The biggest test of Brexit in Britain could be the ability to survive

Photographer: Emily Macinnes / Bloomberg

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Prime Minister Boris Johnson has a fondness for big projects, but few are as appealing as the proposal for a physical link over the Irish Sea between Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Whether it is a billion-pound pipe dream or a show of ambition appropriate to the post-Brexit era, a feasibility study is being conducted as part of the government review of how to better link the UK and its four constituent nations. A more immediate concern may be whether the link could one day connect two independent states that are no longer part of the UK.

As Britain turns 100 days since it turned its back on the European Union, tussles have arisen with the continent over issues, from customs controls to vaccination shots and financial services.

Tensions at home are raising the specter of a more existential conflict, however, which will determine whether Johnson’s goal should be to go out into the world under the banner of an invigorated “global Britain”. changed to a more humble “global England.”

Scotland will hold elections on May 6 in its parliament in Edinburgh that will be voted on whether the nation has the right or the need for another opinion on its constitutional future. Surveys suggest that the pro-independence Scottish National Party could move to a majority, a high bar given the proportional electoral system, and press their demands for a second referendum on the separation of the UK

In Northern Ireland, there are complaints about its separate treatment from the British mainland in the Brexit agreement between London and Brussels, and the province’s bitterly divided past is as a result, resurgence. More than 70 police officers were injured in a week of riots by pro-British loyalists who dropped petrol bombs. Polls suggest a remarkable shift in sentiment for a region so long dominated by its unionist community, and most now say they want to vote on reunification with the Republic of Ireland in five years.

Even in Wales, which unlike Scotland or Northern Ireland voted with England in favor of Brexit, support for independence has increased during the coronavirus pandemic. Wales is also holding elections to its regional assembly on 6 May and there is a possibility that the ruling Labor Party may share power with the nationalist party Plaid Cymru. Plaid has he pledged to hold a vote on Wales’ independence within five years.

The rupture of the three-century-old union has been speculated for decades, certainly long before Brexit became part of the popular language. By themselves, the events of each of the three nations do not necessarily signify revolutionary changes, but speak of changing cultural identities and varying degrees of political dissatisfaction with the center of power in London.

On the whole, it is difficult to ignore the growing feeling that things are inexorably coming to a head, whether to diminish or strengthen the union, and that Brexit has lent these forces a greater agency.

“But for Brexit, the union would be relatively secure, but now I’m not so sure,” he said Matt Qvortrup, Professor of Political Science at Coventry University who served as Special Adviser on UK Constitutional Affairs. The change “won’t be tomorrow, but give it ten years.”

Johnson’s challenge, which was the driving force behind the successful campaign to leave the EU in what was intended to regain British sovereignty, is how to cauterize political wounds at home. His dilemma is exacerbated by the fact that his Conservatives rule in Westminster, but not in Belfast, Edinburgh or Cardiff, where separate parties dominate, reflecting the different regional preferences of voters in a process known as return.

Read more: 100 days of Brexit: Was it as bad as “Fear of the project” was warned?

The most powerful of these decentralized governments is in Scotland, where it manages most of the political fields that matter in everyday life, from health and education to transport and justice. The UK controls areas that include foreign affairs, defense and macroeconomic policy.

So far, Johnson has refused to grant the SNP-administered government the legal permission it needs for another referendum to be watertight, saying the 2014 vote was a one-off event. Scots voted between 55% and 45% to stay in the UK at the time, although at the time it was not thought the UK could be about to leave the EU.

Now, according to Johnson, the focus should be on rebuilding the pandemic together and making constitutional issues an unwanted distraction. Johnson’s Conservative leader in Scotland, Douglas Ross, says that “it is recovery or referendum. We can’t do both. ”He has called on other opposition parties to unite in some constituencies to stop the nationalists.

The election campaign was suspended Friday afterwards the death of the queen’s husband, Prince Philip.

Another landslide of the SNP – the party has been in power since 2007 – would increase the confrontation with London and, if Edinburgh increased demands, investors could become frightened and the pound would reverberate. There is division within Johnson’s party over whether his government should continue to ignore Scotland’s demands for another anti-independence trait or try to gain time and offer enough money or more powers in the hope that the issue will be fade.

The risk is that it will sink. And the longer the dispute, the more possibilities are resolved by demographics. Support for independence is highest among young people and the Scottish voting age is 16.

In any case, the Scots have never embraced the educated Eton Johnson, who has an upper-class downfall alongside the reality of Scottish leader Nicola Sturgeon.

The core of Sturgeon’s argument for another pro-independence vote is generally straightforward: Brexit has changed the game. No district in Scotland voted to leave the EU in 2016, but had to leave along with the rest of the UK. The years of fighting until Brexit on 31 January 2020 only hardened divisions, and all decentralized administrations claimed that they were out of the game.

Part of this anti-Brexit sentiment has become support for the pro-independence cause. According to one strategy paper drafted for the Conservatives and seen by Bloomberg in October, the concern is that there are not enough pro-Brexit voters to counter them.

Emily Gray, who runs Pollster Ipsos MORI in Scotland says Brexit was key for the gradual ones increased support for independence. The result is “significant doubts in Scotland about the future of the union,” he said. “More than half of Scots expect the UK not to exist in its current form within five years.”

Johnson would seem to have a strong argument for the union in the form of the success of the UK vaccine launch to date. Still, Sturgeon, not Johnson, is the face of the fight against the pandemic in Scotland, and the prime minister says Johnson’s handling of Covid-19, which has the highest death toll in Europe, has put manifests the need for full autonomy.

The latest Ipsos MORI poll, conducted between March 29 and April 4, predicted that the SNP would occupy 70 of the 129 seats in the Scottish Parliament. With the pro-independence Greens seeing a leap of support, the momentum for a referendum seems to be growing. Some other polls have shown that the SNP falls short, but none has predicted a union majority.