The Brexit Project and The Future of the United Kingdom

The former Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron displayed a certain insouciance with regard to referenda. With little apparent consideration, he agreed to a referendum on Scottish independence to be held in 2014. Two years later he held a second referendum, in this case concerning the UK’s membership of the EU. In both cases, the referendum was a Yes or No vote, and a simple majority of one vote would suffice to decide the matter. In the case of the Scottish referendum, EU citizens resident in Scotland were entitled to vote. In theory, therefore, since a single vote could be conclusive, a single Spaniard, German, Pole etc, by casting a vote for independence, could have caused the dismemberment of the UK. True, this was a very remote possibility, but it seems to have given Mr Cameron no pause for thought.

Mr Cameron’s government and the No campaign during the Scottish referendum campaign emphasized two arguments very strongly. Firstly, if Scotland voted for independence the country would have voted to leave the EU, and the EU would be most unlikely to re-admit Scotland. Secondly, Scotland would not be able to use the pound as its currency. In effect, therefore, the UK government promised Scots that they could remain in the EU with the pound as their currency provided they voted No. As it turned out, the No vote won by some 10% points.

A year after persuading Scots to vote No to independence in order to remain a member of the EU, Mr Cameron called an In/Out referendum concerning EU membership. Again, the question required a simple Yes/No answer. EU citizens could not vote in this referendum, but in other respects the rules were the same: one vote could decide the outcome. And again, Mr Cameron, had nonchalantly allowed a fundamental constitutional change that could be decided by the smallest of majorities. In the event, the No vote won by almost 4% points, or a little more than 1 million votes.

Now, the Scots voted by a majority of about 33% to remain in the EU. In Northern Ireland a majority also voted to remain in the EU. But England and Wales voted to leave. Thus, Brexit is an English project (with the exception of London’s population of almost 9 million), with Welsh support, over the opposition of the Scots and Northern Irish. The population of England outside London is some 46 million of a UK total of 66 million. Thus, what non-metropolitan England wants is what the whole country gets. This created complicated situations, which include the possible independence of Scotland or Northern Ireland, or both from the UK. Recent events have further complicated the picture.

In the December UK general election, the Scottish National Party (SNP) increased its number of seats in Parliament, while the Conservatives lost seats and the Labour Party, which once dominated Scottish politics, was reduced to a single seat. The Liberal Democrats lost the seat of its brand-new leader. The SNP has been the governing party in Scotland for thirteen years. Thus, Scotland is ruled by a pro-EU, pro-independence party, while the government in London opposes independence and is pursuing the most aggressive form of Brexit possible. The SNP, of course, demands a second independence referendum. Prime Minister Johnson has not handled this matter with any delicacy. His response is that there will be no referendum and that the SNP is doing a rotten job of governing Scotland and should concentrate on improving its performance. You do not need to be a PR genius to paint this to Scots as typical English arrogance. It will certainly not reduce sentiment in favour of  independence.

Meanwhile, things have become more complicated in Northern Ireland, not just because of Brexit and the general election result in the UK, but because the general election in the Republic of Ireland has added an extra complication.

Since my friends beyond the UK may not be too familiar with Northern Ireland, it is worth digressing to explain that politics there operate to entirely different rules and dynamics than in the rest of the UK. Firstly, this is the only part of the UK in which none of the national parties runs   for office: all candidates represent local parties, broadly speaking either Unionist or Nationalist. The Unionists are traditionally allies of Mr Johnson’s Conservative and Unionist Party, to give it is full name, although he has succeeded in upsetting them with his EU withdrawal agreement. The Nationalists are implacably opposed and those who represent Sinn Féin (the largest Nationalist party) refuse to take their seats in Parliament because to do so they must swear loyalty to the British monarch. Sinn Féin is resolutely opposed to Brexit, not least because it leaves the North out of the EU but the South firmly in the EU.

Northern Irish politics has one other unusual feature. It is possible for Northern Irish political parties (that is to say Republican parties, not Unionist) to run for office in the Republic of Ireland, but not vice versa. To exaggerate the point, my American friends might imagine a scenario in which Mexican political parties can run for office in the USA, and indeed occupy the White House, but the Democratic and Republican parties cannot field candidates south of the border. Imagine Mr Trump’s Tweets on the matter.

Well, something almost like that, reduced to the scale of a tiny nation (a little less than 5 million people), has just happened in the Republic of Ireland’s general election. To the astonishment of even its own leaders, Sinn Féin has won the largest number of votes and the second largest number of seats. The Republic is governed by coalition governments. It is theoretically possible, although practically unlikely, that Sinn Féin could organize a governing coalition and become the principal governing party.

The leader of Sinn Féin has declared her intention to make a “Border Poll” her condition for a coalition. A border poll, or referendum, is a provision of the Good Friday Agreement of 1999, which ended many years of the violence of “The Troubles”. Essentially, the Agreement states that, if sentiment in the North comes to favour reunification, a referendum can be held. The key here is that the Agreement is an international treaty between the UK, the communities of Northern Ireland, and the Republic of Ireland, which therefore involves the EU since the republic remains a member. Sinn Féin and the Irish government do not have the sole power to call a referendum, but opposition to Brexit and recent election results in the North, have shifted opinion further in the direction of reunification. If Sinn Féin forms part of the government of the Republic, the likelihood of a referendum increases.

The Irish and British general elections happened only two months apart in the two countries most profoundly affected by Brexit. However, while the Conservatives succeeded in making the UK election about nothing but Brexit, the Irish result was the result of other concerns, principally an acute housing shortage and access to health care in the Republic, which the ruling parties had been ineffective in addressing. Sinn Féin campaigned very effectively on these issues.

Housing is, or rather should be, a critical issue in the UK where the cost and availability of housing is a long-standing problem, which the party in power has not addressed effectively in the last ten years. In addition, the National Health Service is under increasingly severe stress, and a reform of Social Care has been promised repeatedly, but not delivered, for the past decade. However, incompetent opposition leaders allowed the UK election to be called for the single reason of Brexit. So far, Mr Johnson’s government’s grand spending announcements have focused principally on transport initiatives that cost billions of pounds. While increased spending on the NHS has bene promised, a solution of the Social Care crisis is still in the realms of rhetoric, rather than action. It is worth noting that the performance of Northern Ireland’s NHS is scandalously bad, principally because of a long political dispute between Sinn Féin and the Democratic Unionist Party. Thus, Sinn Féin lost votes in the North because it handled the health care issue, while it won votes on the same issue in the South.

Brexit, which is now essentially a project of the Conservative and Unionist party, increases the possibility of one or two parts of the UK becoming independent. We Brits are familiar with the tendency of Americans to call us all English. I am both English and British. I have friends and neighbours who are Scots and (Northern) Irish. Whether they will remain British is another matter. I hope that they do.