That's Where I Am

''My family came here from Ireland 50 or 60 years ago but they never left the United Kingdom. In political terms, that’s where I am - a Unionist.''

So says Jim Murphy. It's a good interview, and at least Fraser Nelson admits that he and Murphy have known each other since university. But I can't help suspecting that Murphy is playing up his humble origins just a bit for the benefit of the Spectator readership.

Still, he's right, of course. Irish (and, by extension, all) Catholics are the people in Scotland with the most to fear from the dissolution of the United Kingdom, and they know it, as Irish (and, by extension, all) Catholics in England and Wales (in which latter the whole thing is already very well-understood by, notably, such staunch Unionists as Paul Murphy and Don Touhig) would come to know it pretty rapidly once that process of dissolution had began.

And if Murphy's family never left the United Kingdom a mere fifty or sixty years ago, then they must have come from Northern Ireland, where, as in Great Britain, Irish Catholics have always been among the main beneficiaries of the social democracy made possible by the Union, but which would be quite impossible (economically, culturally, or both) in any other arrangement on offer to any of the Union's constituent parts.