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The shift from Unionism - which in theory saw the Union as guarding and respecting the various national traditions and identites of the UK - to British nationalism, verging on denying that those national identies can or should exist is a profound one. https://twitter.com/paulbsinclair/status/1340370651744497667
Scots Tories in, say, the 1960s would have been appalled by this. Unionist nationalism looks odd from a pro-independence perspective, but it endured for a long time for a reason, it allowed national disctinctiveness and pride to coexist with a larger structure.
To the unitary British nationalist mindset that distinctiveness is an unwelcome threat. That appeals to a small and angry base, but most Scottish people value that distinctiveness, and hardline unitary nationalism will drive people away from Unionism.
A Unionism that can't accomodate Scottish patriotism is a world away from the Unionism that held pretty much unchallenged sway in Scottish culture for generations when Unionist Scots built monuments to Bruce and Wallace and fought for the Empire in tartan, marching to the pipes.
This new, defensive, rigid unitary British nationalism - ironically - lacks the kind of national sensitivity and flexibility that made the UK possible. It's gambling a lot on Scots' attachment to the UK as such, regardless of the content of its cultural identity.
This shift changes what Britain is. Is it a Britain that Scottish people want to be a part of? We'll see, I suppose. But it's certainly true that a lot of Scottish people *like* things like the historic Scottish regiments, Burns suppers, Wallace monument etc. that this new
incarnation of unitary nationalism would not have countenanced had it held sway at the zenith of Empire and Union.
There was a time when Scottish Presbyterians could both be absolutely, unquestionably in favour of the Union and also be proud of the matyrs of the Covenant resisting the impositition of the English church.
There was a time when my Tory step-grandfather could say that the public reaction to the retaking of the Stone of Scone was "Nothing to do with nationalism, it was about getting one over on the English."
Those kinds of things look increasingly out of step with the "there is no border" Britishness we see now.
It's hard to see the kind of people who angrily deny that the Scots language does or can or should exist as representing the same politics of the same Union as their Unionist great-great grandfathers who read kailyard novels in Scots and were members of Burns Clubs.
It's hard to see the people who eagerly wish for the death of Gaelic and see its use as a nationalist provocation as belonging to same tradition as those Church of Scotland ministers whose Gaelic hymnal of 1935 included "God Save The King" in Gaelic.
Now, anti-Gaelic sentiment within British nationalism (and certain Scottish ideas of progress) is nothing new, but the current unitary British nationalism has less and less space for people being proudly Gaelic, Scottish and British.
Campaigns for and rhetoric of promoting Gaelic in the late C19th were very political, very nationalistic, and seldom if ever had any anti-Union or pro-independence content.
Hard to see that being accepted now by folk who (say they) can just about tolerate Gaelic "but don't like it being politicised.
