Coming two days after Donald Trump decided to throw his considerable weight behind a United Ireland, the summit gives nationalists of various stripes reason to feel that history is finally beginning to move in their direction.
Visiting Dublin at the weekend, Trump declared that he would “love” to see Ireland united, predicted that it would happen eventually, and wondered aloud: “How can it be bad?”
Trump Delights the Irish
This was classic Trump foreign policy: taking an immensely complicated constitutional question and assessing it with the level of thought, consideration and detail normally devoted to deciding whether to order the steak or the burger.
Still, Sinn Féin was delighted. And the usually Trump-skeptical Irish establishment in Dublin, which generally treats the president’s words as almost too foul to report, characterized his latest bout of logorrhea as something of a historic intervention.
Between Trump in Dublin and Swinney, O’Neill and ap Iorwerth in Cardiff, it is possible to squint slightly and imagine that the United Kingdom is entering its final chapter.
There is only one significant problem with this narrative.
The Voters Are Inconvenient
Take Scotland first, because Scotland is unquestionably the most serious case for British unionists.
Scotland has already been asked whether it wishes to leave the United Kingdom. In September 2014, after years of campaigning and one of the most intense democratic exercises in modern British history, the answer was no. More than two million Scots voted to remain in the UK against 1.6 million who voted for independence: 55.3% to 44.7%, on an extraordinary turnout of almost 85%.
That, nationalists argue, is not the end of the matter. The precedent having been set, there will certainly be relentless campaigning for another referendum – but there has never been much evidence, to date, that the result would be any different were such a vote to be held tomorrow.
The fact is that Scotland had its great constitutional moment and, when presented with the ballot paper, chose Britain. Twelve years later, after Brexit, Boris Johnson, Keir Starmer, assorted Conservative catastrophes and every other supposed recruiting sergeant for Scottish independence, the country remains – at best – divided on the independence question, with an enduring, if narrow, advantage for the unionists.
Northern Ireland: Unity Always Just Five Years Away
Northern Ireland presents an even larger difficulty for those who wish to see an end to the Union.
Irish reunification has undoubtedly gained support over the past 30 years, mainly due to demographic change reducing the once-majority British Protestant population to a plurality, with immigration and decades of peace contributing to a large bloc of voters without discernible tribal allegiance.
But the actual numbers on Irish unity remain stubborn.
The latest Northern Ireland Life and Times survey asks perhaps the most straightforward possible question: if there were a referendum tomorrow, should Northern Ireland unify with the Republic?
Thirty-six per cent say yes. Forty-five per cent say no. That is a significant gap – and one likely to expand in a referendum, with undecided voters traditionally breaking for the status quo in such votes.
Indeed, one of the peculiar features of the Irish unity debate is the extent to which the certainty of its advocates is inversely correlated with the enthusiasm of the voters for the idea. For years now, nationalists have been declaring that unity with the Republic would arrive in five years or so. It appears always inevitable, always just over the horizon, much like the end of the rainbow.
For most of the last decade, Irish political commentary has existed in a state of permanent anticipation of the famous “border poll”. In the Republic of Ireland, political parties have been “preparing for unity” for nearly 50 years, without ever getting any closer to the objective. In recent years, various events have driven that excitement into overdrive: Brexit was going to deliver a referendum. Sinn Féin becoming the largest party at Stormont was going to do it. Demographic change was going to make a vote inevitable. And so on.
Yet whenever Northern Irish voters are actually asked the basic constitutional question, the Union continues to win in the most reputable polls.
The Welsh Anomaly
Then there is Wales.
Wales is the most entertaining member of this new revolutionary troika because, unlike Scotland or Northern Ireland, it has never really possessed a mass independence movement at all.
Welsh nationalism certainly exists. Plaid Cymru has existed for a century. Plaid’s victory this year is historically significant.
But that victory was much more a repudiation of the UK Labour Party – historically dominant in Wales – than it was any kind of embrace of independence.
Indeed, immediately before May’s Senedd election, YouGov found that just 22% of Welsh voters would support independence in a referendum. Fifty-five per cent would vote against it.
An earlier YouGov poll this year found almost exactly the same thing: 26% for independence and 54% against.
And so the sight of the three Celtic first ministers gathering beneath the banners of national self-determination will make for striking television, but it should not be overinterpreted.
The United Kingdom is not about to disappear, despite all the posturing.
A Union Safe for Now, but at Risk
But it would be foolish nevertheless for its defenders to become complacent. The scenario that the nationalists desire is not impossible to conceive of.
Imagine a serious British recession with widespread unemployment and poverty – not unimaginable for a country with an enormous debt problem and stagnant growth. In those circumstances, nationalists will be well placed to argue that their various nations would do better as independent countries or, in the case of Northern Ireland, as part of another country.
And the other problem is that the decks have been stacked against the Union by the British government’s foolish decision to permit referenda on the question at all. The Scots have already voted on this matter and rejected independence – but now some of them demand the right to vote again, and again. While referenda are a live possibility, the problem for unionists is that they must win every time, whereas their enemies only have to win once. Were Scotland, for example, to become independent, there would not likely be regular votes about rejoining the UK.
So this week’s summit is, for now, best understood as naked political posturing by three nationalist leaders for the benefit of their own voters, rather than as a serious threat to the Union. But equally, there is no reason at all for complacency among those who support the Union. The forces eager to destroy the United Kingdom are real, and they are waiting for their chance to strike.
