Abstract

The other Chapters in this volume deal mainly with the machinery of governance while this one, by contrast, deals mainly with the ghost in the machine, those dispositions, loyalties, sympathies, beliefs, feelings and sensitivities that together constitute a political identity. Rather than using the matrix format at the end to present alternative scenarios, this Chapter deploys the axes to identify what was, what is and what may become of Britishness. It then abridges into two directions of travel the complex possibilities of the post-devolution condition. These possibilities are separation and adaptation, the first a radical dissolution of the Union, the second a modest modification of the multi-national Union.