Brexit Has Brought the Idea of Scottish Independence Back From the Dead

On March 16, Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, stood before reporters on a stairwell at Holyrood, the home of the Scottish Parliament. Theresa May, the prime minister of the United Kingdom, which includes England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, had just dismissed Sturgeon’s public appeals for a second independence referendum, the first of which had failed in 2014. May argued that a Britain in the throes of Brexit should avoid the uncertainty of another independence vote, but to Sturgeon, her words represented “the crystallization of the case for independence.”

As head of the Scottish National Party (SNP), Sturgeon leads a national government that, two years ago, was elected with of the vote since Scotland’s , which transferred some governing powers from the central government of Westminster to the Scottish parliament. She also leads a country where—during last summer’s Brexit referendum, which brought May to power and set Britain on a path to remain in the bloc. “And yet we have a Westminster government with one MP in Scotland thinking it’s got the right to lay down the law,” Sturgeon said on March 16 in Holyrood. “I suspect history will look back on today and see it as the day the fate of the union was sealed.”