Bloomberg: The United Kingdom may be stumbling toward a disastrous breakup

Pic.: You Tube

Barring an unprecedented upset, in a few days each of the four nations that make up the UK will be ruled by a different political party. Polls suggest three of the four will be separatists dedicated to the breakup of the union of England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales that has existed since Ireland seceded in 1922, Bloomberg notes.

Should they win, it would be wrong to see that as a verdict on the state of the union, or an indication of overwhelming support in the smaller nations for a split. Yet we could be stepping onto an escalator that leads to that outcome.

The process has already begun. Sinn Fein, political wing of the now defunct Irish Republican Army, has been the largest party in the Northern Ireland Assembly since 2022, having given up the Armalite rifle in favor of the ballot box to push for a united Ireland following the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.

In crunch elections this week, the Scottish National Party is looking to extend its majority in the country’s devolved parliament and Plaid Cymru is hoping to snatch Wales from the UK’s ruling Labour Party. Both may see a mandate to begin the process of departure. But it’s not at all clear this is what voters want.

Independence is only the sixth most important issue for Scots at these elections, according to a YouGov survey, behind the economy, health, immigration, education and housing. In Wales it was 14th. The constitutional question is considered such an unwanted distraction that Plaid Cymru’s leader had to deny that he’d take steps toward a breakaway any time soon.

John Swinney, the SNP’s leader and Scotland’s first minister since 2024, has been bolder, vowing to bring forward legislation for a second independence referendum on day one if he’s reelected. This would almost certainly be blocked by the UK government. Some 55% of Scots voted to remain in the last poll in 2014, supposedly resolving the matter for a generation.

While support for separatism in Scotland and Wales hasn’t shifted much in recent years, what has changed is the collapse in Labour’s popularity across the UK since its landslide victory in the 2024 general election. It has been dominant in Wales for generations and had hoped to recapture the Scottish assembly from a scandal-plagued SNP. Instead it’s braced for a mauling in its traditional heartlands, including Scotland and Wales.

The rise of Nigel Farage’s hard-right Reform UK has been another boon for non-English nationalist parties. In Wales, many progressives want to vote for whomever they consider the likeliest to see off the Farage threat. A special election in Caerphilly in October showed this may be Plaid rather than Labour. That’s not a vote for independence, though.

There’s another, troubling, aspect to Reform’s surge. If it keeps performing well nationally, and if it seems likely that Farage will become the UK prime minister, backing for nationalist parties will rise even more sharply. That won’t be because independence per se becomes more popular, but the generally more liberal-minded Celts will want to distance themselves from Reform. Scotland and Northern Ireland voted against Brexit. Having its flag-bearer sitting in No. 10 might make independence feel inexorable.

But given the strong cultural identity and understandable pride in being Scottish or Welsh, devolution probably remains the best system for governing these isles. Northern Ireland might be the exception, at least to me. Nationalism there is not being about breaking up into ever smaller parcels, but about joining a larger state on the same island. As support grows there for Irish unification, a border poll feels inevitable.

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