On March 29 Tim Barrow, UK Permanent Representative to the EU, handed EU Council President Donald Tusk UK Prime Minister Theresa May's letter triggering Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, the mechanism for nations to exit the European Union. In London, in the House of Commons, the UK Prime Minister announced: "This is a historic moment from which there can be no turning back." Invoking Article 50 opened a two year window for Britain, after having been a member for 44 years, to negotiate an exit agreement from the EU. By all accounts the negotiations promise to be messy and acrimonious. Within the UK the British government needs to start working on an enormous legislative to-do list. CNN published "50 things the UK needs to do after triggering Article 50." These include transposing all current EU laws into the UK statute books. "Nearly 20,000 EU legislative acts are in force, dictating everything from how much clean energy a country should use to the acceptable curvature of a grocery store banana." (Kara Fox et.al., CNN, March 29, 207). Within the remaining 27 EU bloc members' attitudes towards Britain have significantly hardened. The concern is that the bloc can't afford to grant Britain a better deal outside of the EU than it had in it. They can't afford to set a precedent other current members might want to take advantage of in the future. Ms. May proclaimed that she recognizes that negotiations will be difficult, and that "there will be consequences for the United Kingdom of leaving the EU." Not all of these consequences are existential. Some of these could well pop up in her own backyard, threatening to dismantle the cohesion of the UK as it exists today.
The most immediate threat to UK cohesion is Scotland's demand for another referendum on independence. Scotland's First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, angered Theresa May days before March 29 by calling for a new referendum to be held in early 2019. In their 2014 referendum Scotland voted to stay in the UK by a 55%-45% margin. But in the Brexit referendum Scotland voted 62% to 38% to remain in the European Union, in dramatic contrast to the overall outcome. On March 31, when Ms. Sturgeon, with support of the Scottish Parliament, sent a pointed request to the UK Prime Minister, she remarked that: "The UK government has decided to remove Scotland not just from the European Union but from the single market as well, and that is clearly against the will of the majority of people who live here." Ms. May has already said that the referendum cannot happen until two years from now when Britain leaves the European Union. (Steven Erlanger, "Brexit Moves Drives the Push," NY Times, April 2, 2017.) In reality the British government would need to give permission for such a referendum. Its Prime Minister has made it clear in the past that keeping the UK intact was a priority of her premiership, reiterating: "It means we believe in the Union; The precious bond between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland." Even if Ms. Sturgeon succeeds in completing a successful referendum, Scotland would the need to apply for EU membership, which could well take several more years.
Another potentially significant challenge to UK unity rests in Ireland. Ireland consists of the independent Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, which is now a part of the UK. The Good Friday Agreement - a.k.a. the Belfast Agreement - which ended what was referred to euphemistically as "The Troubles," that lasted from the late 1960s until the agreement was signed on April 10, 1998, stipulated that: "The agreement reached that Northern Ireland would remain part of the UK until a majority, both of the people of Northern Ireland and of the Republic of Ireland wished otherwise. Should that happen, then the British and Irish government would be under a "binding obligation" to implement that choice." As long as the UK and Ireland were members of the EU, this agreement held together quite comfortably. The UK is the Republic of Ireland's biggest trading partner. Around $1.3 billion worth of goods and services criss - cross the border every week. However, after Brexit the Irish border becomes an EU frontier. While currently no border controls exist between the signatories, Brexit would prompt the EU to re-establish customs barriers, thereby increasing the cost of doing business. Besides, Brexit would also end the 3.5 billion Euros in farm subsidies and structural grants Northern Ireland is receiving for the 2014-2020 period. Needless to say, the push to unify the two Irish entities is intensifying. Sinn Fein MPs are already touring England and Scotland to open the
unity debate. According to Pat Doherty, one of the MPs, "It isn't a matter of if we will achieve a united Ireland, it is a matter of how and when."
And finally there is the matter of Gibraltar. This British Overseas Territory on Spain's south coast with a population of 30,000 voted overwhelmingly, by 96 percent, to stay in the EU during the Brexit referendum, even though most of its inhabitants apparently want to remain British subjects. This territory, ceded to Britain by Spain in 1713, is twelve miles off the coast of Africa. It borders Spain, and it houses a British military base. After Brexit Spain could effectively isolate Gibraltar by reinforcing border controls that now don't exist. The European Council, whose members comprise the EU member states, shocked Downing Street recently by announcing that Gibraltar could only be included in a trade deal between London and Brussels with Spain's consent, effectively giving the latter a veto over whether any deal would apply to this territory.
Thus far last June's vote to exit the EU has appeared much less consequential than initially expected. However, the effects of actually initiating the divorce negotiations will relatively soon begin to sink in. It is not clear that Brexit's potentially destabilizing effect on domestic cohesion was anticipated. The British government recently did appoint a functionary whose sole task is to head off any potential Brexit-related consequential challenges to national unity. Nevertheless, David Martin, Scotland's longest serving Member of the European Parliament, made headlines just a few days ago predicting that the United Kingdom would no longer exist unless a "flexible and imaginative" Brexit solution could be found for Scotland.
It is clear that Britain's Prime Minister will have her hands full during the next few years.
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