One-fifth of Scots would vote to abolish devolution, according to a poll conducted last month for Progress Scotland, a think-tank owned by SNP government minister Angus Robinson. YouGov found similar opposition to devolution in 2021 – consistently high backing for a cause that no serious party supports.
There are several fringe parties advocating closure of the Scottish parliament. While they have no electoral presence, a call they made for tactical voting in 2021 helped cost the SNP its majority, according to Glasgow-based Prof John Curtice, the UK’s best-known polling expert.
Abolition of the Welsh assembly is even more popular, backed by more than a quarter of people in the region, also according to YouGov. Wales has a party for this cause, the appropriately named Abolish. It won 4 per cent of the regional vote in the last assembly election and was on double that in preceding opinion polls. These are good showings for a single-issue party in Britain, even under a form of proportional representation. Abolition campaigners in Scotland and Wales believe they are bearing a torch for what will inevitably become a mainstream issue. In Northern Ireland, that day may be closer than is widely realised.
During the two lengthy collapses of Stormont over the past decade the public made it clear in elections and opinion polls that their overwhelming preference was for devolution to be restored. This view was shared across unionism and nationalism; Sinn Féin and the DUP each caused a collapse and saw their vote fall sharply as a result. It has since become an article of faith in northern politics that whatever Stormont’s shortcomings, devolution itself has robust public backing.
That may be true when the choice is between Stormont or limbo – a choice artificially created by the UK government’s refusal to take control during recent collapses. A radically different picture emerges if the choice is widened out to include other means of governing Northern Ireland, such as direct rule or a united Ireland.
A quarter of the population preferring direct rule, presumably encompassing half or more of the unionist population, is no marginal phenomenon
Questions of this type have been asked by the long-running Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey, a joint project by both the region’s universities. Analysis of its results published this June by the Institute for Government, a non-partisan UK think-tank, found support for devolution has dropped from 60 per cent a decade ago to under 40 per cent last year. Stormont’s welfare reform crisis from 2012 to 2015 started the rot so the decline predates the EU referendum. After the welfare crisis was resolved there was a brief rise in support for devolution, until the 2016 renewable heat incentive resumed the downward trend. The conclusion may be unsurprising but it is significant enough to bear repeating: a decade of dysfunction has steadily undermined Stormont’s credibility to the point where a clear majority of the public would prefer something else.
Naturally – and luckily for Stormont – people are divided on what that alternative might be. Preference for a united Ireland has risen from a quarter to a third, levelling off just shy of support for devolution. This increase began two years after the EU referendum so it appears to be driven more by nationalist exasperation with Stormont than by Brexit.
Support for direct rule, the unionist alternative, sits at about 15 per cent. However, it spiked at 25 per cent in 2015 and again in 2019, the heights of the welfare crisis and the collapse caused by the renewable heat incentive. A quarter of the population preferring direct rule, presumably encompassing half or more of the unionist population, is no marginal phenomenon.
One-tenth of Life and Times respondents support an independent Northern Ireland, an outcome associated with eccentric loyalism, although not confined to it.
All these figures exclude people who answered don’t know or gave other options such as full UK integration. Integrationism, with Northern Ireland governed no differently to Yorkshire, was mainstream unionist opinion in the 1980s and 1990s.
As Stormont’s unpopularity is disguised by an orange/green split over alternatives, its survival depends on both sides continuing to disagree. That might seem like a safe if unhappy basis for staggering on. Realistically, direct rule is the only alternative and no foreseeable UK government will offer it, nor will any Irish government agree to it. But the failure of public services over which Stormont already presides creates a vacuum that demands to be filled. Partial alternatives, such as rolling back devolution, are plausible: the welfare crisis was resolved by Sinn Féin and the DUP handing powers back to London.
There is some evidence from Britain that frustration with devolution can blur constitutional divides. In YouGov’s 2021 poll, more than a fifth of previous nationalist Plaid Cymru voters wanted to abolish the Welsh assembly.
Of course, Northern Ireland believes its constitutional divide runs deeper. Stormont seems determined to put that to the test.