a programme to promote culture, sport and business. Michelle O’Neill, the deputy first
minister from Sinn Fein, a nationalist party that wants Ireland reunified, says there is
“nothing to celebrate”. For the unionist side, celebrations may also be in short supply.
On January 1st the United Kingdom’s Brexit divorce of October 2019 will come into
effect. Despite Boris Johnson’s promise to maintain unfettered trade, Northern Ireland
will continue to follow EU food and product regulations, and customs checks will be
carried out as goods cross the Irish Sea. (British and EU teams spent 2020 haggling over
whose officials will do the checking, what border posts will be needed and how taxes
would be levied.) Over time, as Britain diverges from the rest of Europe, the rules
governing the province’s economy will look less like London’s and more like Dublin’s.
Unionists fear that economic separation from the rest of Britain will, in time, lead to
political separation, too.
The risk to the union will be less acute, but much noisier, in Scotland. In May 2021,
elections to the Scottish Parliament will take place. The coronavirus pandemic enhanced
the Scottish government’s image as a state-in-waiting. Brexit has fuelled the idea that
Scotland and England are on divergent paths.
Barring a major slip in the polls, the Scottish National Party will increase its number of
seats in the parliament, which Nicola Sturgeon, the Scottish first minister, will say is a
mandate to hold a new referendum on independence from the United Kingdom. Boris
Johnson will refuse to permit it. He will point to his own mandate, having promised to
oppose such a vote in the general election of 2019; and besides, he has little to gain and
everything to lose from a vote that would break up the country. Ms Sturgeon will ignore
calls from her supporters to hold a referendum without approval from London, saying it
must be legally watertight to secure independence. A long and ugly stalemate will ensue.
The ground will shift in the Welsh Parliament elections in May, too. The Labour Party,
which was responsible for devolution, has been hegemonic in Wales for decades. It will
lose seats to the Conservatives, who want a closer relationship with London, and Plaid
Cymru, which favours independence. Radical ideas will also show their face: support for
independence will remain far lower than in Scotland, but it may inch up. So, too, may
support for the idea circulating among the fringe right of scrapping the devolved
parliament altogether.
Members of Mr Johnson’s circle think the strategy of the past 20 years—staving off
separatism with ever-growing powers for the devolved administrations—has failed. He
will seek to reassert the role of Whitehall in governing them. Whereas EU funds for
roads and bridges were handed to the devolved administrations to spend, Mr Johnson’s
government will take command of the cash, and advertise it noisily.
He will seek to dispel the idea that he is a guest when visiting Scotland. Brexit will also
mean that London will set the rules, once made in Brussels, that apply in Scotland and
Wales on pesticides, competition and much else. That will provoke accusations of a
power-grab by an over-mighty centre. The prime minister’s team are veterans from the
referendum of 2016 to take Britain out of the EU. The coming year will test whether Mr
Johnson is as good at containing insurgencies against unpopular unions as he is at
leading them.