Britain’s constitutional argument has entered a more serious phase. The question is no longer simply whether Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland can demand greater autonomy from Westminster. It is whether the United Kingdom can continue to function as a political union when increasingly influential forces within three of its four nations question the permanence of that union.

The meeting of John Swinney, Scotland’s First Minister and leader of the Scottish National Party; Rhun ap Iorwerth, Wales’s First Minister and leader of the pro-independence Plaid Cymru; and Michelle O’Neill, Northern Ireland’s First Minister and a senior Sinn Féin leader, is significant because all three now head devolved governments whose governing parties favour breaking, in different ways, with the United Kingdom. That does not make the dissolution of the UK inevitable. Indeed, the obstacles remain formidable. Scotland voted against independence in 2014, and the UK government has resisted another referendum.

Northern Ireland has a distinct constitutional framework under the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which provides for a border poll under specified circumstances. Wales is further........

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