Conservative Senedd Member: ‘UK will end in 2020s if not reformed’

The UK will end in the 2020s if not reformed, according to a Conservative Senedd Member.

David Melding said that Prime Minister Boris Johnson should “prepare for history’s judgement as the man who abolished Britain” unless he could offer a new model of what a UK union would look like.

“My view is that the UK will end in the 2020s unless it is artfully reformed and again inspires an idea bigger than national independence,” he said.

“Ominously” however the Conservatives were preparing the ground for “IndyRef2 denial,” he wrote.

“From the imaginative but perhaps impractical ‘county’ membership of the UK cabinet for the FMs of the Home Nations; to the wildly fanciful scheme for CANZUK (a bird that flapped last in 1909 but failed to fly) much frenzied thought has gushed out of London this summer.

“It all reminds me of the forlorn but ingenious efforts of a chess Grand Master stretching out a game after making a catastrophic mistake.”

‘Unpredictable’

Boris Johnson continuing to “duck the challenge” of an independence referendum would lead inevitably to Scottish independence, he said.

Instead, he suggested that Boris Johnson hold a referendum on an alternative model for the union in England, Wales and Northern Ireland concurrently with one on independence in Scotland.

“The SNP know Indyref2 would be unpredictable with both sides having the ability to win,” he wrote. “They believe its denial would produce only one eventual outcome – the defeat of an obdurate union.

“Unionists, on the other hand, face a choice between perilous alternatives. But surely it is better to choose the one the SNP relishes least?”

David Melding announced in February that he would not be contesting the 2021 Senedd election.

He represented the South Wales Central region since the first Welsh Assembly was formed in May 1999.

He served as the Deputy Presiding Officer between 2011 and 2016.

He is one of only five politicians, alongside Elin Jones, Dafydd Elis-Thomas, Kirsty Williams and Carwyn Jones, to have remained a Senedd member since 1999.