Scottish Unionism is finished and has been for some time
Does the book point to Scottish independence as the way forward?
“It’s a book for a big international market and that question is left entirely open,” said Pittock. “The book suggests that the Union doesn’t really work as it’s presently constituted. People think the Union’s been there for 300 years but the kind of Union we have now is much younger than that.”
He believes that many in Scotland, including the politicians, have not yet worked out how to deal with this new type of very rigid English-orientated Union.
“The other point the book makes is that maybe the current politics of Scotland haven’t made themselves properly ready to be anything else than within the Union,” said Professor Pittock.
“The book is meant to be balanced and say the Union has ceased to be what it used to be but if Scotland wants to be any different, it has to find the politics to be different. And it hasn’t quite found that yet. The electoral politics and the constitutional politics don’t exactly map on to one another.
“I don’t over specify but I think if you want to develop a different state, you have to develop a different politics, a different set of institutions and very consistent messaging around that, difficult as it is.”
It might help if people, particularly leaders, knew their history, according to Pittock.
“History is extremely important, yet we are seeing political decisions of enormous moment being taken by people who think that they don’t need to know any history. This has been getting steadily worse for the last 40 years but history is the best guide to the future we’ve got,” Pittock said.