Is the United Kingdom heading towards its own Brexit? Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland join hands to challenge Westminster
· OpIndia
For centuries, the United Kingdom has projected itself as one of the world’s most enduring political unions. On Monday, however, that union faced one of its most consequential constitutional challenges in modern times.
Cardiff became the centre of attention as leaders of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland came together to assert their nations’ right to determine their own constitutional futures, including the possibility of leaving the United Kingdom.
Visit biznow.biz for more information.
SNP leader and Scottish First Minister John Swinney, Plaid Cymru leader and Welsh First Minister Rhun ap Iorwerth, and Northern Ireland First Minister Michelle O’Neill of Sinn Féin signed a memorandum of understanding calling on Westminster to prepare for constitutional change. Sinn Féin president Mary Lou McDonald also attended the meeting.
The declaration is politically significant for one simple reason: for the first time since devolution began, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are simultaneously led by politicians who favour independence or constitutional separation from the UK.
What exactly is the United Kingdom?
Before understanding why Monday’s meeting matters, it is important to understand what the United Kingdom actually is.
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland consists of four constituent parts: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
And no, England, Great Britain and the United Kingdom are not interchangeable terms.
England is one of the four constituent countries. Great Britain refers to the island containing England, Scotland and Wales. The United Kingdom is the sovereign state comprising Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
The modern UK is therefore the product of several different unions formed over centuries rather than one grand political settlement created at a single point in history.
Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland also have their own political institutions because of the process of devolution. Scotland has the Scottish Parliament, Wales has the Senedd and Northern Ireland has its own Assembly and power-sharing executive.
That distinction is now at the heart of the constitutional battle: how much power should remain at Westminster, and how much should reside in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast?
How did this Union come into existence?
The story goes back much further than modern British politics.
England gradually absorbed Wales during the Tudor period. Legislation in the 16th century incorporated Wales into the English legal and political framework. England and Scotland, meanwhile, remained separate kingdoms even after the Union of the Crowns in 1603, when James VI of Scotland also became James I of England.
The decisive moment came in 1707.
The English and Scottish Parliaments passed the Acts of Union, creating the Kingdom of Great Britain and a single Parliament at Westminster. The union took effect on 1 May 1707.
The reasons were not merely romantic appeals to British unity.
Scotland’s failed Darien colonial venture had inflicted serious economic damage. Access to English markets and England’s growing maritime and commercial power made union attractive to sections of the Scottish political elite. England, meanwhile, feared the possibility of Scotland aligning with its enemies, particularly France, and wanted to secure the Protestant succession.
A century later came another major constitutional transformation.
The Act of Union 1801 united Great Britain and Ireland, creating the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. But Irish nationalism never disappeared.
The union ultimately fractured under the pressure of Irish nationalism. Following years of conflict and political upheaval, most of Ireland left the United Kingdom in the early 1920s. The Irish Free State emerged from 26 counties, while the six counties of Northern Ireland remained within the UK. The constitutional name eventually became the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
The bitter history of partition eventually produced the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, which established Northern Ireland’s present power-sharing arrangements and recognised the principle that its constitutional status can change if the people express that democratic wish.
In other words, the United Kingdom has already lost a major part of the territory that once constituted it.
The question now is whether history could repeat itself.
Devolution was supposed to strengthen the Union. Has it done the opposite?
This is perhaps the biggest irony confronting Westminster.
Devolution was introduced to give Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland greater control over their domestic affairs while keeping them inside the United Kingdom.
Referendums in Scotland and Wales in 1997 paved the way for their devolved institutions, while devolution formed a central part of the 1998 Northern Ireland settlement.
Instead of permanently settling the constitutional question, however, devolution arguably gave nationalist movements powerful political platforms from which to make the case for going further.
Scotland came closest to leaving in 2014.
In that referendum, 55.3 per cent voted No and 44.7 per cent voted Yes. The result appeared to settle the issue for a generation.
But then came Brexit.
Brexit changed the equation
The 2016 Brexit referendum exposed a profound constitutional divergence between England and the other nations.
The UK as a whole voted to leave the European Union. But Scotland voted 62 per cent to Remain, while Northern Ireland voted 55.8 per cent to Remain. Wales, by contrast, voted 52.5 per cent for Leave.
For Scottish nationalists, Brexit became a powerful argument that Scotland could be taken out of the European Union against its electoral preference because decisions were ultimately made at the UK-wide level.
The argument has since evolved into something broader: if Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland can repeatedly be outvoted by England, why should Westminster retain the final say over their constitutional future?
That is precisely the argument being advanced in Cardiff.
The Cardiff declaration: what does it actually mean?
The memorandum signed by the nationalist leaders is not itself a declaration of independence.
Nor does it mean that Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland is leaving the UK tomorrow.
Its importance is political rather than immediately legal.
The agreement argues that Westminster should not block the right of the constituent nations to determine their own futures and calls for preparation for constitutional change. The parties also intend to cooperate on areas including the economy, energy, Europe, international relations and self-determination.
Swinney described the moment as pivotal.
Ap Iorwerth has spoken of a “major reset” in relations between Westminster and the devolved nations, while insisting that Wales has no immediate timetable for an independence referendum. Plaid Cymru has previously ruled out holding such a referendum before the next Senedd election in 2030.
Northern Ireland is different.
Under the Good Friday Agreement, a border poll on Irish reunification is possible if the relevant threshold for considering such a vote is reached. That makes Northern Ireland’s constitutional route fundamentally different from Scotland’s and Wales’. (GOV.UK)
And then Donald Trump entered the debate
As if the constitutional crisis was not complicated enough, US President Donald Trump has now inserted himself into the Irish question.
During his visit to Ireland, Trump said he would “love” to see a united Ireland and described the merger of Northern Ireland with the Republic of Ireland as a natural outcome. He has, however, declined to say what he thinks about Scottish independence, for now.
The comments triggered irritation among pro-Union politicians in Northern Ireland and London.
Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin, while supporting Irish unity in principle, acknowledged that a referendum held now would probably not produce a majority for reunification.
For Westminster, the timing could hardly be worse.
The Cardiff summit came immediately after Trump’s intervention and has given the impression of a rapidly expanding constitutional conversation across the British Isles.
Is the UK actually on the verge of breaking up?
Not yet.
A political movement demanding independence is not the same thing as a successful independence referendum. A referendum itself is not the same thing as negotiations over separation. And negotiations do not automatically guarantee the creation of viable independent states.
There are enormous questions surrounding currency, debt, defence, trade, borders, pensions, energy, public finances and relations with the European Union.
Scotland’s own 2014 experience demonstrated how complicated independence would be. Wales faces an entirely different economic and political equation, while Northern Ireland’s future is tied to the delicate architecture of the Good Friday Agreement.
Yet dismissing the current movement as mere political theatre would also be a mistake.
Recent polling cited by The Guardian puts support for independence at 47 per cent in Scotland, 36 per cent in Northern Ireland and 32 per cent in Wales.
More importantly, the political leadership has changed.
For decades, Westminster could confront nationalist demands one territory at a time.
Now, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast are speaking about constitutional change simultaneously.
Westminster’s biggest challenge
Prime Minister Andy Burnham has firmly backed the Union and Downing Street has rejected the suggestion that Britain is inevitably heading towards dissolution. The government says it wants to deliver change across all four nations while keeping the Union intact.
Burnham’s recent comments on a possible Scottish referendum created confusion after he appeared to suggest that a vote could be considered if there were clear public support. He subsequently clarified that another Scottish independence referendum remains “off limits”.
That ambiguity may itself become a political problem.
The nationalist leaders are effectively asking Westminster one question:
If the Union is genuinely voluntary and democratic, who gets to decide when its constituent nations want to reconsider it?
Westminster’s answer is equally clear: constitutional change cannot simply be imposed by devolved governments.
And that is where the battle lines have now been drawn.
The United Kingdom has survived wars, empire, Irish partition, economic crises and the loss of its global imperial dominance.
But it is now facing a challenge from within.
The irony is hard to miss: the country that once created one of the world’s most powerful unions is now debating whether that union itself has an expiry date.
Monday’s meeting in Cardiff may not have broken Britain.
But it has undoubtedly made the possibility of Britain breaking up considerably harder for Westminster to ignore.