As the debate over Britain’s future in the European Union gathers pace and heat, there has been much discussion of what might happen if voters in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales disagree. What if the U.K. were to leave based on the English vote alone?
Would such an outcome provide the “material change“ in circumstances cited by the Scottish National Party’s (SNP) leadership as a potential trigger for a second independence referendum? What would such a decision mean for support for independence in Scotland and Wales? Could there even be implications for the peace deal in Northern Ireland, as the Irish prime minister recently suggested?
At the same time, rather less attention has been paid to the potential for another, equally plausible, outcome. What if England votes narrowly in favor of leaving the EU, but is kept in Europe by its more Europhile U.K. neighbors? Could such an outcome trigger calls from England for further loosening of ties within the U.K.?
A Nation Divisible
All recent survey and polling data confirm that such a gap does indeed exist. Recent polls suggest support for leaving the EU could be as low as 25 percent in Northern Ireland and 36 percent in Scotland. In Wales it sits at 45 percent. Meanwhile, in England, 48 percent say they would leave (based on averaging recent opinion polls in each country, excluding those who do not know how they will vote).
At the moment then, the polls point to all four countries voting to remain in the EU. But the margin of support for remaining is clearly narrower in England than elsewhere.
Some relatively simple modeling (multiplying the estimated leave vote in each country by that country’s percentage share of the U.K. population and then summing the totals) enables us to estimate a “tipping point” for votes in England. Above that point, England could take the rest of the U.K. out of the EU against its will. Below it, and England might be kept in the EU against its will by its neighbors.
