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But before Johnson’s message was relayed, Scottish Prime Minister Nicola Sturgeon uttered his own address. In doing so, he revealed the uncomfortable reality that Johnson has little practical power over people living in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.
Of Johnson’s road map, Sturgeon said the Scottish government “had not yet seen all the details of the plan, so it is not possible that we would simply adopt it for Scotland,” and that she had asked Downing Street “to did not display its Stay Alert “‘advertising campaign in Scotland.” The message was still clearly “stay home.”
It was, of course, her right to do so. “For about 20 years, the UK government has only really been the government of England in large areas of politics,” says John Denham, a former labor lawmaker and professor of English identity at the University of Southampton.
Since the late 1990s, Westminster has ceded a great deal of power to the legislative bodies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, allowing delegated governments to establish internal policies in areas such as health and education.
Therefore, it is not surprising that Sturgeon was confused when Johnson began talking about the opening of schools, among other things, on Sunday night. “Speaking of schools, for example, he used annual group terms that don’t even make sense in Scotland. It was not at all clear in the statement what guidance applied to the whole of the UK and what specifically applied to England,” says Nicola McEwen, Professor of Territorial Policy at the University of Edinburgh.
Sources inside Downing Street told CNN that Johnson himself thought the message was confusing. “Filming was a total nightmare. He was stopping and starting, asking to change parts, complaining about the duration, saying everything was too complex,” said a government source who was not allowed to speak on the record.
While this could give little comfort to those in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, which all too often feel like an afterthought, it has raised important questions about how much longer the current deal can continue, and also how desirable it is. All three delegated administrations have deviated from Westminster in their handling of this crisis, despite the perception that Johnson and Downing Street have been driving the coronavirus response across the UK.
The most striking example of this occurred on Wednesday morning, when images flooded the social networks of commuters on London’s transport network, as large parts of England went back to work. In stark contrast, the other three nations, which advise people to stay at home, keep their economies in a tighter blockade. In England, now you can meet someone else outside your home in public, that’s not something you can do anywhere else in the UK.
Denham thinks the pandemic has been a wake-up call on how different the four nations have become. “Relatively speaking, England has a much weaker state than the other three and has a much more centralized center of power. Coronavirus has revealed that on some key issues the other nations cannot and do not want to work with England and how is governed. “
McEwen agrees that the pandemic has shed light on asymmetric political power in the UK, which had been beaten in the past four years of the country’s Brexit debate.
“The strained relations between the UK government and delegated governments in recent years have been exacerbated by the fact that the four nations are now led by different political parties that have different ideologies and different ideas about the future of the UK” .
All of this creates a political headache for Johnson, who in addition to being prime minister, is also the leader of what is officially still the conservative and unionist party. Shortly after entering Downing Street last year, Johnson was appointed Union Minister, signaling his commitment to strengthen ties between the four nations, after the damage Brexit had caused.
The leading conservative unionists told CNN that their perception is that Johnson did this to keep his own party happy, rather than a sincere desire to protect the union. His concern is not that he wants to actively see the end of the union, but that the union he wants to preserve is one with England in the center, from London.
The problem is that this view of the union is not particularly popular in any corner of the UK outside the capital. “English voters, especially, leave voters, tend to prioritize their English identity, and want English interests to put themselves ahead of the Union,” says Denham. “It is not that they are anti-union, it is that their idea of Britishness is like an extension of English and English interests. If the two conflict, they prioritize English interests.”
This English-centric vision of the union is understandably irritating in other parts of the UK. “There is a feeling in Wales that Westminster does not particularly understand or respect the return,” says Roger Awan-Scully, professor of politics at Cardiff University and president of the Association for Political Studies. “When it comes to that, they see delegated governments as a necessary irritation. The coronavirus has definitely put some of this into sharper focus.”
Northern Ireland again a “place between”
The union issue is arguably the most complicated in Northern Ireland. The National Assembly in Stormont is based on a power-sharing agreement between Unionists and Republicans. The recent history of the island of Ireland means that virtually no problem can affect Stormont without being politicized.
The coronavirus has offered Republicans the opportunity to argue that an Ireland-wide approach would be preferable to Northern Ireland keeping in touch with Britain. “When you think about it from a nationalistic point of view, Ireland is an island. We can close the external borders and manage this as a single island. It makes a lot of sense to them,” says Katy Hayward of Queen’s University Belfast.
However, unionists would point to the importance of financial support from the UK government during the crisis. Hayward points out. “The five-party executive has had to look in two directions at once, to handle the fact that Northern Ireland is very much a ‘middle ground’.”
While no one believes that the Covid-19 pandemic will lead to the union’s death, Johnson’s handling of the crisis has exacerbated divisions among his four nations at a time when the UK was already in the midst of an existential crisis. about Brexit.
“The idea of English-centered union was promoted as part of imperial Great Britain,” says Denham. “The truth is that the old union idea lost its sense of purpose decades ago. And at that time, the other parts of the union claimed their identity (or in Northern Ireland, identities). If the government really wants the union to survive it has to be an association between all nations. “
The question is: do the English, who represent over 80% of the UK, really care enough about saving the union to do so?
