Dr Stephen Goss is a freelance historian, lectures in history and politics in London, and is a Conservative councillor in Reading.
The votes were cast and the results are in. To all appearances the ‘pro-union’ parties lost. Labour was rewarded for its abysmal record in national government with the loss of 1,500 council seats, four seats in the Scottish Parliament, and a historic 35 seats in the Senedd. The Conservatives were relegated to fourth place in Wales and fifth in Scotland.
The SNP remained the largest party in Scotland. Plaid Cymru formed a government in Wales for the first time. With no Northern Irish elections until next year, Sinn Féin continue to hold the office of First Minister. As a result, all three devolved governments are now led by nationalists. Representatives of all three parties met – with no sense of irony – at Westminster and spoke, with obvious satisfaction, about a changing political landscape and co-operation to secure national self-determination. How Scots, the Welsh, and Northern Irish are currently denied self-determination was conveniently overlooked. Sinn Féin First Minister Michelle O’Neill claimed the moment was ‘seismic’. SNP First Minister John Swinney is pushing for a second referendum on Scottish independence. Nationalist commentators have gone further, imagining a new Celtic alliance: Scotland, Wales and Irish republicans acting together to force the British state into retreat.
It is an arresting image. It is also deeply misleading.
The election results do not show the peoples of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland marching as one towards the break-up of the United Kingdom. They show something much more prosaic: voters punishing Labour, distrusting the Conservatives and rejecting Reform where Reform looked alien, abrasive or unserious. The nationalist parties have benefited from this discontent. They have not caused a constitutional revolution.
In Scotland the SNP won again – but is not a party on the march. It lost six seats from 2021 and has not won a majority since 2011. The pro-independence arithmetic in Holyrood has given Swinney the basis to stay in government propped up by the Greens, but parliamentary arithmetic is not the same as settled public consent. Scotland has seen this pattern before: a strong SNP machine, a divided opposition and a constitutional demand presented as if it were the obvious meaning of every vote cast. Yet the Scottish electorate has repeatedly shown itself more complicated than that.
Many Scots vote SNP because they think the party defends Scottish interests. Some vote for it because Labour has disappointed them. The Conservatives are toxic in large parts of Scotland. Others vote SNP because Reform looks like an English answer to an English argument. None of that automatically translates into support for independence.
The same is true in Wales. Plaid Cymru’s victory is historic. For the first time since devolution, Labour is no longer the dominant force in Cardiff Bay. That is a major event in Welsh politics and a humiliation for Labour which spent a century behaving as if Wales belonged to it by right. Plaid’s success was not a plebiscite for independence. Plaid won 35.4 per cent of the vote. The majority of Welsh voters chose other parties.
If Wales had suddenly become a nationalist country, the numbers would say so. They do not. They say Welsh Labour collapsed. They show Reform has surged into second place. The Conservatives remain distrusted. They say voters wanted change after years of Labour mismanagement of public services and a wider sense that the old Welsh political settlement had run out of road. Plaid was the best-positioned vehicle for that protest. That does not mean Wales is looking for independence.
Then there is Northern Ireland.
Sinn Féin’s position is always treated by British and Irish commentators as if it contains a kind of historical inevitability. Demographic change, republican discipline, unionist division, and Dublin’s growing confidence are all woven into the same story: Irish unity is coming, and only the date remains uncertain. However, contrary to the claims of various politicians, there is no such thing as the ‘right side of history’.
For all Sinn Féin’s talk of preparing for a new Ireland, its becoming the largest party at Stormont and the Opposition in the Dáil, the recent by-elections in the Republic show it has peaked. Sinn Féin failed in both Dublin Central and Galway West. In Dublin Central, the Social Democrats won. In Galway, Fine Gael won. Dublin Central is particularly embarrassing as it is party leader Mary-Lou McDonald’s own constituency.
Sinn Féin has spent years presenting itself as the coming party of government in Dublin. It has tried to be radical and respectable, populist and managerial, nationalist and socially progressive all at once. The result is increasingly incoherent. On housing, immigration, taxation, policing, and social policy it is pulled in different directions. The party’s old confidence has been replaced by defensive messaging. Even on its home ground of Dublin, voters are not behaving as if the future belongs to Mary Lou McDonald.
This matters for the wider ‘Celtic alliance’ because Sinn Féin is supposed to be one of its pillars. Yet a pillar that cannot win a by-election in the Republic is not proof of irresistible nationalist momentum. It is proof that nationalism, once tested against ordinary domestic politics, becomes just another party programme – and often a vulnerable one.
The proposed alliance between the SNP, Plaid Cymru, and Sinn Féin is therefore less a constitutional earthquake than an exercise in political branding. It allows three parties to tell themselves a flattering story. The SNP can pretend that its stalled independence project is part of a wider historical wave. Plaid can present a Welsh protest vote as a national awakening. Sinn Féin can wrap its recent disappointments in the language of destiny.
There is, of course, a lesson here for unionists: they should not be complacent. The Union is not defended merely by pointing out that nationalists have failed to win majority consent. It has to be made to work and the benefits demonstrated. The DUP maintain a siege mentality approach, but a successful Union cannot be built on panic. Nor can it be built on nostalgia. It must be built on competence, its many advantages, and confidence.
The Celtic alliance depends on a sleight of hand. It turns anti-Labour feeling into pro-independence sentiment. It turns Conservative unpopularity into constitutional consent. It turns Reform’s rejection into nationalist affirmation. That is wishful thinking dressed up as strategy.
The majority of voters in these contests did not vote for the nationalist party. In Wales, most voters did not vote Plaid. In Scotland, most voters did not vote SNP. In the Republic’s by-elections, Sinn Féin could not win. Across these islands, the evidence points not to a great nationalist rising but to a fractured electorate shopping around for alternatives to parties it no longer trusts.
That is uncomfortable for Labour, damaging for the Conservatives and disappointing for Reform.
But it is not fatal for the United Kingdom.
A Celtic alliance may make good headlines. It may produce dramatic speeches, joint statements and carefully staged photographs. It may even unsettle a Westminster class that too often remembers devolution only when it becomes a problem. It is not a popular mandate to break up Britain – it is the attempt of three nationalist parties to utilise protest votes for permission.