The Union is weaker after the Welsh Senedd, Scottish Parliament and English local election results. Starmer’s myopic speech ignores the danger.

Sir Kier Starmer’s speech on Monday morning painted an almost apocalyptic picture of the future of his country, were he to be ousted from the Prime Ministership. He said “our country will go down a dark path”. Referencing the gains by Reform UK and the Greens, he stated that Labour is “battling the despair upon which they prey”. “Change cannot come quick enough”. “People need hope”. “Incremental change won’t cut it”.

Starmer described “a battle for the soul of our nation”. There’s the rub. He is Prime Minister of a multi-national country. There was no focus on Scotland, Wales nor Northern Ireland. Indeed, England wasn’t referenced. It didn’t need to be: for Keir Starmer and the Labour bigwigs, Englishness and Britishness appear interchangeable. This was a speech by a decent Englishman which had no resonance for the non-English UK nations.

The election results have seen the annihilation of the old British unionist parties in Wales and Scotland. Together, the Labour and Conservative parties won 22% of Scottish seats, and 17% of Welsh seats. (Remember that, unlike the English-local or Westminster elections, the Scottish and Welsh electoral systems are proportional.) Nothing like this has been seen before, electorally.

These two old parties are sclerotic. They cannot imagine a British government that doesn’t include one of them. They are majoritarian by nature. They won’t trust the people of the UK with a proportional electoral system, believing themselves above the people. They see nothing wrong with a party that gains one-third of the vote winning two-thirds of the seats, as happened in 2024. Their hubris will result in a farrago of Faragistas running the UK into the ground and the departure of Scotland and, possibly, Wales. (Politico poll of polls currently has Scottish independence running at 51% – 46% in favour of independence, the second-highest margin since the 2014 referendum.)

What happens to NI/NoI if the hubris of Labour and Conservatives results in a Reform UK government that antagonizes Scotland sufficiently to lead to its secession and the end of British identity? Reunificationists urgently need to craft a vision for the future of this island that truly cherishes all identities. The failure of separatist violence to achieve unity – and the immense suffering it has caused – must be addressed and acknowledged in a way that is genuinely cathartic for unity-desirous, unity-agnostic and unity-hostile voters. Is that possible? If it is not tried, what will we sleepwalk into?

Philip McGuinness

Philip McGuinness taught at Dundalk Institute of Technology, plays mandolin with the Oriel Traditional Orchestra and loves to walk around and over the wee perfect hills of the Ring Of Gullion.