Quote of the day 15th September 2026

"Nationalists hoping to kill the United Kingdom should be careful what they wish for."

This was the sub-heading on a leader in The Times today.

It contines,

"Nationalists politicians love talking about independence because it means they don't have to deal with the hard stuff: how to balance the books, make the NHS work better or make children better at maths. The fiscal issue is especially neuralgic if you are punting the Scottish National Party of Plaid Cymru line about how everything in the garden would be rosy if only the tyrannical yoke of Westminster could be cast off. Unfortunately the figures tell a different story. Far from the Union being a brake on progress in this kingdom itis and always has been an essential facilitator of it.

In 2024/25 public spending per person in the United Kingdom as a whole was £13,504. In England it was £13,134 per head - 3% below the national average. But in Wales it was £15,563 - 12 per cent more. Scotland did even better at £15,563 - that's fifteen per cent higher. And in Northern Ireland it was £16,116 -  a full 19 per cent above the UK average. The Union has been one giant exercise in regional wealth redistribution.

Of course, that was not the line pushed by the leaders of the three devolved administrations meeting in Cardiff yesterday."


The question some English nationalists may ask (or Scots or Welsh ones seeking vainly to discredit the above figures) is why it wouldn't therefore be in the interests of England to dissolve the union.

The answer is that the extra wealth generated and costs saved by having a UK single market and avoiding internal trade barriers, combined with the economies of scale from having some services provided collectively, makes all four components of the United Kingdom better off. Even some devolved services, such as the NHS, benefit in many instances from combined procurement. Those benefits are worth more to England than the costs of the subsidies paid to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

There is no doubt in my mind that all four countries of the UK are better off together in a whole host of positive ways.

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