Barring an unprecedented upset, in a few days each of the four nations that make up the UK would be ruled by a different political party. Polls suggest three of the four would be separatists dedicated to the breakup of the union of England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales that has existed since Ireland seceded in 1922.
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 Nationalist Party (SNP) 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 might see a mandate to begin the process of departure, but it is not at all clear that this is what voters want. On recent visits to big cities in each of the four UK nations, I encountered people who wanted to administer a kicking to the ruling establishment, not to the union itself. The hard lesson of leaving the EU has left a mark.
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 had taken 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 is re-elected. This would almost certainly be blocked by the UK government. About 55 percent 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 has not shifted much in the past few 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 is braced for a mauling in its traditional heartlands, including Scotland and Wales.
The reasons are varied. Years of Labour rule in Wales have seen per capita spending about 15 percent higher than in England, with little benefit. Public services are worse there, as is school attainment. The number of people on welfare is much higher. Meanwhile, the SNP has managed to deflect blame for its own failings onto the Labour government in Westminster. While British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is unpopular across the country, he is loathed in Scotland. His party’s candidates suffer by association.
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 might be Plaid rather than Labour. That is not a vote for independence, though.
That is equally true in Scotland, where Reform’s rise seems to be splitting the anti-independence vote between Farage’s party, Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. The SNP’s profiting from this should not mask its unpopularity or suggest that support for the union has waned.
There is another, troubling, aspect to Reform’s surge. If it keeps performing well nationally, and if it seems likely that Farage could become the prime minister, backing for nationalist parties would rise even more sharply. That would not be because independence per se becomes more popular, but the generally more liberal-minded Celts would 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.
Opponents of devolution, which came about in the late 1990s at the instigation of Tony Blair’s Labour government, say money has been thrown at the smaller nations with little difference in their inhabitants’ lives. Some of that critique is fair. Funneling cash from England to its neighbors cannot always — or even usually — be the answer.
However, 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 about being broken 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.
Ahead of Thursday’s local and regional votes — which would take in 30 million voters in England, Scotland and Wales (though not Northern Ireland this time) — I spent some time in Cardiff, Edinburgh, Belfast and London, as well as Glasgow, Derry and the Welsh steel town of Port Talbot.
I found a country in which the divisions seemed less between the nations than within them. The inequalities were stark. While parts of Belfast and Glasgow have prospered, hardship persisted beyond middle-class and student areas. Port Talbot is a symbol of the struggle to protect industrial jobs. The Welsh capital, Cardiff, with its Russell Group university, is a world apart.
However, as a riposte to the US’ online trolls, Britain did not feel broken. My trains, buses and planes were on time. Local authorities and health facilities were providing services, even under financial strain. Banks and businesses, schools and sports were functioning. Shopping malls teemed with people.
Of course, how people experience all this differs wildly. Instead of prized manufacturing jobs, many people make do with low-pay and low-esteem service jobs. Young people are lucky to get employment at all. And after voting for change with Starmer’s Labour, many British people are angry that they have not seen much of it. As a result, they are going to take out their frustrations on the old establishment parties.
The beneficiaries would be Reform, the Greens (by far the most posters I saw on my travels were for Zack Polanski’s avowedly socialist party, Green these days only in name and plagued by allegations of anti-semitism) — and, in Scotland and Wales, the nationalists.
Farage is unlike his fellow nationalists, who lean left while he leans far right. Yet his success in England, allied with that of the SNP, Plaid and Sinn Fein would mark a dangerous moment for the UK. It is a sad consideration. Nationalism is defined by a reductive, narrow mindset, and if the UK fractured into ever smaller entities, it would reduce the power and importance of each.
The UK’s balkanization would not be good for any of its constituent parts.
The lesson of Brexit is that splintering makes no sense economically. In an era of global uncertainty, in which overmighty men in powerful countries make terrible decisions, making ourselves even smaller and weaker is foolhardy.
Rosa Prince is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering UK politics and policy. She was formerly an editor and writer at Politico and the Daily Telegraph, and is the author of Comrade Corbyn and Theresa May: The Enigmatic Prime Minister. This column reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
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