During his recent visit to Ireland, Trump, the perennial disrupter of geopolitics’ business as usual, said that he would love to see a united Ireland which would be a “fantastic thing” as also “one of the naturals of all time.” Events in Venezuela and Greenland have shown that there is clear intent behind Trump’s pronouncements, howsoever brash these may seem at the moment of utterance. The British Isles are strategically important from the perspective of the US-Russia relations, as these are a part of the chain including Greenland and Iceland that separates the Norwegian Sea from the North Atlantic Ocean. Russia has heavy dominance in the former and the latter is the home turf and raison d’être of NATO. The future of NATO, thus, is inseparably bound with the future of the UK as is the idea of democracy with the Mother of Parliaments.

The United Kingdom is certainly not on the verge of immediate dissolution. Yet, it is increasingly difficult to describe it as a politically settled union. Its internal compact is weaker than it appeared a generation ago. Brexit, uneven development, disputes over devolution, increasingly divergent political identities and the bugbear of immigration have converted what was once a manageable constitutional ambiguity into a persistent political problem. The issues in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales do raise a question on whether the UK’s existing constitutional architecture can still generate consent across all its nations.

The United Kingdom has never been a conventional nation-state. It is a multinational union: England and Wales were joined under the Tudor settlement; Scotland entered the Union in 1707 and Northern Ireland remained within the UK after the partition of Ireland in the early twentieth century. Its unity has therefore rested not on ethnic uniformity, but on a mixture of political bargains, imperial history, economic integration, monarchy, security and—at crucial moments—the capacity of Westminster to accommodate distinct national identities. For much of the twentieth century, that arrangement seemed durable. The institutions of the British state, the welfare system, industrial economy, armed forces and imperial legacy supplied a common political framework. Scottish and Welsh identities survived, but they did not necessarily translate into mass support for statehood. Northern Ireland was different: its constitutional status rested on a divided society, a contested border and a history of violence that eventually culminated in the Good Friday Agreement of 1998.

Did the post-1990s devolution settlement achieve its intended goal of stabilising the Union? Scotland acquired a Parliament; Wales gained an Assembly—now the Senedd—and Northern Ireland received a power-sharing Assembly and Executive. Yet devolution produced an unintended consequence: it gave political form and institutional permanence to distinct national prisms. Citizens increasingly judged public policy through Scottish, Welsh or Northern Irish political arenas, rather than only through a Britain-wide lens. While solving the immediate problem of excessive centralisation, the devolution created a new long-term question: if Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland can govern themselves in significant areas, why should they not decide their own ultimate constitutional futures? Westminster may argue that the Union remains a matter reserved for the UK Parliament and yet, this legal answer does not resolve the emotional question of whole-hearted consent.

Even though the Scots voted in the 2014 referendum 55 percent to 45 percent to remain in the UK, Scotland remains the most consequential challenge to the Union. Scotland is a historic nation with a distinct legal system, strong national institutions, a substantial population and a mature independence movement. If anything, the referendum crystallised the independence constituency that represents a durable dividing line to the authorities in London as well as in Edinburgh.

The dividing line became even more starkly visible during and after the 2016 Brexit referendum; Scotland had voted to remain in the EU. The English electoral weight overrode it, adding a powerful grievance to the Scottish nationalist discourse. It strengthened the feeling that the promise of a “union of equals’ was just words and the English will steamroll with their numerical superiority whenever required. To add to the strain on Scottish emotions, the UK Supreme Court unanimously ruled in 2022 that the Scottish Parliament could not legislate for an independence referendum without Westminster’s consent as the Union is a reserved matter.

Will a future Scotland government that gets elected on a manifesto of independence be deemed to be legitimate in the eyes of the UK courts? If the Scotland Parliament calls for a referendum without clearance from Westminster, can the Supreme Court prevent it? If the referendum results in majority support for independence, will Westminster’s obstruction not look more like it was exercising a power of veto? When parliamentary sovereignty backed by the judiciary collides with consent of a constituent nationality, will not the outcome be a defeat for both the parties? The case of Northern Ireland is even more ticklish for London because the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, which ended the recurrent incidents of ‘terrorism’, was an international peace settlement which established that the UK incorporated the territory only by consent. The UK Secretary of State shall have to call for a “border poll” if it appears likely that a majority would favour Northern Ireland’s unity with the Irish Republic. Thus, the demand for Irish unification is not an abstract nationalist demand or extra-constitutional threat anymore; it is a possibility expressly anticipated by the constitution. There may be no immediate threat with polls indicating around 36 percent support for reunification; that number is not insignificant either.

Sinn Féin, which was at the forefront of the decades-long violence, is now a political force in Northern Ireland leading the reunification sentiment. Brexit has compounded the problem and the border between Northern Island and the Republic of Ireland, which is still a member of the EU, is the new bone of contention between the Irish and London. Polls indicate that support for Welsh independence hovers around 32 percent, again not an insignificant figure. The recurrent disputes between Westminster and the Senedd over funding, infrastructure, energy policy and many other issues are not so serious as to threaten the ‘United’ part of the Kingdom but do not bode well either for nipping in the bud the separatist sentiment yet in its infancy. All nations are burdened as well as driven by their baggage of history. The Celtic Isles that today comprise the UK and the Irish Republic underwent cataclysmic disruption with the invasion of Julius Caesar in 55 B.C. but the impact across the four parts was uneven.

While the subsequent Anglo-Saxon and Norman invasions resulted in the total obliteration of Celtic language and culture from England and substantial change in Wales too, Scotland and Ireland retained large influences of the original. The pride in the indigenous has increased in recent years, particularly in Ireland where the Celtic language, which is completely unintelligible to the English speaker, is seeing a huge resurgence and so are Celtic festivals and symbols. The large-scale Scottish migration to London in the 18th century was resented, as usually happens, by the locals who saw loss of a large part of their hold on business and politics and this resulted in the Scottish accent being satirised. The Scottish kilt and tartan were labelled as ‘uncivilised” and the Dress Act of 1746 went to the extent of legally banning these. Such history hurts deeper than lances and swords and plays a role in the relations between nations. Yet, if such hurts play a role in accelerating the break-up of the UK, it will damage not only NATO but also the idea of democracy in general, while being a shot in the arm of undemocratic forces like Russia, China and North Korea lurking in the Arctic. / DAILYWORLD /

( R N prasher is a former IAS officer. The views expressed are his personal.)