By Andrew MacAskill, Elizabeth Piper and Amanda Ferguson
LONDON/BELFAST, May 8 (Reuters) – Three of the United Kingdom’s four nations are set for the first time to be governed by pro-independence parties after elections on Friday which nationalists said marked the death knell of the centuries-old union.
A breakup of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland is by no means imminent, and polling showed voters were motivated by factors other than independence, but the outcome is likely to make Britain harder to govern.
Michelle O’Neill, the Northern Ireland First Minister from Sinn Féin, which wants to end British rule of the province and unite it with Ireland, described the parliamentary votes in Scotland and Wales – held alongside English local elections – as a “moment of seismic change”.
“I don’t think there can be any clearer sign that Westminster’s time is coming to an end for the people here and the people in Scotland and Wales,” she told Reuters.
‘SLEEPWALKING INTO THE END OF THE UNITED KINGDOM’
The United Kingdom’s four nations have proud separate identities and regularly fought wars before coming together as one political entity over the centuries, with ties often straining since then.
In recent decades Irish nationalists and pro-British “loyalists” waged a 30-year war over Northern Ireland’s place in the union that ended in 1998. Parties representing both sides now govern together under a power-sharing peace deal, but Sinn Fein nationalists won the most seats in 2022 and chose the first minister for the first time in 2024.
Pro-independence nationalists have run Scotland since 2007, although Scots voted to reject independence in a referendum in 2014. They managed to keep power in Friday’s election despite scandals that had weakened their leadership in recent years.
And in Wales, nationalist party Plaid Cymru was on course to be the largest party in the Welsh Senedd assembly for the first time, with voters deserting Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour Party and main opposition Conservatives who between them have governed the UK from London’s Westminster for a century.
The populist Reform UK party of Brexit veteran campaigner Nigel Farage – who rose to prominence on a platform of English nationalism – also performed strongly across England, Scotland and Wales, with voters attracted to its rejection of what it calls “establishment politics”.
With the electorate angry over a stagnant economy, a prolonged cost-of-living crisis and a widespread perception that Britain’s best days are behind it, anti-status quo voices are cutting through.
“There is a real risk that we end up sleepwalking into the end of the United Kingdom,” said George Foulkes, a former minister for Scotland under Labour’s former Prime Minister Tony Blair. “Once these things get momentum, they are hard to stop.”
He said the Westminster government should offer a new constitutional settlement – with a new chamber of parliament made up of the four nations, or risk one leaving in the next decade.
NATIONALISTS ADVANCE BUT LACK SWIFT PATH TO INDEPENDENCE
For now the nationalist parties lack a short-term roadmap to leaving.
Scottish leader John Swinney was expected to fall short of winning a majority of the 65 seats in the Scottish parliament that, he said, would have provided a mandate for a second referendum.
British prime ministers have refused requests from the Scottish government for a new independence referendum in recent years, insisting that the one in 2014 when voters rejected it by 55% to 45% stands for a generation.
In Wales, where Labour has been the biggest party for a century, Plaid was expected to form a minority government in the 96-seat Senedd to take control for the first time since the parliament was set up in 1999 to give locals more say over their own affairs.
Officials in the pro-independence party said they would not push for a referendum in the first term as it would distract from tackling the nation’s many problems. Delyth Jewell, deputy leader of Plaid, told Reuters that independence would be considered if the party won a second term.
In Northern Ireland, the terms of the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement oblige the British government to call a referendum if it appears likely that a majority would back a united Ireland. But polls show any vote would currently be defeated.
FARAGE’S RISE COULD FUEL SUPPORT FOR INDEPENDENCE
While polls show support for independence stands at about 50% in Scotland, about 40% in Northern Ireland, and about 25% in Wales, they also indicate voters were backing these left-wing parties partly for other reasons.
Independence was 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, independence was the 14th most important issue.
But SNP and Plaid politicians think the prospect of Farage, long associated with English nationalism, winning a general election due by 2029 could focus minds further on independence.
Plaid’s Jewell said Farage and his anti-immigration Reform “unifies so many people in being against his nasty vision for the future of the UK”.
A more immediate risk for the British government is the prospect of the pro-independence parties forming a ‘Celtic alliance’ to force Westminster to grant further powers on spending, taxation and welfare to the devolved authorities.
Swinney recently sent a message of fraternal greeting to Sinn Fein’s latest conference, while Rhun ap Iorwerth, Plaid’s leader, vowed that the British government would be compelled “to sit up and listen” to the parties determined to “change the history of our nation and indeed of these islands”.
Yet, any ‘Celtic alliance’ might not form the easiest of bedfellows.
“You may find that potentially they could be in conflict,” Andrew Blick, professor of politics at King’s College London, said. “We’re going to get the chance to see how it works.”
(Editing by Kate Holton, Michael Holden, Peter Graff)
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