As a very brief reflection on the post-Brexit UK, a country certain on the verge of breaking up into pieces over the realized insanity of separating from a unified Europe, it should be quite certain from Nicola Sturgeon's statements that the Scottish National Party (SNP) will be aiming, as quickly as possible, to put forward another independence referendum in the interest of separating from London to rejoin the EU as an independent sovereign state. It would, thus, seem that Brexit has sealed the fate of London's connection to Scotland and that the union of England and Scotland, formalized beyond the unity of the crowns through the merging of the English and Scottish parliaments in 1707, will soon be torn asunder. With this in mind, the status of the remaining pieces of the UK remains an open question.
Oddly, when it came to the question of EU membership, the Welsh seem to have voted with their neighbors in the English Midlands. Apparently, outside of Cardiff (which voted 60/40 to stay) and certain areas on the Irish Sea coast, presumably beneficiaries of more active economic connections to the EU Irish Republic, the majority of Welsh voters (53/47) voted to leave the EU. Again, as with voters in the English Midlands and in certain rural and deindustrialized urban constituencies in the Northern English counties (Lancashire, Yorkshire), there was little perception within the older, Whiter, and predominantly rural electorate of Wales that the UK had anything to gain from a robust connection to the continent and much to lose, especially relative to the perceived negative effects of immigration. Moreover, Plaid Cymru/the Party of Wales, the left-wing, pro-EU Welsh sovereigntist party, is simply too weak a contingent within the National Assembly of Wales to drive to the conversation among the Welsh electorate in the same direction currently advocated by the SNP in Edinburgh. For better or for worse, English and the Welsh remain unified, and, at the behest of mostly older White, rural voters, both will be leaving the EU.
Then there is the question of Ulster/Northern Ireland. Since the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, ending a generation of armed confrontation between Irish Republicans and Ulster Unionists over the status of Northern Ireland's six counties, the country has enjoyed a more robust aggregate economic growth rate, on average, than the other national components of the UK. Part of this rate of growth was related to its proximity to the Irish Republic during a period of rapid economic growth in the latter and, secondarily, to the connection of both the UK and the Irish Republic to the continent. Continental firms apparently invested significantly into the creation of an export base within the Northern Ireland counties, especially in close proximity to metropolitan Belfast, areas that endured substantial rates of unemployment throughout the period of conflict between Irish Republicans and the Ulster Unionists. Moreover, areas of Northern Ireland directly abutting the border with the Irish Republic enjoyed a degree of economic growth bolstered significantly by the demilitarization of the border with the Good Friday Agreement. As such, greater Belfast and the outlying border areas of Northern Ireland profited substantially from economic development due, to a substantial degree, to European economic integration and, more directly, to the deepening of economic relations between the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland. The current economic status of Northern Ireland, thus, remains significantly tied to the continued vitality of the Irish Peace process and to the robust connection of Ireland, as a whole, to both the UK and the continent. It seems certain that the shifting of any of these pieces could jeopardize the economies of both Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic. In this regard, Brexit represents a substantial and daunting problem for Northern Ireland, even more so than for Scotland. At stake is the political and economic trajectory of country that is teetering along edges defined by the peace process and continental economic integration.
To be brief on how Northern Ireland voted and the impending consequences of the larger vote to leave, the Northern Ireland counties collectively voted 56/44 to stay within the EU. This stands to reason. The principal beneficiaries of economic development in metropolitan Belfast and in the outlying border regions to the Irish Republic had no justifiable basis to vote against continued EU membership - they would have been voting to slit the throats of their economy. By contrast, in largely rural internal areas of Northern Ireland, neither benefiting from significant integration with neighboring regions in the Irish Republic nor located within the privileged economic developmental hot spots of metropolitan Belfast, voters substantially backed leaving the EU. Emphatically, voters in these constituencies were older, Whiter, and overwhelming Protestant Unionists. There is not much question that the critical dividing line in Ulster politics, between (Catholic) Irish Republicans and (Protestant) Scot-Irish Unionists, remains, but, on the contrary, it has become at least partially blurred by the same generational dynamic characterizing the larger electorate of the UK for the Brexit vote (i.e. younger voters favoring "stay," older voters favoring "leave") and by the conflict between the countryside and urban areas. Along these lines, County Antrim, a stronghold for Protestant Ulster Unionists largely separate from the Belfast metropolitan area, voted overwhelmingly to leave the EU, as did northern constituencies of County Armagh and County Down. Central areas of metropolitan Belfast, along the dividing lines between Counties Antrim and Down, voted overwhelmingly to stay within the EU, as did Londonderry County, especially the urban constituencies in and around Derry, and County Tyrone and County Fermanagh. We might be able to assert that the Brexit vote in Northern Ireland followed the urban-rural fault line, except that it also traced the Catholic-Protestant fault line and the distribution of positive economic externalities from EU membership and increased commerce with the Irish Republic.
In the aftermath of the Brexit vote, Northern Ireland seems to face not one, but multiple choices regarding its economic and political future, potentially complicated, in part, by the impending departure of Scotland from the UK to rejoin the EU. Arlene Foster, the leader of the Democratic Unionist Party and First Minister of the government of Northern Ireland, and a supporter of Brexit, seems to believe that the formality of a UK departure from the EU will not profoundly impact either the Irish peace process, the economic integration of Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic, or the larger economic destiny of her country relative to the larger nexus of European commerce(!). In this regard, it seems that, at least at the top echelons of the Ulster unionist political establishment, among politicians with power bases in rural areas among decisively conservative Protestant constituencies, a particular species of myopia is rampantly spreading! It is one thing for Nigel Farage of UKIP to cavalierly promote the virtues of abandoning the EU to constituencies in places like Birmingham that never really felt any economic benefit (and probably experienced some degree of pain from freer trade) from greater commercial linkages with the continent. It is another for unionist politicians in Northern Ireland to push Brexit to constituencies who have benefited palpably from EU membership, if only because a borderless connection to the Irish Republic has profoundly benefited economic development in Northern Ireland, lowering unemployment substantially since the Good Friday Agreement. Foster and her party appear oblivious to a potential for political crisis that should be as clear as their noses. Emphatically, Foster's Deputy First Minister, Martin McGuinness, the leader of republican Sinn Fein, is now calling for a referendum to determine the willingness of the electorate of Northern Ireland to unify itself with the Irish Republic, citing the potential for reinsertion of a border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic as the former departs from the EU as a basis for the need to undertake a fundamental reconsideration of the political future of Northern Ireland. In these terms, by seizing Brexit as an opportunity to flirt with the abolition of Northern Ireland's independence from the Irish Republic, Sinn Fein is moving relevant parties on the Catholic-Protestant fault line back to the breach and inviting a new round of political violence to swallow up the peace process. It may be worth asking, at this point, whether the Good Friday Agreement is going to survive Brexit!
To conclude the larger point of this post, I think it is worth noting the obvious observation that the majority of Protestant unionist Northern Irelanders are, at least to my knowledge, descended not from Englishmen but from Scottish Presbyterians. Notwithstanding the fatal idiocy of unionist leaders like Foster on the idea that Northern Ireland can leave the EU without any consequences, maybe Northern Ireland's future could hinge more on the impending moves Nicola Sturgeon's SNP than on the extraordinarily divisive republican suggestion that Ulster should have a vote on joining the Irish Republic. That is to say, if sensible, pragmatic Protestant leaders in Ulster, possessed with a wherewithal to comprehend a potential opportunity to steer their country in a direction that would both respect the will of their national electorate to remain in the EU and protect their cultural and political uniqueness in relation to republican Ireland, could steer a secular (Protestant, Catholic, and other) majority toward the idea of departure from the UK and a closer political connection with Edinburgh, rather than Dublin, then, maybe, the effective will of the majority of the electorate relative to EU membership might be preserved, the border with the Irish Republic might remain relatively open, and Northern Ireland might maintain a relevant post-UK partner, committed to the notion that the importance of European economic integration, both to economic development and the maintenance of peace, transcends any appeal to parochial, nationalistic prejudices. In these respects, I think I may be displaying a substantial degree of idealism, but the alternative looks exceeding grim!
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