There’s an astonishing lack of thinking about how to address the radical implications of Britain’s disintegration

There is a famous quote from the Italian writer Antonio Gramsci: “The old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.”

His argument could equally apply to the United Kingdom. Many think the UK in its current form is probably doomed, and that the break up of the union is inevitable. But outside the various nationalist causes, few people seem to have a clear idea about what should replace the dying dream of unionism.

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Alex Niven is a lecturer in English literature at Newcastle University and the author of New Model Island