suggest that in complex policy matters Mr Johnson simply does not read the briefings given to him or listen to expert advice.
In short, there is no conspiracy to break up the UK. But there is a prime minister who does not do his homework.
Gavin Esler is a journalist, author and presenter
