The United Kingdom is made up of 4 different countries. It can be tempting to focus just on England, which makes a bit of sense electorally because England dominates the constituency numbers because of the vast population. Regional politics, however, should not be ignored and it is important to understand the shape of regional politics for the whole of the United Kingdom. With the regular inclusion of the Scottish National Party (SNP) and Plaid Cymru (The Party of Wales), it is important to understand their role for UK politics, though it is important to understand that Plaid Cymru is not even the second party in Wales, as Labour runs the Labour devolved administration.
Firstly, it is important to know that the various different administrations are very different in their makeup. Scotland, for example, is pretty independent already. With a different tax, religion and health policy to name a few areas, Scotland enjoys a large amount of autonomy already. Wales has devolved powers over some tax and all of health policy but the Welsh administration has a comparatively smaller role in devolved matters than in Scotland. We should not forget Northern Ireland in all of this, but the state of Northern Irish is shared between a unionist party and a nationalist party as per the rules of the Good Friday Agreement. Due to the binary and fractious nature of Northern Irish poltiics it almost exists in a different electoral fight, though it is still about Westminster Seats. Also, Northern Ireland has only recently just returned to power-sharing after a key disagreement with Sinn Feinn (the nationalists) and the Democratic Unionist Party (the unionists) about how to govern especially in the wake of the Brexit deal with effectively annexed Northern Ireland into the single market and therefore has a tax regime set by Brussels, not the UK.
In this election, seats are up for grabs everywhere and all of the major parties fight in these areas apart from in Northern Ireland. The major parties have different electoral strategies, logistics and even manifestos for different parts of the UK. Historically, Labour has done the best from these devolved administrations, largely because of Tony Blair’s devolution reforms that have effectively given them a monopoly over Wales and until 2010 a monopoly over Scotland. Wales is run by a Labour administration and Scotland has been run by the SNP as an effective one-party state. England has no devolved administration, save the mayoralties in certain cities. Historically, the United Kingdom devolved administrations tend to revolve around centre-left politics, mostly due to the fact that there’s nothing to ‘conserve’ when it comes to devolved matters and thus centre-right politics doesn’t really thrive. From this, the various regional parties revolve around a form of ‘civic nationalism’, that being nationalism of the left. Labour, the SNP and Plaid Cymru have very similar policies on economics, society and public services, the question is what else? In this case the differences revolve around the region’s place within the UK.
In Scotland, the only real difference between the SNP and Labour is that the SNP is a region-only party that campaigns for Scottish ‘independence’, though in actuality this really means ‘seperatism’, that being the complete political, cultural and in some ways diplomatic break from England. The SNP also wants to rejoin the EU, which confuses the ‘independence’ message. The SNP have been running Scotland pretty much as a one party state for the last 14 years. They have overseen a depressing record in Scotland with stats like eduction and crime as well as drug use trending in very negative ways. The SNP have also suffered from the hubris of parties that have had effective ‘carte Blanche’ over Scottish politics, dominating the regional administration called ‘Holyrood’ (elections to this Scottish Parliament are not up for grabs now). Their long-time leader, Nicola Sturgeon, stood down last year over corruption scandals along with her husband. The party was also harmed by it’s own ‘Gender Recognition Bill’ which proved to be incredibly unpopular, which brought down their short-term leader Hamza Yousef, who himself was unpopular for his ‘race-baiting’ in the Scottish Parliament. The SNP claimed close to most of the Scottish seats in Westminster, but now for the first time since 2010 Labour a polling ahead of the SNP and this looks set to continue. Because there are fewer people in Scottish constituencies on average it is much easier to win in Scotland, and Labour are projected to take a majority of the Scottish seats to Westminster. The Labour Leader Sarwar will look to even become the next Scottish First Minister in next year’s Scottish Parliament elections.
Scotland looks set for change back to a UK-wide party. The SNP won’t be wiped out entirely, but their stranglehold will be loosened and they will be no longer be able to claim to speak for Scotland. Scottish ‘independence’, the movement that swept the SNP to such a giant majority for 14 years, looks set to be gone for a generation. It’s by no means dead, but for a long time the matter will have been resolved. It will be up to the UK-wide parties to show their reasons for why the UK should still be united now.
Wales is slightly more straight-forward in that Welsh poltiics has remained largely unchanged bar a surge not for Plaid Cymru but for UKIP. As the other region to vote by a majority for Brexit, Wales has a different attitude to UK-wide matters to Scotland, yet it’s domestic politics has largely remained unchanged. Labour has been in charge of the Welsh administration for pretty much it’s whole time. Labour have seen their Wales majority rise and fall but they have not really let go of Wales as they tend to dominate the chequered constituencies of South Wales, whilst the more Plaid Cymru-favoured areas are quite concentrated in the valleys and certain parts of North Wales. Plaid Cymru, the SNP-equivalent, is not popular in Wales, save in some councils. Their relevance in UK-wide politics does not make arithmetic sense but the importance of involving region-based politics is made clear by the electoral commission and the media.
Plaid Cymru does not have an independence movement, though Plaid Cymru has always campaigned to hold an independence referendum. In this election they have not put it in their manifesto but they are requesting a time frame for it. In essence, they want to do what the SNP want to do, but Wales is historically a very different thing. Wales is not independent in the true sense of the word like Scotland is, aside from the central legislative body in Westminster. It has a Welsh Parliament, and those seats are not being contested in this election. But Welsh politics is far closer to English politics than the obvious difference in the Scottish system. There isn’t much call for Welsh independence as the integration with England is historically long. The resurrection of the Welsh language though shows the maintenance of a Welsh identity, though this has not really bled out into Welsh politics.
Labour runs Wales. The Welsh government has run Wales since its inception in 1998 after a referendum on Welsh devolution in which the pro-devolution side won by .5% of the vote in a low-turnout (compare this to well over 70% in Scotland, after a second referendum). The NHS, independently run in Wales, is not good; in fact it is dire. It would be prudent for the rivals to Labour to point to Wales to show its record in power, though it is important to note that Wales does not raise its own money in taxes as lots more comes from Westminster. The Welsh First Minister has recently lost a vote-of-no-confidence in the Welsh parliament, though he has stated that he is staying in power regardless. Plaid might be the beneficiaries here, but in reality the Tory party might be a bit better here. We shall see how this plays out. Maybe Plaid will do well? The polls suggest though that Labour will maintain its hold on Wales and quite significantly so in terms of the Westminster seats. What happens in the Welsh Parliament though might be up for debate.
In Northern Ireland the politics is far less sanguine, far more run on religious lines and so secular. Northern Ireland’s place in the UK has been undermined significantly by Boris Johnson’s 2020 Brexit deal on matters like tax and the power-sharing agreement of 1997 has left Northern Ireland in a state of limbo on its own. The Unionist sides are split and Sinn Feinn are strong but by no means have the case for pushing the case once again for a united Ireland. It would be best to leave this to the people of Northern Ireland to explain…
Regional poltiics matters as there are a significant amount of seats up for grabs. In an election where Labour is expected to win by a massive margin regional poltiics might be more on the back burner, though in their manifesto Labour have promised to increase devolution to the other nations, increasing power int he devolved areas. Far from uniting the UK more though devolution has emboldened nationalist voices. Labour will further spread out Westminster’s power, and its consequences will be seen later. The two regional parties will continue to make their cases for independence and the break-up of the UK, but with Labour set to be in power next the case for independence will be quieter for a while yet.
This article first appeared on the TDL Times. For more information, articles and more please visit www.thetdltimes.com.
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