Is the UK being stretched to breaking point ?

Political commentator Iain Macwhirter believes the disaggregation of the UK is imminent. "The SNP [The Scottish National Party] is now running Holyrood [Scottish Parliament]; Plaid Cymru [Welsh nationalist party] is in coalition with Labour in Cardiff ; and the nationalist Sinn Féin shares power with the DUP [Democratic Unionist Party] in Stormont [Ireland]. It is the unionist nightmare come true : a separatist clean sweep. ... This country is changing - and, it has to be said, largely for the better, as the old centralised apparatus disintegrates before regional democracy. Now that the unionist parties in Scotland have all but given up, the UK faces a choice : adopt some form of federal solution, or prepare for political disintegration, on the lines of Czechoslovakia's 'velvet divorce' in 1993. It is as serious as that. While Brown launches fatuous 'Britishness' campaigns, the very fabric of the country he claims to love is being torn up and stitched anew."

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