No.29 - Another Week, Another Vote and the Demise of the United Kingdom?

Dear James, 

Here we go again. Another week, another statement from Mrs May, another vote and no doubt, another delay in resolving our ever deepening crisis. Mrs May political limbs are stretched to breaking point between the four points of her Party’s compass. Mr Corbyn’s spectral body is similarly stretched but with a void of leadership that makes even Mrs May seem like a scion of authority. Our normal two party system seems to be on the edge of splitting in several new ways. Whatever happens, our nation will be diminished. Meanwhile, in the real world, doctors’ surgeries are reporting raised levels of anxiety and stress and business is dumb with disbelief as the chasm approaches. 

Last week one of my correspondents pulled me up by saying that in my various comments to yourself, I omitted to mention the ultimate consequence of our crisis - the potential break up of the United Kingdom.  He was right. Amongst the clamour of current issues, a much bigger picture is emerging. If Mrs May’s fudge is ultimately passed by a cowed House of Commons, Britain will leave the EU sometime soon. Scotland, which voted 62% to 38% to stay in the EU will have its grievances confirmed and the pressure for another independence referendum may be irresistible. And this time it could vote to leave the Kingdom. Meanwhile across the Irish Sea, the polls seem to detect that the Northern Irish, who also voted to remain in the EU, may little by little be seeing the benefits of a United Ireland. That will just leave the Welsh who voted by a small margin to leave but who may not wish to be attached to a much larger England should the other nations depart. Owain Glyndower may soon be coming out of hiding. 

And that will leave the question of what is England? We will no longer be an island, but just a  part of a geographical conglomerate of disconnected off-shore states. English nationalism, which did so much to create the Brexit crisis in the first place will have created a small state of 55m people sandwiched between the EU, Scotland and Ireland. Britain and the United Kingdom will be mere relics of history and, if reduced England is controlled by the eccentricities of Messrs Rees-Mogg and Johnson, then we are into the area of the glorious ‘heroic failure’ described so well by Fintan O’Toole.  Boris and co will be fine but what about the rest of us? 

As you continue your slavish adherence to Mrs May’s strategy of herding us all down the road that ends at the chasm, I would hope that you might lift your eyes above Westminster and imagine the impact of your actions across the United Kingdom as a whole. It took us four hundred years to build it. It will take us a few, short sighted votes to destroy it.  

Food for thought James?

Kind regards, 

BH - Your Concerned Constituent