But will there always be a Britain?

WE ARE RIGHT TO BE CONCERNED that arrogant self-regarding ‘progressives’ in Australia seek to extinguish the kindly light of the Crown. Once it is out it will likely never be relit, and that will be a final end and a betrayal of what their ancestors loved, believed in, and died for. Kevin Rudd, we know, is more than happy to exploit the patriotism of ANZAC Day and its commemoration of those who fought for King and Country. His quietly nursed desire to abolish the Australian monarchy shows us that he has a pitiless contempt for it, too.

But I wonder if we have missed something else far more dangerous. There are many reasons to believe that within our lifetimes the monarchy will cease to bind sixteen nations together in brotherhood, and will reign over England merely, and nowhere else, including Scotland. The stress point of this falls far closer to home.

Simon Heffer – otherwise a professed Tory – writes in today's Telegraph that it is time, as it once was with the Empire, to let Scotland go. Not least, he writes, because it would be an "awesome opportunity for the Tories". Now, Heffer is known for his vein-bursting rants against the Cameron-project; and yet here he is recommending the most naked party-political opportunism at the mere cost of the death of our country. If Cameron had proposed this I think it fair to say that I would have heard Heffer’s head exploding all the way in Oxfordshire. In the very best hang-‘em/flog-‘em tradition of Heffer, then, may I recommend said columnist is, in fact, hanged for treason?

I sometimes wonder whether pundits like Heffer, or even just the average Englishman, lazily bitter at all the news of Scots enjoying English-funded welfare, realise quite what independence means. It wouldn’t just (pace Heffer) teach Scotland a lesson ("grown-ups must be allowed to make their own mistakes"). (And quite how pique is a coherent principle for the constitutional organisation of a country I don’t know).

It would delete the Union Flag from the face of the earth. All the UK overseas territories would be obliged to remove it from their flags, as well. And then Australia and New Zealand would likely follow suit and remove the obsolete portion from theirs. After this, how else would all these territories suffer? Would they be divided amongst the independent British nations, or given to their nearest neighbours, or made independent themselves? Shall we lose the Falklands, at last, because a Scottish politician wound us up? It would also delete the unicorn from the arms of our country, and Canada’s too, and from the mastheads of two dozen worldwide newspapers. It would delete the Royal Navy and its White Ensign; the British Army would be destroyed, not by Napoleon or Hitler, but by self-hating Britons; the RAF would need to be split up and renamed. Scotch republicanism (which fills the ranks of the SNP tremendously) would be given a very good chance of rendering Scotland kingless for the first time in its history. The BBC would cease to exist (small loss, there, I suppose). We would have no seat on the UN security council. Rule Britannia would be a historical curiosity. Balmoral would be sold for housing, its purple hills papered with prefab homes.

Once Scotland goes, the drive for Welsh independence – an even more seemingly preposterous idea – will surely only increase, as it has with devolution. (More powers were recently given to the Welsh Assembly, slowing giving it parity with the Scottish settlement already). Once they are out it is hard to conceive of just England and Northern Ireland remaining in partnership at this point, not least since the six counties have always been viewed by the modern English as a rather troublesome and nonsensical possession. There are also already legislative treaties drawing it into a stickier relationship with the southern Republic (signed by Thatcher, and not forgetting that Brown never once mentioned the province in his recent Union speeches). So independence would give half of Great Britain over to the unencumbered rule of the Continent. The Scotch and Welsh desire far more in the way of ever-closer-EUnion than England, and are eager to fasten their mouths to the EU sow. We would no longer be an island nation, but one landlocked on two sides by Celtic neighbours, altogether divided and conquered by Brussels.

Does Simon Heffer honestly want all that? If so, he selects a radical scoundrelism almost unparalleled in British history. He has bolder aims than Guy Fawkes, and grander dreams of ruination than any ancient leftist.

I tremble at the idea that I could live to see the end of Great Britain. It has rightly been pointed out that whilst Rome lost its Empire and soon after lost itself, Britain seemed to drop its and yet continue to prosper. But the drive for independence in the minds of the Heffers of this world suggests that there is a self-eating canker at the heart of the United Kingdom, and its work is not yet finished.