News / Politics

UK’s four nations going up against nationalist sentiments

Thursday, 31 October 2019 3:14 PM [ Last Update: Thursday, 31 October 2019 3:23 PM ]

UK 4 nations

The UK’s four nations are moving towards destabilization as nationalist sentiment in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland appears to have increased during the three years of Brexit.

Since the UK vote in 2016 to leave the European Union, ongoing polls have revealed an increase in support for independence in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales.

The 2016 Brexit referendum was framed as London’s bid to take back sovereignty from Brussels.

And, with the recent breakdown in the British parliamentary system, the remaining nations of the UK have taken the cue to seek their own independence.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s newly negotiated Brexit deal passed through parliament last week, but achieved little consensus elsewhere.

Northern Ireland’s ruling Democratic Unionist Party, the devolved assembly in Wales, and Scotland’s Parliament all rejected the bill, but their voices were not heard by lawmakers in the House of Commons.

Nationalist sentiment in England also appears to be on the increase, as a YouGov poll in June found that a majority of Conservative Party members said they would rather see Scotland and Northern Ireland break away from the rest of the UK if it meant ensuring that Brexit happens. The poll has revealed a project of English nationalism, rather than of Britain as a whole.

But the idea of the United Kingdom breaking apart is hard to imagine considering the sheer complexity of Brexit over the last three years. Unravelling the decades-long relationship between Britain and the EU has proven difficult, but even more difficult than that would be disentangling centuries of the United Kingdom as a union.

Remo Newton, Political Commentator

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