The United Kingdom Is Breaking up Right Under Labour’s Nose

John Taylor is among the most prominent and longstanding Northern Irish unionists. First elected to Northern Ireland’s devolved parliament in 1965, he was minister of state for home affairs in the early years of the Troubles. During that time, Taylor was strongly associated with the policy of interning Catholics suspected of terrorism without trial. In 1972, the IRA unsuccessfully attempted to assassinate him. Taylor went on to sit in the European parliament, the House of Commons, and the Northern Irish Assembly, eventually serving as deputy leader of the Ulster Unionist party when the Good Friday agreement was signed. Now aged 88, he sits in the Lords as Baron Kilclooney – for many, the last living link to Northern Ireland’s pre-Troubles, Protestant-dominated regime.

So it’s pretty significant that, in February, Taylor used an interview with the Irish News to tell his fellow unionists that it was time to prepare for a united Ireland.

“The people in Great Britain are no longer interested in Northern Ireland,” Taylor said, citing the “growth of a new sense of specifically English nationalism”, which he said was incompatible with Irish unionism.

As a result, Taylor predicted that soon, “the majority are going to be in favour of a united Ireland”.

How soon is another question. In the 2024 Northern Ireland general election survey, almost half of respondents said they wished to remain in the UK; only 33.7% favoured unity – a dramatic increase from a decade earlier, but clearly not a majority, yet. Nevertheless, within Northern Ireland, Taylor’s comments appeared to catch a vibe. As Irish News columnist Denis Bradley wrote, they have “transformed the Irish unity debate”.

In Westminster, though, the response to this drama across the Irish Sea has been tumbleweed. As if to confirm Taylor’s remarks about England’s uninterest in Northern Ireland, the London papers barely mentioned his comments about the likely break-up of the United Kingdom. Britain is sleepwalking towards a constitutional crisis.

It’s not just Northern Ireland.

Starmer versus Swinney.

On 7 May, Scotland will hold a general election for our devolved parliament in Holyrood, Edinburgh. Pollsters predict a 99.7% chance of a pro-independence majority – that is, a majority held by the Scottish National party and Scottish Greens, both of which support Scottish independence. This would almost certainly give the newly elected Scottish government a mandate for another independence referendum (the last one, in 2014, lost 55% to 45%).

Of the 10 opinion polls on Scottish independence so far this year, “yes” has been ahead in seven.

After months of such polling, Westminster sort of noticed this week, when Kemi Badenoch warned that an SNP majority would lead to another referendum, since Keir Starmer would be too “weak” to stand up to an emboldened Scottish first minister, John Swinney.

What’s certainly true is that, if there is a pro-independence majority at Holyrood, Starmer will be the first Labour prime minister to be confronted with an SNP first minister with a refreshed mandate for an independence referendum. While it was relatively easy for Tories to turn down demands for such a vote, because their base in Scotland is ultra-unionist, many Scots who voted Labour in 2024 are also independence supporters, or at least support the right to self-determination, and maintaining that uneasy coalition will be tricky if the party outright denies a mandate seen as legitimate.

To make things harder, a referendum held towards the end of the current term at Holyrood would be 15 years from the last one, long enough to meet the “once in a generation” pledge made by Alex Salmond (who was SNP first minister 2007-2014) at the time of the last referendum, a pledge often cited by unionists now. As Swinney pointed out last year, by 2030, there will be 1 million young Scots eligible to vote, who weren’t in 2014 – more than a fifth of the electorate. “That seems like a generation to me,” he said.

Perhaps Starmer will refuse to allow such a referendum. Perhaps he will be replaced by another Labour leader after his party is devastated in the May elections, leaving someone else to work out how to respond.

Either way, neither choice will be politically easy for them. Agreeing to a referendum could well mean they end up presiding over the break-up of the UK. If they block one, it will increasingly feel to many – particularly younger Scots, who overwhelmingly support independence – like Scotland is no longer in the union by choice. The media – like Kemi Badenoch – will frame a rejection as a macho showdown between party leaders. But the SNP and Greens between them will get more than a million votes, and those people can’t just be disappeared forever. Independence may not be their current top priority, but supporting it is increasingly part of the common sense in large chunks of Scottish society.

Plaid takes its place.

In Wales, Plaid Cymru is ahead in most recent polls, while the Welsh Greens – who are also pro-independence – look likely to win their first seats. Some polls suggest the two parties may be able to form an administration together on their own. Support for Welsh independence certainly isn’t a majority position. But over the last decade, it’s gone from being a marginal opinion to one held by around a third of the electorate.

It’s now consistently true that majorities of young people in each of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland want to leave the UK, and the coming elections in Scotland and Wales will almost certainly bear that out.

Even in England, support for the union is waning. One fascinating detail of the Gorton and Denton by-election is what the Greens weren’t attacked for. While their position on drugs was smeared across endless Labour and Reform leaflets, the fact that the party supports both Scottish and Welsh independence went unmentioned. As John Taylor said, English voters are very much unconcerned about the potential break-up of the UK, some for progressive reasons, others, less so.

In practice, a party which is now regularly polling in second place supports breaking up the state it seeks to govern. Zack Polanski told me last year about his enthusiasm for independence.

Yet most MPs and journalists seem to be entirely unaware that the very fabric of the UK is tearing right under their noses.

A functional state system would have anticipated this long ago. But Westminster is far from functional. For the past few months, it has been obsessed with its own gossip. You’re less likely to notice a constitutional iceberg if you’re squabbling on deck. Similarly, many Scottish and Welsh Labour MPs are unquestioningly loyal to their party; warning that things are going badly is a bad way to get a ministerial car, while Labour’s generalised inaction, borne of the paralysis produced by its catastrophic unpopularity, can’t have helped.

In just six weeks, Labour may well have lost a major election in Wales for the first time in a century. It will likely have been humiliated in Scotland. As a factional war unfolds over whether to replace Keir Starmer, and with whom, an emboldened Scottish first minister will be spotting an opportunity. It’s likely that, this summer, Swinney will assert his renewed mandate to hold an independence referendum and, in doing so, will quite possibly have the support of a new Plaid Cymru first minister in Wales; a Sinn Féin first minister in Northern Ireland; and Zack Polanski, the leader of the party which will have just taken hundreds of former Labour council seats across England.

Taylor’s warning to Northern Irish unionists should have been a wake-up call to Westminster – but they have their fingers firmly in their ears.