If you were the leader of a democracy, you would hope that the people you govern would, at the very least, want the state itself to exist. It shouldn’t be too much to ask. And yet, if the polls are to be believed, the United Kingdom is in a very interesting position. By the end of May, it is likely that the largest party in three of the four constituent countries of the UK will want the larger polity in which they operate to break apart.
The SNP is currently the overwhelming favourite to have the most seats in the Scottish parliament in the upcoming elections. In Wales, there was polling last week suggesting that the Welsh nationalist party Plaid Cymru was on course to be the largest party inside the Welsh Senedd, just four seats short of a majority. Even more astonishing is that the Welsh Green party was also predicted to get 11 of the 96 seats. This would mean that there would be a majority of parties inside the Welsh parliament whose official policy was for Welsh independence. In Northern Ireland, the party with the most seats at present is Sinn Féin.
Now, if you were an introspective member of the UK government you might think, “Hmmm, clearly something isn’t working here. If Wales, which has long been apathetic to independence, is flirting with the idea, perhaps we need to have a rethink?” But of all the things you can call the Starmer administration, “introspective” is not one of them. I know from conversations with Labour people that they see the support for the pro-independence Plaid and Greens in Wales as a “kicking of the establishment” rather than an endorsement of breaking up the UK. They point to polling regarding Welsh independence that has constantly hovered around the 30% mark in recent years.
They are partly correct in this assessment. Many people who are planning to vote Plaid Cymru in the elections in May are not advocates for an independent Wales. You can see this by the fact that Plaid’s leader, Rhun ap Iorwerth, is deliberately putting talk about Welsh independence on the back burner as he tries to win over traditional Labour voters. Instead, he simply talks of a “higher ambition” of Wales. He told me last week: “I don’t think we’re quite in a place where we would win a referendum on independence.” But when you think about it, doesn’t this underscore more than anything that the UK, as currently constituted, isn’t working? Voters are willing to risk the UK itself, such is their level of frustration with the status quo.
If you consider yourself a unionist and want the UK to continue, you should be very concerned that we are getting to a point where three-quarters of the countries within it have large numbers of voters that don’t want the UK to exist, or at least are willing to tolerate that outcome.
So what can the UK government do about it? Well, ultimately you need the UK to work for all of its component parts, and have the structures of governance reflect the reality that it is a union of four nations. This has to start with recalibrating our preconceptions about how a state should look. The UK is highly centralised. This doesn’t work for Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland, but it also doesn’t work for many parts of England.
At present, we have a ridiculous situation where the House of Commons doubles as both the parliament of the UK, and the parliament of England. The prime minister of England also doubles up as the prime minister of the whole of the UK. This is not ideal. The governor of California can’t also be the president of the US. There are clearly conflicting priorities.
When it comes to funding, the current structures look as if they were drawn up on the back of the fag packet by a fresher at uni. We have a funding system for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland that is entirely based on the spending priorities of the UK government in England. The Welsh government has less borrowing powers than a local council, and it often publishes its final budget nine months into the financial year, because the Treasury has decided to change funding in England. This doesn’t work. And it can’t work.
While the system is failing Wales, it is perhaps even worse for certain regions of England. At least Wales gets funding automatically allocated, whereas many parts of England have to fight for individual funding pots.
At the start of 2024, the independent commission on the constitutional future of Wales published its report, setting out 10 recommendations designed to strengthen Welsh democracy and protect devolution. It was led by Prof Laura McAllister from Cardiff University and the former archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. It called for better safeguards for devolution (at the moment Westminster can technically scrap Welsh democracy without any input from the people of Cymru); reducing the constraints on the Welsh government budget management; and the devolution of policing and justice – powers Scotland currently has, but Wales doesn’t.
The best way to secure the future of the UK is to make it work for the people of the UK. To do this would involve a bold rethink of how we make it a state fit for the present day rather than the arcane hodgepodge of inertia and tradition that it currently is. Does the UK government have the energy to do this? Probably not. Does it have the intellectual chops to pull it off? I doubt it.
It will probably argue that people don’t care about constitutional structures and instead want it to focus on “bread and butter issues”. But how the UK is constituted directly shapes how you can fix these bread and butter problems. Imagine if your house was on fire and you were trying to put it out with a Super Soaker. You would instantly realise that your tools aren’t up to the task and get a hose. Well, this is the situation we have in the UK right now. The house is on fire, but the UK government insists on using just a water pistol, and then it wonders why people want to move out of the house.
Will Hayward is a Guardian columnist. He publishes a regular newsletter on Welsh politics
