If the UK becomes a failed state after Brexit, what will happen to England?

As the reality of Brexit starts to hit home, with the disruption of trade between mainland Britain and Northern Ireland, trawlermen left with unsaleable fish, and that extra pound or so we’ll have to pay for a bottle of French or Spanish wine, so profound political and constitutional effects are also making themselves felt. The UK is looking, and behaving, less and less like a united kingdom.

It took Gordon Brown, a former prime minister and a fervent supporter of the Union, to tell it like it is. In the aftermath of Brexit and the pandemic, he told the BBC, the United Kingdom was in danger of becoming a “failed state”. There were problems of trust, structures and consultation. The way the UK was governed, he insisted, had to change.

In fact, the risks had been sensed within hours of the polls closing in the EU referendum in 2016. First came the surprise and shock at the victory for Leave: positive or negative, depending which way you had voted. You will probably remember the agony on David Cameron’s face when he announced his resignation outside Number 10, and the almost appalled expressions on the faces of the Leave leaders, as well as their almost immediate falling out.  

It was not just the Leave victory, however, that caused consternation, but the pattern of voting, which bore out the worst fears of some Westminster politicians. While England had returned a solid (53 - 47 per cent) vote in favour of leaving, Scotland and Northern Ireland had both produced bigger majorities for Remain. The result in Wales was closer to that of England, but the Remain vote increased, the further you were from the English border.

In effect, England was set to take the UK out of the European Union, against the clear wishes of two of the devolved nations. In England, two very different groups of voters – those in the wealthy shires and those in the industrial North – had produced a winning coalition for Leave. It was, commented some, a vote for English nationalism, and against the Celts.  

In the four-and-a-half years since, this divide and its implications have been manifesting themselves ever more clearly. Not only did it render the negotiations with Brussels even more complicated than they might have been – as seen in the controversy about the so-called Northern Ireland “backstop” which blighted Theresa May’s time as prime minister – but it now threatens a state order that used to be seen as one of the most stable anywhere. The UK must now contend with the possibility that both Northern Ireland and Scotland, if not Wales, could actually break away.

If you exclude Tony Blair’s devolution reforms of the 1990s, which left the UK intact – indeed, which were seen as a means to keep it intact by drawing the sting of revived Scottish nationalism – any territorial change would be the first such alteration since the partition of Ireland a century ago. This stability has been the envy of many Continental Europeans, whose history over the same time has been incomparably more chequered than ours, but that stability may be coming to an end. And while Gordon Brown is the most prominent UK politician to warn of the dangers, he is not alone.

The former First Minister of Wales, Carwyn Jones, who is now a Labour member of the Welsh Assembly, told a recent webinar that “the UK has never faced such an existential crisis”; “we are facing the possible collapse of the UK”. On the Conservative side, Theresa May’s former adviser, Nick Timothy, has warned that Boris Johnson could be the prime minister who “destroys the UK” and called for a constitutional convention. Vernon Bogdanor, the constitutional historian and emeritus professor at King’s College London, sees Brexit as precipitating a “constitutional moment”, which could result in the UK’s first written constitution, while also posing a threat to the UK.

In this high-level flurry about the constitution, however, there is one notable absentee. The place and interests of England are almost nowhere to be found. All the running has been made by the UK’s devolved nations.

With Northern Ireland, the UK-EU “deal” signed in December provided for a de facto customs border down the Irish Sea, which is why trade between the mainland and Northern Ireland is experiencing difficulties that may be more than “teething problems”. To this maritime trade border can be added the open land border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, along with demographic and voting trends in the North,  all of which make the prospect of a united Ireland a lot closer than it once was.

This is not what Arlene Foster, Northern Ireland’s current First Minister and the leader of its Democratic Unionist Party, wants to see. In a recent interview (with Sky News) she described a potential border poll as “absolutely reckless”, as “we all know how divisive it would be”. But there is provision for such a poll in the Good Friday Agreement, and a poll for the Sunday Times (published 24 Jan 2021) showed a slim majority favouring a referendum on Irish unity within five years. So the question would now seem to be less whether, more when.  

The position with Scotland is more complicated, as Scots rejected independence seven years ago in what was supposed to have been a once in a generation vote. The big majority for Remain in the EU referendum, however – 62 to 38 per cent – served to reignite calls for independence. The new argument was that Brexit was happening against the interests of Scotland and against the will of Scottish voters; independence could allow it to apply to rejoin the EU as a sovereign state.

Recent polls have shown small, but consistent, majorities for a new referendum. The latest – in the same Sunday Times poll – found 49 per cent of those asked favoured independence, with 44 per cent opposed and 7 per cent undecided. When the question was about support for holding another referendum within five years, the proportion of those in favour reached 50 per cent.

With the Scottish National Party expected to use Assembly elections this May to seek a mandate for a new referendum, the Westminster government could face an unenviable dilemma. To refuse a referendum – and UK government permission is required – could place Westminster and Edinburgh in a conflict as bitter as that between Catalonia and Madrid. Unless Johnson can come up with some ingenious solution, or the SNP somehow implodes, the options would appear to be a new referendum that could well lead to Scottish independence or a troubled and unstable relationship for years to come.

Separatism in Wales is quiescent by comparison with Scotland, though it has been increasing during the pandemic. Because health is a devolved responsibility – and Boris Johnson was unable to override this, even though he initially tried – the pandemic has had the effect of giving the devolved leaders a higher profile and, with it, a new credibility. They have taken advice from their own experts, steered their own policies that have differed from those of England, and held their own press conference to speak directly to their people.

Although the results – as judged by infection and mortality rates – are no better in the devolved nations than in England, this has not, it appears, detracted from the ratings of the first ministers – or bolstered pro-Union sentiment. The freedom to manage your own crisis seems so far to outweigh the possible advantages of being tied to a UK central government that has not done significantly better.

It is, of course, too early to assess the longer-term fall-out on the Union from either Brexit or the pandemic. Thus far, though, the two seem to have combined to produce almost the opposite effect from the one Brexit cheer-leaders had banked on. Far from uniting the UK and essentially re-launching it as “an independent coastal state” (Boris Johnson’s words) with a stronger national identity and a greater sense of common purpose, they have opened up divisions that could lead to the Union’s demise.

And the question that then has to be asked is where might all this ferment leave England? Except that it hasn’t been. The discussion has focused on possible departures. The English Question, so-called, has gone missing. Or, to put it another way: if the Leave vote at the referendum could be couched as a vote for England against the Celts, then the English have been woefully remiss in exploiting their victory – for better, and worse.

Where, for instance, is the St George’s flag? When Leave voters shouted themselves hoarse outside Parliament day after day, as Theresa May tried and failed to secure her Brexit “deal”, the flags they waved were mostly Union flags, while Remainers waved the blue EU flag, with its golden stars. It was the same at the Brexiteers’ celebrations when they descended on Parliament Square for the final countdown in the last hours of January last year.

Since then, the Union flag has been a staple not just for prime ministerial, but for ministerial, appearances. Whether from government or erstwhile campaigners, the message is that the Brexit brand is the UK brand; it is “Global Britain”, not “Little England”.

That the UK’s departure from the EU has not been accompanied by an orgy of English jingoism should be a cause for relief – though it is less clear why. A part of the reason could be the absence from the political scene of Nigel Farage, whose UK Independence Party was often seen, despite its name, as an English party; his objective attained, he is looking for other causes. The main reason, though, may well be a reluctance in Westminster even to broach the possibility of a UK break-up as well as a broader squeamishness about England and Englishness.

And this starts with the flag. Despite efforts in recent years to reclaim the cross of St George for the English mainstream, it remains identified to a degree with a xenophobic and thuggish strain of nationalism, as exemplified in groups such as the English Defence League. The Scottish Saltire and the Welsh dragon have escaped those connotations.

But qualms do not stop with the flag. The row last summer about the BBC’s decision not to have the words to Rule, Britannia sung at the Last Night of the Proms is a case in point. With Black Lives Matter marches at their height and a street mood of hostility to the legacy of Empire, Englishness seemed again to be the preserve of the EDL and its ilk. The Rule Britannia decision was then reversed.  

Where the Scots and the Welsh may be enthusiastic patriots, ambivalence is the correct mode for the English, who have learned to separate the English cultural canon – the language, literature, music and the rest – from national allegiance. There has also been a sense that Englishness could somehow be assumed; with England by far the largest and most populous part of the UK, being English was synonymous with being British. Over the years, Britishness has also come to seem more accommodating to diversity, with UK citizens of a different ethnic background preferring to describe themselves as British-Pakistani, British-Nigerian, etc, rather than hyphenated English, which somehow implies a culture clash.

The convenient separation between English cultural identity on the one hand and nationhood on the other, however, becomes harder to sustain when Irish unity, Scottish independence and rising Welsh nationalism are all around. If the UK is to change shape, even lose much of its Celtish fringe, where does that leave England? Surely someone should at least be thinking about the options.

A big difficulty at present is that England is not recognised institutionally as a nation within the UK. When Tony Blair’s government devolved power to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, England was left out. The sense seemed to be that the UK parliament was an English parliament in all but name; plus there was little popular demand for change.    

This left an anomaly, in that Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland MPs would continue to be elected and sit at Westminster, with the right to vote on legislation that in some cases would apply only to England. This conundrum, the so-called West Lothian question, was half-solved with an acceptance that only English MPs would vote on English laws. The truth is, though, that even now, nearly 25 years on, the UK’s version of devolution remains a mishmash that is politely termed “asymmetric”, with the different nations enjoying different powers.

England’s anomalous position within that mishmash has been further underlined by the pandemic, with city mayors – most notably Greater Manchester’s Andy Burnham – pleading for more authority vis a vis Westminster – and the UK Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, exercising power that does not extend beyond England. Boris Johnson’s early efforts to coordinate a UK-wide pandemic policy failed, and there is no mechanism – no central council, say – that would provide for coordinated decision-making.

It is hard to pin down quite why there is so little overt concern about the future of England just now, given the evident fragility of the Union. It could simply be that, with Brexit and Covid, everyone from government to grassroots has quite enough to worry about already. But the risk is that the UK could be overtaken by events if the thinking about England that is currently restricted to a few university departments does not move into the political mainstream.

As things stand, there is no obvious solution to the challenge that Brexit has posed to the Union. Devolution has been tried, and tweaked, and still found wanting. A full federation on the German model is effectively ruled out by England’s disproportionate size and wealth. Dividing England into regions with their own assemblies was mooted as a way of forming a more even federation, but the idea was roundly rejected when put to a vote in the North-East – and there is no sign opinions have changed. It looks very much as though Boris Johnson will try to muddle on with the current structures, while perhaps offering more powers to Scotland and to England’s mayors.  

Some, such as Vernon Bogdanor, warn that devolving more powers could only fuel Scotland’s appetite for full independence. But another, starker, warning comes from recent history. Strange though it may seem, the closest analogy for the UK in its present fractious state is the Soviet Union before its collapse. Russia’s dominance in size and power in the USSR was similar to England’s in the UK, and Russia was similarly unrepresented – having neither its own legislature nor its own Communist Party hierarchy. When Mikhail Gorbachev  tried to convert the USSR from a top-down to a bottom-up federation, the result was collapse. The republics with national ambitions seceded, and the centre could not hold.

Another element in the collapse, however, was a distinct lack of will in Russia to keep the Union alive, which might offer a further parallel with the UK. Could it be that the English simply see few mortal dangers in a break-up and don’t really care.

That possibility was starkly illustrated 18 months before Brexit became a done deal in a YouGov poll of Conservative Party members. It found a remarkable rejection of the Unionism that had once been a Conservative article of faith, with a majority of those polled saying that they would be prepared to sacrifice Northern Ireland and, with only slightly more reluctance, Scotland too, if this was the price of Brexit. Since then, that sentiment has only grown. It could then follow that, like the Russians in 1991, the Conservative majority in England could be looking at the hassle, the money and the attention needed to maintain the Union and simply decide to let it go.

In some ways, a break-up of the UK would be a simpler option for England than trying to keep a reluctant Union intact. Hadrian’s Wall and Offa’s Dyke could mark real borders again: the pandemic even offered a rehearsal as Wales and Scotland mounted patrols to discourage cross-border traffic. A cultural renaissance is conceivable, with Shakespeare reclaimed for England, English orchestras reviving English composers, and the Houses of Parliament reserved for England’s Parliament, which might also convene a few times a year in York. Ireland would be united and Scotland would be a small Nordic country back in the EU.

All this could be fantasy. When the time comes, it could turn out that Northern Ireland was keener on unity than the Republic. Or Scots could fall out of love with the SNP (with a little help, perhaps, from a dirty tricks department in Westminster). But the prospect that the UK may not be in its current form within the decade has to be faced, and the time to be thinking about where this leaves England is now.

History often seems to move at a snail’s pace. But sometimes, as with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the established order is transformed literally overnight. The UK may continue to muddle through as a devolved state, but it might not. And then preparations need to be in hand for the re-emergence of an English identity and of England as a nation state.