After fulfilling his dream of becoming prime minister a year and a half ago, Briton Boris Johnson invented an extra title for himself: union minister. The new emblem was made to show his dedication to strengthening the ties between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, which together form the United Kingdom.
Johnson also promised to “do Brexit”, which he did for the skin of his teeth, with the UK signing a last-minute trade deal with the European Union before withdrawing entirely from the club on December 31.
But what should have helped to end the bitter domestic divisions that Brexit unleashed has only served to sharpen them. Scotland and Northern Ireland voted against leaving the EU in 2016, but were powerless to stop it. Many of its residents are affected again by the trade deal, and their resentment of the Johnson government in distant London is growing.
Add that to the widespread criticism of how to deal with the pandemic – Scotland’s leader is said to have done a better job – and Johnson is now facing an uncomfortable question: Could this self-proclaimed union minister be reading his latest rites?
A man waves a British flag and a European Union flag in front of the Houses of Parliament at an anti-Brexit protest in London in 2016.
(Justin Tallis / AFP / Getty Images)
If Michael Sturrock of Edinburgh is any indication, Johnson’s desire to hold the four regions of the United Kingdom (the British call them “four nations”) together is in serious trouble, with a disunited kingdom in danger of becoming disintegrated. .
Sturrock, 26, was among the 55% of Scottish voters who opted for Scotland to remain in the UK in a 2014 independence referendum. But he never imagined at the time that staying in the UK would lead him to be dragged outside the EU. against your will.
Now he is in favor of Scotland going its own way. In an unprecedented development, at least 18 successive surveys in the past few months showed a plurality or a majority of Scottish residents agreeing with him.
“Brexit was the key turning point for me and for so many people,” said Sturrock. “The big problem for me is to regain my European citizenship. I am devastated, really. And so angry. “
Although he regrets that young people like him can no longer pursue the dream of living and working freely anywhere in the 27 EU countries, he also considers the policies of the Johnson conservative government to have been so far removed from Scotland’s social democratic tendencies that secession is the only solution.
“I am no longer convinced that staying in the UK is Scotland’s democratic will or the best way to achieve the kind of society we want,” he said. “Independence is the way we can achieve this.”
Sturrock created a website, NoToYes, as a place where he and other voters who switched sides in the Scottish independence debate can meet and share their stories. He is surprised by the interest of voters across the political spectrum.
“We need to move forward as one movement,” he said.
Sturrock’s change of mind is music to the ears of Scottish Prime Minister Nicola Sturgeon, who has devoted much of his political career to the struggle for Scottish independence.
Brexit has been “the gift of the gods” for his Scottish National Party, said Thomas Devine, one of Scotland’s leading historians. Sturgeon may not only point to the fact that the majority of Scots did not want to leave the EU in the first place, but also the new reality of trade in a post-Brexit world has hit Scottish businesses hard in recent weeks.
The local fish and seafood industry says that its trade with Europe – valued at more than $ 1.3 billion for Scottish companies – is on the verge of collapse because new border controls and long customs forms have led to the cancellation of orders and supplies that didn’t reach their destinations on time.
“What appears to have happened is a slow burn in terms of the consequences of Brexit,” said Devine. “There is a growing feeling that nations are going in different directions.”
Sturgeon now plans to hold a symbolic vote on the UK’s Scottish divorce if his party wins local elections in May. The aim is to increase pressure on Johnson to grant another independence referendum, since any new referendum is not mandatory unless it is approved by the central government in London.
The transition to life outside the EU was no less tense or complicated across the Irish Sea.
In Northern Ireland, where a fragile peace between dissident Republicans and British legalists prevailed for about 20 years, there were fears that Brexit could revive sectarian tensions if a rigid border emerged between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, which continues being a firm member of the EU. To avoid this, the new trade agreement leaves Northern Ireland within the EU’s single market for goods and, to some extent, its customs framework, although on paper Northern Ireland has officially left the European Union along with the rest of the Kingdom United
The half-in, half-out status irritates those who see him as a wedge being placed between the people of Northern Ireland and the rest of his countrymen in Britain.
“It feels more like we left the UK than we did the EU,” said Harry Wick, CEO of the Northern Ireland Fish Producers Organization. “We feel very rejected by UK politicians.”
Having served in the British Royal Navy for 20 years and lived in England for many years, Wick describes himself as a proud trade unionist. But now he feels “like a second-class citizen” and warns that those who call for the unification of Ireland will point to the Brexit agreement and say, “See what Britain has done for you”.
“It will be difficult to argue that they are wrong,” he said. “Brexit only served to highlight our divisions.”
Customs officials check the vehicles at a ferry terminal in Northern Ireland on New Year’s Day, the first day after Britain has completed its withdrawal from the European Union.
(Peter Morrison / Associated Press)
Whether Johnson can stem the resurgence of dissent and disillusionment in Scotland and Northern Ireland is an open question. His bluff, at times bombastic and often playful – tolerated or even appreciated in moments of tranquility – did not help him, as the United Kingdom threatens to start breaking up at the seams.
One of his predecessors as prime minister, Gordon Brown, said the country now faces a difficult choice: to become a “reformed state” or a “failed state”. The four parts of the UK must “urgently rediscover what holds them together” or risk the union falling apart, Brown – a proud Scotsman – wrote in the Daily Telegraph this week.
The COVID-19 pandemic – which plunged Britain into a deep recession and caused the UK’s death toll to exceed 100,000 on Tuesday, the highest in Europe – also revealed how the different parts of the country are separated, despite Johnson’s attempts to promote solidarity by evoking a spirit of war.
Each of the four regions exercises control over its own health policy, which resulted in blockages being instituted at different times in Britain, schools remaining open in one part, but not in another, and a patchwork of rules and restrictions which made Johnson look more like the leader of England alone, rather than the entire UK.
In Scotland, where around 5.5 million of the UK’s 67 million people live, Sturgeon has been credited with acting more decisively and transparently, although his administration has not really managed to tame the coronavirus. On Wednesday, at least 5,888 Scots died of COVID-19, according to the Scottish government – a higher per capita rate than in the U.S.
“The perception is that Sturgeon handled the pandemic much better than Boris Johnson,” said Devine, the historian. “The reality may be a little different, but it doesn’t matter at all. The perception is that she did a brilliant job. They don’t support Johnson here. “
While the UK is not at risk of splitting tomorrow and people’s immediate attention is trained to overcome the pandemic, political analyst Coree Brown Swan said the centrifugal forces felt in Scotland and Northern Ireland should not disappear.
“There is a sense that the union is in danger … a struggle to articulate the union’s case in a post-Brexit world,” said Brown Swan, a researcher at the Center for Constitutional Change in Edinburgh.
“Everyone is focused on surviving the current crisis, but you have calls for an independence referendum [in Scotland] this year or next, ”said Brown Swan. “If you see independence happening in Scotland, will Scotland become the tipping point?”
Boyle is a special correspondent.