As Americans, when we think of “England” these days, we all too often are really thinking of the United Kingdom. The UK is actually called the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and encompasses England, as well as Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.
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Here’s the problem: England is basically carrying the rest of the country. Would it be better if England went back to being, just… England? Would it be better for England if the United Kingdom became disunited?
The Daily Sceptic’s Clive Pinder has some thoughts.
The United Kingdom no longer behaves like a unified nation-state. It behaves like an exhausted multinational holding company, held together by inertia, nostalgia, transfer payments and the BBC weather map.
Scotland increasingly votes as if it is a Nordic social democracy trapped against its will in Thatcher’s ghost. Wales leans permanently towards public sector socialism. Northern Ireland is basically a theological argument attached to a motorway network. Meanwhile England generates most of the tax revenue and carries most of the economic weight – then gets told by its own governing class that expressing the slightest English self-interest is somehow vulgar and racist.
England now feels like the chap paying alimony to three ex-wives who all say he was useless.
That has a slightly familiar ring to it. Here in the United States, the red (Republican) jurisdictions are the primary drivers of economic activity. That dichotomy, in economic activity, between red and blue is only growing more pronounced as the Great Sorting continues. England, though, is a much smaller nation; there aren’t any really red jurisdictions to flee to, unless one chooses to emigrate.
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Even so, England, sans Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, would still have the UK’s primary city and center of economic activity – London – and would still have an economy the size of the economy of France.
The economic numbers are revealing. England already accounts for roughly 85% of UK GDP. Strip away Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and England would still possess an economy of around $3.5 trillion to $3.7 trillion. That would leave it roughly the size of France and still among the seven or eight largest economies on Earth.
More importantly, England’s GDP per head would remain among the richest major nations in the world. London would still be London. One of the planet’s dominant financial capitals, legal centres and cultural magnets. The Bank of England would remain. The City would remain. Most corporate headquarters would remain. Heathrow would not suddenly drift into the North Sea.
Know who else would remain? The hordes of Third World “migrants” that the UK has allowed to flood across the Channel.
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But an independent England may have more latitude to deal with problems like this. An independent England may just foster enough fortitude to start sending the “migrants” home – or giving them a free bus ticket to Wales or Scotland.
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The problem is this: The United Kingdom has been united since 1801. There are a lot of questions that would have to be answered before England could jettison Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. What about military basing and defense? Would the cast-off provinces, states, whatever they might be called (they were, once, kingdoms in their own right) shelter under England’s defensive umbrella? What about the big Royal Navy bases HMNB Clyde and HMS Gannet, in Scotland? Would Scotland keep those? The Royal Navy’s primary ports are in Devonshire and England, but what would become of the two in Scotland?
Also, what about families that would be divided by the new national lines? Would there be a free-travel agreement, like in Europe, where travel by road, bicycle, shank’s mare, whatever, is more or less wide-open?
What about trade? It would be to England’s advantage, perhaps, to leave off with the drag from the other states, but what could Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland do? Northern Ireland could always apply to re-unite with the rest of Ireland, but Wales and Scotland would quickly be looking for a new way to bring in business.
It’s an interesting proposition, but the problem is, it’s got almost no chance of happening. The UK is an old, mostly ossified country now. They are suffering a slow demographic suicide, and they seem unable to resist the influx of third-world immigration, which is transforming parts of the country into third-world enclaves. It’s a sad pass for a country that was once America, Original Recipe, but now, in 2026, it seems not even a breakup will save them – the only chance Britain has of remaining British is to deal with their immigration crisis. And there’s where they may be a glimmer of hope, if the UK’s reformers can take control.
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On that, everything depends – for the UK, and for England.
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