A Disunited Kingdom Falls Apart

The 2016 Brexit referendum has largely been framed as the United Kingdom’s voting to return sovereignty from Brussels to London. But in answering one nationalist call, the country has unleashed yet more nationalist forces that threaten to fracture its union.

The United Kingdom is made up of four nations: England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. In the three years since the vote to leave the European Union, Scotland’s independence movement, which was stymied by a failed referendum in 2014, has resurfaced. Calls for a similar poll in Northern Ireland, which would raise the prospect of reunification with the Republic of Ireland, have grown. Even in Wales—which, unlike Scotland and Northern Ireland, favored leaving the EU—nationalist sentiment appears to be increasing.

Brexiteers have largely branded Brexit as