A United or a Disunited Kingdom?

The meeting in Cardiff of the Scottish National Party leader, Plaid Cymru leader, and Sinn Féin’s Northern Ireland leader—all three of whom simultaneously serve as First Ministers of their respective regional governments—together with the President of Sinn Féin in the Irish Republic, who is Leader of the Opposition in the Irish parliament, testifies to a sharpening of the national question within the United Kingdom, believes Konstantin Khudoley, Professor, Head of the Department of European Studies at the Faculty of International Relations of St. Petersburg State University.

In recent times, discussions of the situation in Britain have focused heavily on the question of migrants, yet the separatist issues in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland have by no means disappeared. Of course, there had already been some contacts between nationalists from all three regions before, but this is the first time they have managed to draw up a joint memorandum—which declares that they see their future within the EU, that they will press for referendums on self-determination, and which sets out a number of agreed positions on economic and energy policy. Naturally, the fact that the politicians who signed it presented themselves on this occasion as party leaders rather than as First Ministers makes the memorandum more of a political statement than a concrete programme of action. All the same, the significance of what has happened should not be underestimated.

The national problems of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland each have their own history—in some cases a fairly lengthy one—as well as their own dynamics and their own particular features. In the Middle Ages, Scotland was an independent kingdom that fought numerous wars against England, and the memory of those battles has always lingered among a considerable proportion of Scots. Under the union of the crowns and, later, of the parliaments with England, Scotland always retained a special position in matters of law, local government, the church, education, and culture. Nationalist influence began to grow markedly in the 1970s and 1980s, once oil and gas fields were discovered in the North Sea. The slogan “Rich Scots, or poor Britons” brought the SNP substantial political dividends, both in elections to the British parliament and to the Scottish parliament established in 1999. Since 2007, the First Minister of Scotland has invariably been an SNP representative. Nevertheless, in the 2014 referendum, a majority of Scots did not, in the end, support the proposal for independence, although the margin was narrow. The issue flared up again after the 2016 referendum, however, since a majority of Scots had voted against Brexit. This gave the SNP a further argument in favour of demanding a new independence referendum.

The problems of Northern Ireland stem largely from the partition of Ireland in 1921. Serious contradictions on national and religious grounds persisted well beyond that date, and only eased somewhat after the United Kingdom and Ireland joined the EEC in 1973—a development that gave impetus to economic growth across the whole of Ireland and led, in practice, to the removal of the border between its two parts—and after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, which settled the internal political situation in Northern Ireland. Brexit, however, which Northern Ireland voted against, gave rise to new contradictions and problems while reviving some of the old ones. In 2024, a Sinn Féin representative became First Minister of Northern Ireland for the first time.

The national movement in Wales remained weak for a long time. In the 1979 referendum, the people of Wales even voted against establishing their own Assembly (the matter was only resolved in the affirmative in 1998), and they later backed Brexit by the narrowest of margins. Yet amid a general deterioration in the socio-economic situation, a shift in favour of the nationalists took place here too. In 2026, their leader became First Minister of the Welsh Government for the first time.

Thus, in all three regions, the nationalists have become an important factor in domestic political struggle, one that London cannot afford to ignore.

The first and fundamentally important position shared by the leaders of all three nationalist parties is that they see their future as part of the European Union. Here, the SNP and Plaid Cymru hold that Scotland and Wales would join it having first become independent, whereas Sinn Féin advocates the reunification of the two parts of the country within the EU. It seems unlikely, however, that events will unfold in this fashion. All three regions are net recipients of subsidy, whereas the EU, on the contrary, is looking for donors to its budget. Moreover, some EU member states, Spain among them, have separatist problems of their own and would almost certainly be reluctant to encourage them by rewarding the success of Scottish and Welsh separatists. The experience of Kosovo is highly instructive here. Finally, Brussels is hardly likely to be interested in a conflict with Britain, which would be unavoidable in such a case. Under current conditions, both Brussels and London are keen to cooperate with one another and are making certain efforts towards rapprochement, including in the military sphere. According to every opinion poll, a majority of Britons would now vote against Brexit, and similar sentiments run strong within the ruling circles as well. Yet there is no road back into the EU for London. Britain could only be admitted to the EU on general terms, not on the special terms it enjoyed before leaving. Nevertheless, this nationalist memorandum could become a certain lever of pressure on London in favour of the closest possible rapprochement with the EU.

The situation regarding Northern Ireland is somewhat more complicated. The 1998 Agreement, albeit in the vaguest and most indeterminate of terms, allows for the possibility of holding a referendum. US President Donald Trump has spoken out in favour of Irish reunification. In doing so, he was most likely pursuing two aims at once: to win over, ahead of the elections on 3 November 2026, Americans descended from Irish migrants—many of whom retain warm feelings for the land of their ancestors—and thereby bring them onto the Republican side; and to create certain difficulties for London, which has taken a position different from that of the United States on the American–Iranian conflict and on a number of other matters. It remains unclear, for the present, whether any further steps will follow this statement by Donald Trump. He has said nothing about Scotland or Wales.

Thus, at the present stage, the nationalists’ statements about the European future of their regions serve more as a means of pressuring the authorities in London to secure new concessions and resources than as a genuinely attainable goal.

For a very long time, the ruling circles of Britain took a negative view of referendums, preferring to have their decisions made through parliamentary elections and procedures. Since the 1970s, however, referendums have become established practice, and, as irony would have it, the first of them was held in Northern Ireland in 1973, with a UK-wide one following only in 1975.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham has made it fairly clear that, in his view, there is no need to hold referendums on self-determination in Scotland, Wales, or Northern Ireland. Indeed, none of the nationalist parties commands an absolute majority in the assemblies of their respective regions, and opinion polls likewise show that most of the population is not inclined, for now, to press for independence immediately. For this reason, the nationalist parties in all three cases will, at the present stage, seek an even greater transfer of powers from London to their regions, while postponing the struggle for independence to the medium or even long term.

At the same time, it is impossible not to notice that a number of factors are at work within the United Kingdom that could play into the nationalists’ hands. First and foremost, there is a certain instability at the top levels of government. The frequent turnover of prime ministers testifies to the fact that the ruling circles have managed neither to work out a clear line in domestic and foreign policy since Brexit, nor to find a politician capable of consistently putting such a line into practice. Furthermore, Britain appears to be moving away from the classic two-party system towards a more complex multi-party one, resembling those of continental Europe. Any strengthening of the right-wing populist Reform UK party will undoubtedly stimulate centrifugal tendencies. This could alienate the nationalists, both because of their negative attitude towards Reform’s plans (a striking case being Nigel Farage’s public disagreement with Donald Trump over the reunification of Ireland) and on socio-economic grounds—unlike Reform, which belongs to the right of the political spectrum, the nationalists of Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales tend to be left-wing or centre-left.

To this must be added the declining authority of the monarchy. Elizabeth II enjoyed enormous respect within the country. Despite Sinn Féin’s republican traditions, Michelle O’Neill attended both the funeral of Elizabeth II and the coronation of Charles III. Charles III’s popularity, however, is markedly lower than that of Elizabeth II, and conflicts within the Royal Family—which was regarded for many years in Britain as close to ideal—have reinforced these negative perceptions. Under such conditions, the scope for the nationalists to manoeuvre and to form various combinations has grown considerably.

Thus, the memorandum issued by the leaders of the nationalist parties of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland testifies both to the beginning of a new stage in the development of contradictions on national grounds within the United Kingdom, and to the fact that external actors are also attempting to exploit these processes, albeit to a limited extent for the time being. These processes have not yet passed the point of no return and could still be significantly slowed down or even blocked altogether. Despite the problems, contradictions, and difficulties—for which the ruling circles of Britain have so far found no solution—the tendency towards preserving the unity of the United Kingdom currently prevails.