THE Union is "heading for calamity", according to the former chief spin doctor to the Scottish Tories.
Eddie Barnes headed the party's Holyrood media team and wrote Ruth Davidson's speeches before quitting in January after four years.
Writing in the The Times today, he says Boris Johnson's devolution "disaster" comment — made in a private call to English Tory MPs — could be the "wake-up call" unionists need.
He states: "Something is very broken in the way that devolution has been delivered and if it is not fixed soon, then those who want Britain to stay together are indeed heading for calamity."
Barnes says the SNP has exploited a "governance gap" due to an out-of-touch Whitehall, adding: "The SNP’s political success has been based, often, on the fact that their complaints are justified.
"This dysfunction is now reaching breaking point."
Barnes' comments come days after Tory grandee Malcolm Rifkind, a former Scottish Secretary, called for a federal UK in response to 14 consecutive Yes majorities in opinion polls.
Support for independence has reached 58%.
Meanwhile, Yes support is also growing in Wales, where 33% of people with an opinion on the constitution would vote for independence.
Barnes says the "sense of frustration, alienation and grievance with the centre of power that has been building in Scotland and Wales" is also now emerging in England’s regions, stating: "The ringing condemnation by Andy Burnham, mayor of Greater Manchester, of the UK Government’s attitude to his city region last month could have been scripted by Nicola Sturgeon’s advisers in Edinburgh.
"The upshot is that the pandemic has spread Britain’s constitutional crisis. The irony of the UK in 2020 is this: we are increasingly united by a growing sense of alienation towards the centre of power itself.
"A shared feeling of discontent was not, perhaps, how Mr Johnson hoped to bring people in Cardiff, Liverpool, Manchester, London and Edinburgh closer together, but the self-styled Minister for the Union appears to have pulled it off nonetheless."
Barnes says Brexit negotiator Lord Frost, formerly of the Scotch Whisky Association, "gets Scotland" but the end of the transition period next month will bring "more and more issues" to the fore.
He writes: "Will the voice of devolved governments be represented? What role should the Scottish government have over the creation of a new immigration policy? When post-Brexit policy has an impact on an area of huge importance to Scotland, such as fishing, how can the devolved governments be involved in those decisions?"
Stating that "the status quo cannot hold", Barnes concludes: "Scotland knows this, and now much of the rest of the UK is catching on.
"The question is whether Mr Johnson decides to tackle the challenge head on, or let the disaster that he warned of last week come back to smack him hard in the face."
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