UK OK?
Many people are looking forward to the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee next year — with an extra Bank Holiday and four-day weekend — and the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham too. These will be rare moments of national shared experience, and we’ll likely see a mixture of national iconography; Union Jacks alongside the individual flags of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland who compete as individual countries in the Commonwealth Games (despite the latter being an evolutionary outgrowth of the British Empire).
This split-personality must look odd to outsiders. How long will it last? According to Ipsos MORI, 48% of those living across the U.K. think the Union will persist in its current form for another five years with the remainder unsure (17%) or pessimistic (34%). But only a quarter, 24%, think it will last for ten years.
Equally striking is the similarity in expectations across the UK. For example, Scots are surer that the Union won’t be around in five years but the main distinguishing feature of sentiment there is relatively higher certainty. People elsewhere are more likely to say they don’t know.
The future of the Union is not just in Scottish hands. Nationalism in Wales is stirring, albeit from a low base, and Professor John Denham has written persuasively about the largely “invisible” influence of England and Englishness. A Northern Ireland border poll seems to be inching closer now the Irish Sea border is creating an all-island economy.
On first sight, Brexit and Covid appeared to be pushing Scots towards independence, but Matt Goodwin’s analysis of recent polling has shown that “Yes” has only led in only two of 20 polls. However, as colleague Emily Gray put it last week “neither the Yes or No camps should be confident of victory at this point” and any continuation of the current difficulties facing the Conservative Government at Westminster could have an impact.
Public attitudes towards constitutional issues such as the Union tend to be slow-to-change, shaped by underlying values. Demographic factors are important too — a majority of 18–24 year-olds back independence for Scotland but an even larger group of pensioners oppose it, while a poll in Wales in 2020 found 43% of 18-to-24-year-olds supported independence. Pro-Union Labour is rock-solid in Wales, but things can change as different generations become more influential voters.
Changes in patterns of study, particularly in Scotland and Northern Ireland, are one reason why young Britons are less likely to migrate within the UK’s internal borders. They are also less likely to meet people from the other U.K. countries, marry, and have children with them. Before Covid, trip-making to other parts of the Kingdom was falling, although not uniformly, although the recent ‘staycation’ trend may have changed that, at least for a while.
Ipsos MORI’s research for the Government’s Union Connectivity Review found considerable interest among the U.K. public in travelling to other parts of the UK and a shared view that enhancing transport connectivity will provide economic and social benefits. But the public’s focus for improvement remains more local and regional than anything, tending towards scepticism about le grand project be it bridge, tunnel, rail or something else.
What can the UK Government do? Should it provide some sort of cultural glue or focus instead on delivering something more tangible (or try to do both)? It’s tough to find solutions, evident perhaps in the short-lived nature of the ‘Union unit’ within №10.
Ron Davies, Secretary of State for Wales in 1997, described devolution as a “process not an event” before going on to use the metaphor of a journey without “a fixed end-point”. This description is also relevant to the genesis of the 300-year-old United Kingdom and its fragmentation, while also applying to any endeavours to build a defence mechanism to protect it.
