A disunited kingdom at the polls
This election, it’s said, is essentially about Brexit. But if that is true for England, it is even more so for the other home nations
How does Brexit play in Scotland?
It’s an overriding issue that has given new impetus to the SNP’S push for independence. Scotland, of course, voted strongly (by 62% to 38%) to remain in the EU; and the main announcement in the SNP’S election manifesto, launched last week, was its call for another referendum on independence, “Indyref2”, to be held at “the end of the Brexit process”, whenever that might be. (This is a slight softening of Nicola Sturgeon’s earlier demand for a vote in 2018 or 2019.) The SNP won last year’s Holyrood election with a manifesto demanding Indyref2; it also won a recent vote on the subject in the Scottish Parliament. So a big win in this election will seal what Sturgeon calls the referendum “triple lock” – making it that much harder for Westminster to deny the legitimacy of holding another one.
What does the SNP want to do about Brexit?
It would like an independent Scotland to reapply to join the EU. But as long as Scotland stays part of the UK, SNP policy is that, post-brexit, it should remain inside the EU single market and the customs union (while the Tory manifesto promises to take Britain out of both). It’s unclear if that would be possible, but the SNP argues there are precedents for such a mix-and-match approach: the Channel Islands, for instance, are outside the EU but largely inside the single market. But one thing both the Tories and the SNP do agree on is that as the UK leaves the EU, some powers repatriated from Brussels should go to Edinburgh.
How do Scottish voters feel about the SNP’S stance?
Since the Brexit vote, support for both independence and another referendum on the subject has declined sharply. Even so, the SNP looks set to secure a big majority once again (it has consistently polled above 40%), though it seems unlikely to match its stellar 2015 result, when it won 56 out of 59 seats. All the opposition parties, however, are against another independence referendum. And it is the Tories, under Ruth Davidson, who are seen as being best placed to oppose one. Scottish politics has, in fact, been reshaped by the two referendums. The 2014 one on independence precipitated the collapse of Scottish Labour, which found itself outflanked on the Left by the SNP, and outshone by a more vital grass-roots operation. Since then, the Tories seem to have overtaken Labour as Scotland’s second party. Yet everything could change if the final Brexit deal is perceived as a poor one.
What about Northern Ireland?
Northern Ireland also voted for Remain (by 56% to 44%). And, as in Scotland, the vote brought constitutional issues to the fore. The big issue here is the border with the Republic. Currently near-invisible, it could become a hard border once again if it is the UK’S only land frontier with the EU – opening old wounds from the Troubles. The Tories have promised a “frictionless” border, but how this would be achieved remains unclear. The EU has called for “flexible and imaginative solutions”, and has even guaranteed that Northern Ireland could rejoin the EU were it to become part of a united Ireland. Such a guarantee is unprecedented, says the Irish columnist Fintan O’toole: the EU “has offered an incentive to part of an existing European state to join another state”.
And is Irish unity likely?
In principle, Sinn Féin wants a referendum on Irish unity, though it is unlikely to pursue this in the short term: it has been ruled out by British and Irish governments, and recent polls suggest that little more than 20% of Northern Irish voters would like to join the Republic. Even in the South, only 60% of voters support the idea of unification.
So how will Brexit affect the vote?
Northern Ireland’s 18 Westminster seats are at present split on nationalist/unionist lines: the nationalists have seven (Sinn Féin four; the SDLP three); the unionists have 11 (the DUP eight; the UUP two; and one independent). The SDLP and the Greens, like Sinn Féin, are also “anti-brexit”, while the non-sectarian Alliance seeks “the softest Brexit possible”. But unionists are divided: the DUP has long been Eurosceptic, and campaigned strongly for Brexit. The more moderate UUP went the other way, deciding that leaving the EU posed an “existential threat” to the UK. In practice, views on Brexit probably won’t affect the result, though Sinn Féin, currently riding high, may take the ultra-marginal seat of Fermanagh and South Tyrone from the UUP. However, the issue is sure to add to the bad feeling between Sinn Féin and the DUP, the two largest parties in the Stormont Assembly. The devolved power-sharing government between them has been suspended since January. Unless a compromise can be reached by 29 June, direct rule from London could be imposed.
And how has Brexit affected the situation in Wales?
Unlike Northern Ireland and Scotland, Wales voted for Leave (by 52.5% to 47.5%). And though not as marked as in Scotland, this too represented something of a turning point. The Brexit vote showed a deep resentment in Labour heartlands, against both immigration and the current Welsh political elite. It underlined the fact that Labour’s historical grip on Wales, particularly strong in the heavily industrialised and unionised South Wales Valleys, has gradually fallen as heavy industry has crumbled.
UKIP: the voice of English nationalism?
Brexit, many have observed, has turned UKIP into a single-issue party without an issue. Certainly it seemed to implode after the referendum. Nigel Farage quit; his successor, Diane James, resigned after 18 days; the favourite to succeed her, Steven Woolfe, was hospitalised after an “altercation” with a colleague. In March this year, its only MP, Douglas Carswell, resigned from the party, describing it as a case of “job done”. Short of both money and enthusiasm, UKIP is standing in only 378 seats at this election, compared with 624 seats in 2015. The party’s new leader, Paul Nuttall, thinks its future lies in championing “Englishness”, which he calls “the one national identity in our island that is not allowed to speak its name” – a departure from UKIP’S hitherto strong endorsement of unionism. His manifesto insists on English votes for English laws; a “one in, one out” immigration system; and a ban on wearing the burka in public. The response hasn’t been encouraging. UKIP won 12.6% of the vote at the last election: polls now suggest it will win less than 5% this time around.
Who is likely to win there?
In April, polls suggested that by appealing to disaffected Labour voters, the Conservatives might win in Wales for the first time since the 1850s; they gave the Tories around 40% to Labour’s 30%. But Labour still has a strong party machine in Wales, and in recent weeks Labour’s resurgence has been particularly pronounced. The most recent polls suggest the current distribution of seats – 25 for Labour, 11 for the Tories, three for Plaid Cymru and one for the Liberal Democrats – would remain largely unchanged, with Labour perhaps even gaining a seat. As Professor Roger Scully of Cardiff University puts it, Labour seems “to be winning the campaign, if not the election as a whole”.