A Letter from Ireland
A Chara,
Last week, in Britain, voters went to the polls, and the headlines have been dominated by questions about the future of British Prime Minister Keir Starmer after a disastrous set of results for his Labour Party.
These were elections to local councils and to the devolved parliaments in Scotland and Wales.
The parliaments in Scotland and Wales, like the Assembly in the North of Ireland, are not sovereign and only exercise powers within their jurisdictions that have been agreed by the Parliament at Westminster in London, which also holds the purse strings.
In these elections, the British Labour Party lost a substantial number of council seats and, for the first time, lost control of the Senedd (Welsh Parliament) to the pro-independence party Plaid Cymru. The Scottish National Party consolidated its position as the largest party in its Parliament.
Currently in the North of Ireland, Sinn Féin is the largest party, and the Government is led by its Vice President, Michelle O’Neill.
The political map of Britain has changed, and the future of the “United Kingdom” is in doubt, as the governments in Northern Ireland, Wales, and Scotland are now firmly rooted in the concept of self-determination and independence.
Neither Scotland nor Wales has a legal right to self-determination and are held in a “union” with no way out unless agreed by the predominantly English Parliament in London.
The North of Ireland is different: under the Good Friday Agreement, we have both the right to self-determination and the mechanism, i.e., Unity Referendums. At any time, unity referendums can be triggered, and in a second caveat, they must be triggered when constitutional change is likely. On occasion, commentators have misread the provisions that a unity referendum can be called only when the governments believe change is likely.
That is not the case, and in 2002, David Trimble, who negotiated the Agreement as leader of the Ulster Unionist party, called for a referendum to “consolidate the unionist vote.”
It is important to clarify this position because the big election winners across England were Reform, the party of Nigel Farage, who led the Brexit campaign. Despite winning a significant number of seats in Scotland and Wales, Reform is at its heart an English Nationalist party.
They have previously aligned with the extremes of Unionism in the North of Ireland and have little understanding of, and even less respect for, the Good Friday Agreement.
It is entirely plausible that a future Farage government could spring a hasty unity referendum to try to consolidate unionist support and bin the Agreement’s provisions.
A Reform Government is a real risk factor and yet the Irish Government refuses to plan or prepare for such a scenario.
In 1962, Dean Acheson, the US Secretary of State, said that, ‘Great Britain had lost an Empire but not yet found a role.’ Today, we see that played out; Britain is no longer a global military, economic, or political player. Its empire is gone, its internal union is in tatters, and its politics are in freefall. There have been six British Prime Ministers since the 2016 Brexit referendum.
Ireland cannot be spectators. Our national interest is served by planning, preparing, and advocating for unity. No part of our nation should be left to the chaos of Britain.
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The Year that Was:
2026:
