Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland have joined together to challenged Westminster. Here\u2019s why the Cardiff Pact matters<\/p>\n
\u201cThe era of Westminster is coming to an end!\u201d the nationalist leaders of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland declared this week.
\nJohn Swinney, Rhun ap Iorwerth, and Michelle O\u2019Neill gathered in Cardiff to sign an agreement asserting their nations\u2019 right to self-determination, as they called on London not to obstruct referendums and outlined their preferred futures beyond the UK, including EU membership for an independent Scotland and Wales, and Irish reunification for Northern Ireland.
\nIn Russia, the meeting has already been dubbed Britain\u2019s version of the Belovezha Accords, and the comparison is tempting because, as in 1991, political leaders from three of a state\u2019s constituent parts gathered around a table to discuss a civilized divorce.
\nBut the resemblance largely ends there, given the driving force behind the Soviet Union\u2019s dissolution was its largest republic, Russia, represented by Boris Yeltsin. He joined his counterparts in dismantling the state that Moscow built, but no representative of England attended the Cardiff gathering, and Westminster has shown little enthusiasm for presiding over its own retreat.
\nThe participants were also considerably more cautious than their Soviet predecessors, so they signed as party leaders, making the declaration a joint political initiative rather than an agreement binding their governments to secession.<\/p>\n
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This distinction exposes the central weakness of the Cardiff Pact. Its signatories want to leave the UK while remaining within the constitutional framework that holds it together. Their ambitions therefore depend on political and legal processes they don\u2019t control.
\nIreland\u2019s experience offers an uncomfortable historical comparison, as the settlement that opened the way to independence followed two years of guerrilla warfare. Today\u2019s nationalist leaders are pursuing an entirely peaceful route, through negotiations, elections, and referendums, but whether London will accommodate them is another matter.
\nScotland has already encountered this obstacle. In 2022, the UK Supreme Court ruled that the Scottish Parliament couldn\u2019t legislate for an independence referendum without Westminster\u2019s consent, and after the close vote in 2014, London has little appetite for another.
\nPublic opinion presents a further difficulty. Scotland remains divided down the middle, whereas in Northern Ireland, the figure cited for support for Irish unity is around 36% and Welsh independence remains a minority position, however much its advocates have gained politically.
\nSwinney wants another Scottish referendum by 2031, but his counterparts have offered no comparable timetable and their agreement establishes a direction of travel, but supplies neither a departure date nor a convincing explanation of how they will get there.
\nBritain\u2019s dissolution is therefore hardly imminent, but nevertheless, London would be foolish to dismiss Cardiff as an exercise in nationalist theater.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Some British coverage attributed the meeting to an ill-judged intervention by Prime Minister Andy Burnham when he suggested that referendums in Scotland and Northern Ireland might be considered if there is broad public consensus, before attempting to narrow the implications of his remarks.
\nQualifications rarely travel as far as the original statement and nationalists heard an opening and acted accordingly.
\nYet an unfortunate choice of words can\u2019t explain the forces behind this gathering. The more immediate political background was Labour\u2019s local elections defeat in May, which strengthened nationalist parties and created favorable conditions for cooperation and Cardiff gave that cooperation a common platform.
\nHowever, the deeper problem is the condition of the British state itself. In 2014, many Scots supported independence because they believed London ignored their interests and governed badly \u2013 and since then, Westminster has supplied little reason for them to reconsider, as economic stagnation and trained public services have steadily eroded confidence in the established order.
\nConservatives and Labour have each promised renewal, only to leave voters wondering whether either possesses a credible plan, while Reform and nationalist parties have moved into the space created by that failure. Their proposed remedies differ, but their appeal rests on a shared conviction that the old arrangements no longer work.
\nBrexit sharpened this argument, as Britain\u2019s departure from the EU in 2020 changed the calculation for those considering a future outside the UK. Previously, independence meant leaving a state that already offered access to the EU, but now nationalists can present separation as a route back into it.<\/p>\n
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The choice, as they frame it, is between joining a larger, more successful economic and political community and remaining attached to a declining imperial center, still occasionally tempted to compensate for its weakening position with displays of former grandeur.
\nThis argument doesn\u2019t remove the economic risks of independence, nor does it guarantee EU membership, but it gives separatists something more persuasive than a historical grievance: A competing account of where prosperity and security might lie.
\nCardiff matters principally for this reason. It did not produce a mechanism for dismantling the UK, but it brought together politicians willing to imagine what might follow it and an alternative once discussed separately in Edinburgh, Cardiff, and Belfast has acquired a shared political expression.
\nIt\u2019s far too early to suggest that Burnham will be Britain\u2019s last prime minister, as states can survive years of disillusionment, and nationalist declarations are easier to sign than to implement.
\nBut Westminster\u2019s problem is that preserving the union requires more than obstructing its opponents, and it also requires giving people a convincing reason to stay.<\/p>\n
This article was first published by the online newspaper\u00a0Gazeta.ru\u00a0and was translated and edited by the RT team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland have joined together to challenged Westminster. Here\u2019s why the Cardiff Pact matters \u201cThe era of Westminster is coming to an end!\u201d the nationalist leaders of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38494,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy","category-environment","category-politics"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t