PHILIP STOTT looks at recent developments of the various national questions across the UK in the context of the new Burnham government.
The ‘constitutional issues’, or national questions as Marxists refer to them, in Scotland, Wales and Ireland, have been further catapulted into the spotlight recently. US president Trump’s visit to the Republic of Ireland in September saw him comment that he would “love to see” a united Ireland.
On 14 September, leaders of the Scottish National Party (SNP), Sinn Féin and Plaid Cymru – the so-called ‘Celtic Alliance’ – met in Cardiff to sign a declaration stating: “Westminster’s time is coming to an end”. Their memorandum went on: “We call for the British government to prepare for, plan and facilitate constitutional change in each jurisdiction”.
John Swinney, SNP first minster in the Scottish parliament, claimed Andy Burnham would be the UK’s last prime minster and demanded an independence referendum to facilitate Scotland becoming separate from the UK by 2031. The Sinn Féin leader, Mary Lou McDonald, said she expected an Irish reunification poll to take place by 2030. Rhun ap Iorwerth of Plaid Cymru, the first minister of Wales, ruled out asking for an independence referendum before the next Senedd elections in 2030 but is demanding more powers for the Welsh parliament.
All three devolved administrations, in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, have nationalist first ministers who promote the idea of separation from the UK in some form. All three are also run by political parties who have a track record of inflicting cuts to public services over years. To this cutting list must be added the Northern Ireland Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), who are the other main player in the power-sharing administration at Stormont, alongside Sinn Féin.
Marxists can give no support whatsoever to any of those parties, who have all facilitated the implementation of brutal austerity on working-class communities. At the same time, Marxists defend the right of self-determination. Calling for this democratic right has been a hallmark of the Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI) and its sections in Scotland, Wales and Ireland. Regarding Ireland, it is more complex given the consequences of centuries of brutal colonialism and imperialist rule, including the deep sectarian divisions in the North and the many scars of the ‘Troubles’.
Above all, Marxists emphasise the need for the maximum unity of the working class across these islands, in class struggle, as the way to oppose the bosses and their parties, the populist and far right and to change society along socialist lines. We believe that only as part of the socialist transformation of society can the national question be fundamentally and permanently settled.
In the case of Scotland, we stand for an independent socialist state. In Wales, we currently call for a socialist Wales, including a parliament with full powers. In Ireland, we fight for the people of Ireland – north and south – to be able to determine their own future. That means advocating for the unity of Protestant and Catholic workers, and indeed all workers, for a socialist Ireland, with full rights for minorities to be guaranteed.
However, overarching the specific and concrete demands on the national question in each case, we consistently place them in the context of a free and voluntary socialist confederation of Scotland, England, Wales, and Ireland as a step towards a socialist Europe. Such a formulation plays an essential role in emphasising the need for the unity of the working class across these states and indeed internationally.
We have always explained that a just and genuinely lasting solution to national oppression and democratic rights is impossible while capitalism exists. And that it falls to the working class and its organisations – the trade unions and future mass workers’ parties fighting on a socialist programme – to lead a struggle for both self-determination and to end the system, capitalism, that denies those rights.
The current array of pro-capitalist nationalist parties take the opposite approach. They all seek to work within the limits of a billionaire-dominated economic system that oppresses every worker – no matter their nationality. They are also major obstacles to the unity of the working class, which is essential if democratic rights are to be achieved, and divisions to be overcome.
Long-term decline of Britain
The rise of the national question and the centrifugal forces acting on the multi-national state of the UK are a product of the long-term decline of British capitalism. At one time, Britain was the dominant world imperialist power – with an array of colonial interests – first in Ireland, then in large parts of Asia, Africa, the West Indies and North America included. It was that economic power – as well as its military force – that played a key role in welding the British union together.
However, by the end of the 19th century it was a declining economic force, facing competing imperialist powers, such as Germany, and the rise of US imperialism. The aftermath of the first and second world wars cemented its atrophy, leading to a loss of much of its colonial conquests.
Amid the fear of the rising tide of socialist revolution after the first world war, Britain partitioned its oldest colony, Ireland, in 1921, ceding direct control over what became the Irish republic, while maintaining control of the six counties of the North. To achieve this outcome, the British ruling class cemented the tried and tested methods of sectarianism to divide the working class, Catholic and Protestant.
However, both were sectarian states. The Southern twenty-six county Irish republic was largely under the control of the Catholic church and dominated economically by British imperialism. Northern Ireland was from day one a reactionary statelet gerrymandered by Unionists to deny the Catholic minority basic democratic rights, backed up by an array of repressive police powers.
After the missed opportunities offered by the 1968-69 civil rights movement to emerge as a force that could unify the working class in the north, despite the enormous potential inherent in that struggle, a period of sectarian reaction opened. The ‘Troubles’, during which the Provisional IRA pursued a campaign of individual terrorism to try and defeat the British state forces that were sent in by the Labour government in August 1969, eventually led to exhaustion and military stalemate. Neither the republican armed campaign nor the British state emerged as the winners.
The Northern Ireland ‘peace process’ in the 1990s eventually led to the signing of the Belfast Agreement (also known as the Good Friday Agreement) in 1998 and the creation of a power-sharing assembly in the North. The year before, in 1997, referenda took place in Wales and Scotland that saw majorities vote for the creation of a devolved parliament in Edinburgh and an assembly in Cardiff. If the British ruling class thought their experiment with devolution would see off demands for the dismantling of the British state, they proved to be completely wrong.
As the CWI predicted, nothing fundamental would or could be resolved. Indeed, the NI peace process, which led to the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, “takes the existence of the sectarian divide as permanent and, rather than diminish it, effectively casts it in concrete”. (Will The Agreement Bring Peace? Peter Hadden, 1998) The working class in Northern Ireland is still divided by sectarianism today. Only the emergence of a political force that stands for the unity of the working class, a mass workers’ party with a socialist programme, can overcome division and unite the working class in the north.
The Scottish question
By the end of the post-second world war economic upswing in the 1970s, the national question in Scotland had begun to remerge as a major issue. The loss of Scotland’s industrial base, its planned destruction through the brutal policy of Thatcherism, began to erode the glue of economic development that had held the union with England together. Mass unemployment, poverty, the poll tax and the electoral demise of the Tory party in Scotland emerged as key drivers for a growing national consciousness and demands for the creation of a Scottish parliament.
The Holyrood parliament has been a delivery mechanism for cuts from Westminster since its inception in 1999. First administered by a Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition from 1999 to 2007, and from 2007 to today, run by the SNP. The 2007-2009 Great Recession and the brutal austerity that followed provoked a series of mass revolts by the working class. The general strikes in southern Europe – from Greece to Spain to Portugal – were important examples. As was the 2011 one-day public sector general strike over attacks on pensions in Britain.
But another expression of this revolt was growing demands for independence in Scotland and Catalonia. The 2014 independence referendum in Scotland, which saw a 55% to 45% ‘victory’ for the union side, was, in reality, a ‘near death experience’ for the capitalist class in Britain. Hundreds of thousands of working-class people mobilised around the demand for independence seeking an escape route from unending cuts amid mass anger at the hated capitalist establishment.
The loss of Scotland would have been a disaster for British capitalism. Economic dislocation, degraded geopolitical influence and the not unimportant factor of the loss of political prestige on the global stage would have weakened British capitalism markedly. Not to mention the impact the secession of Scotland from the UK would have had in driving forward demands among nationalists for a border poll in Northern Ireland and increased support for Welsh independence.
Naturally, Marxists have to be very sensitive to the democratic and national aspirations of those who take up those struggles seeking a way to resolve both class and national oppression. While at the same time we must oppose all forces that seek to dilute the interests of the working class by utilising various forms of petty bourgeois and bourgeois nationalism.
A denial of rights by Burnham
In September 2026, Labour prime minister Andy Burnham’s response to a question on Scottish independence from an SNP MP at Westminster created a political storm. Burnham was asked during prime minister’s questions (PMQs) whether the conditions that would lead to a granting of a referendum on Scottish independence should be set out in law.
The question was posed following Burnham’s recent assertion that he would stick ‘one hundred percent’ to the terms of the Belfast Agreement as it relates to Northern Ireland. The agreement includes a provision on the conditions that would trigger a order poll (a vote separately in the north and south on the question of Irish unification).
Burnham seemed to concede the point during PMQs. He responded by stating that a border poll would “be considered by the Northern Ireland secretary when there is clear consensus in the country – when public opinion has changed to the point at which the call has to be considered”. He continued: “I would say that it is exactly the same situation in Scotland. I am not aware that there is majority public support for another referendum, and until that changes, there will not be one”.
This response was seized on by SNP leader John Swinney who then wrote to Burnham welcoming his recognition of “the principle that Scotland should have a referendum when it is likely that people would vote for independence”. Swinney requested a meeting to discuss how that principle could be turned into “an agreed legal mechanism”, similar to arrangements set out in the Good Friday Agreement.
‘Mr Devolution’ rapidly shut down that option. “Labour’s 2024 manifesto was clear – the party does not support independence or another referendum”, Burnham insisted. He went on: “As I made clear to you personally when we met recently in Glasgow, independence and a referendum are off limits”. The UK prime minister has also stated that a border poll was “off the table”.
In essence, there is no legal mechanism for a second independence referendum to take place. The UK Supreme Court ruling of 2022 reinforced that only with prior agreement from Westminster could a referendum happen. Holyrood has no formal powers on the matter, unless given by the UK government. Yet the recent Holyrood election in May this year saw the largest ever majority of pro-independence MSPs elected. Opinion polls show consistently that over 50% of the population currently back independence. As far as the ruling class is concerned, democratic rights do not apply in such a precarious scenario for their interests. And Burnham is more than prepared to defend that position.
As it is, the base of support for the traditional pro-union parties – Labour and the Tories – in Scotland has diminished significantly since the defeat of the independence vote more than a decade ago. Both suffered their worst ever Holyrood election result in May 2026. The political institutions through which the rule of the capitalist class is largely exercised are increasingly unreliable for their interests, primarily due to the hollowing out of the traditional parties of capitalism.
The conclusion drawn from 2014 by the capitalist class was that they would fight tooth and nail to avoid a repeat. Therefore, demands for a second referendum have to be resisted.
NI Border Poll
The Belfast Good Friday Agreement says that a poll can take place if the UK government’s Northern Ireland secretary believes “at any time it appears likely to him that a majority of those voting would express a wish that Northern Ireland should cease to be part of the United Kingdom and form part of a united Ireland”. The Northern Ireland assembly has no rights on this issue – only the UK secretary of state can trigger a border poll. By agreeing to this ‘solution’, the British ruling class was effectively making a sop to republicans and signalling that they were prepared to accept the loss of Northern Ireland from the UK, though that possibility was posed in the dim and distant future, if ever at all.
In November 1990, Peter Brooke – then Northern Ireland secretary for the Thatcher government – made a speech to the little-known British Association of Canned Food Importers and Distributors, asserting: “The British government has no selfish strategic or economic interest in Northern Ireland”. His speech was widely interpreted as a calibrated appeal to the republican leadership – whose decades long war with the British state had largely exhausted itself – that the Tories were prepared to talk.
As a leading member of the CWI in Ireland, Peter Hadden, argued in the days after Brooke’s speech: “It is quite true that since the 1960s the strategy of the British ruling class has changed. Under the then economic conditions of boom, with the opening of the southern Irish economy to British investment and goods, and with the threat of socialist revolution off the immediate agenda, they would have preferred to move towards withdrawal and reunification. This is the government’s intent today. But it is something they can never achieve”. (Will Britain Withdraw?, Peter Hadden, 1990)
Things have moved on since the Good Friday Agreement was signed, including important demographic changes in the north (giving Catholics a small majority over Protestants for the first time, but not as an absolute majority in the north as a whole); the pushing back of the power of the Catholic Church in the south; the apparent economic ‘success’ of the south and the north’s continued de-industrialisation and economic decline; and the consequences of Brexit. These and other factors have led many commentators in Ireland and beyond to predict the ‘inevitability’ of a united Ireland. Sinn Féin has pressed hard for a border poll.
However, there is no indication that the majority of working-class Protestants are prepared to acquiesce to a united Ireland, including after a border poll, any more than the majority of working-class Catholics can be reconciled with the northern state, despite the significant changes since the ending of Unionist misrule and institutionalised discrimination, and since the Good Friday Agreement.
Moreover, the conscious act of British imperialism to use sectarianism to divide the working class has come back to haunt it. It’s one thing claiming that they have no ‘strategic interest’ in Northern Ireland, it’s another thing to find a solution to the monster of sectarianism they themselves created.
That’s why Burnham wants to emphasise that a border poll is off the table. Because otherwise a poll on ‘Irish Unity’ would lead to a rapidly deteriorating sectarian head count. Nationalists would in the main vote in favour of a united Ireland, while Unionists would vote to oppose it.
No matter the outcome, nothing in reality would be resolved. If the vote was in favour of Northern Ireland staying as part of the UK, Catholics in the north would be hugely frustrated and still aspire to be part of a united Ireland. If the vote was in favour of reunification, many Protestants would not accept the outcome. The very real possibility of outbreaks of sustained sectarian violence – even a drift towards civil war – would be posed, no matter what various bourgeois constitutional arrangements governments and parties may find themselves discussing and negotiating.
Only when a mass force emerges, based on the common interests and common struggles of the working class in the north, can a socialist way forward be found.
Sectarianising the national question in Scotland?
In the same week as the Celtic Alliance met in Cardiff, four Democratic Unionist Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs) visited Scotland to take part in a conference organised by the Scottish Lodge of the Orange Order. The Shared Heritage, Shared Future summit, was a direct response to the Celtic Alliance gathering, emphasising: “At a time when the Union faces challenges from a relentlessly aggressive political Nationalism, closer cooperation between Unionists in Northern Ireland and Scotland is both necessary and welcome”.
The Orange Order asserted: “We are not the ones who have introduced Northern Irish politics into the political arena in Scotland – that mould has already been set by the Scottish National Party”.
Leave aside the laughable claim that the reactionary and sectarian Orange Order have not introduced Northern Ireland politics into Scotland, do they have a point? It is true that SNP leaders have increasingly aligned themselves with calls for a border poll in Northern Ireland and sought closer political ties with Sinn Féin. Such a political orientation – to a party that bases itself on the sectarian divide – carries with it the dangers of increasing sectarian division in Scotland, where the Irish national question is a live issue. The only way to cut across the danger of deepening divisions among the working class in Scotland is for the building of a working-class and trade union campaign independent of the SNP leadership.
A movement that would fight for the rights of all workers, as well as for the right to self-determination for the Scottish people and for a voluntary socialist confederation of Scotland with England, Wales and Ireland.
What is certain is that on the basis of capitalism there can be no real solution to the national question in Scotland, Wales or Ireland. Devolution has not worked, and not only in Northern Ireland where the assembly has been suspended or collapsed for more than one-third of its existence. Devolved administrations in all three jurisdictions have implemented Westminster austerity to the penny, leaving public services in crisis and an affordable housing emergency that they refuse to resolve. Left in the hands of cuts-making, pro-capitalist parties, a solution to the national division is impossible.
However, the formation of mass workers’ parties fighting on a socialist programme would change that balance of forces. Linking the struggle to overthrow the capitalist elite with a struggle for democratic rights and self-determination would open the door to a just solution to the national question across nations. The vital importance of socialism to emerge as a unifying force that can unite the working class in that struggle is the urgent task of our age.