THE week before last Prof Ciaran Martin, a former UK civil servant who in his role as Cabinet Office Constitution Director (2011-2014) had helped negotiate the basis of the 2014 Scottish Referendum with the Scottish Government, gave a public lecture – Resist, Reform or Re-Run – at Oxford University (and did the media rounds afterwards) pointing out that if Boris Johnston simply refuses to grant a second independence referendum to a Scots Government elected with a mandate to hold such a referendum then he will be changing the Union of the United Kingdom from one based on consent to one that survives only by force of law.