Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland are all heading for the exit. Ireland is already in the EU. And Clive Ashford-Pemberton is finally, at long last, going to be proven right about everything.
I am writing this from my flat in Schaerbeek—where I have lived since 2016, a decision I made entirely of my own volition—and I want you to know that my hands are shaking. Not from the cold, though Brussels is cold, and my radiator makes a sound that my landlord describes as “character.” My hands are shaking because I have just watched a video that confirms what I have been saying for nine years, at Thursday pub nights, in comment sections, and to my cat Monnet, who is the only member of my household who does not walk away when I start talking about the UK breakup/EU reunification path that has been obvious to anyone paying attention.
The video is from TLDR News, a channel I have followed since its inception and on which I have left several comments that were, I feel, more insightful than the videos themselves. The analysis is straightforward: Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland are all moving toward governments led by parties that want out of the United Kingdom. The SNP is poised for a fifth consecutive victory in Scotland. Plaid Cymru may form the first non-Labour government in Welsh history. Sinn Féin already leads in Northern Ireland. The union, as the presenters note with characteristic British understatement, looks “a bit shaky.”
A bit shaky. We Europeans have a phrase for this level of understatement. Actually, we have several. I rotate three of them, depending on the audience.
The Map Clive Has Been Drawing on Napkins Since 2016
Let me explain what I see, because I have been seeing it for nearly a decade, and I would like credit.
The United Kingdom is not a country. It is a hostage situation with a flag. England voted to leave the European Union in 2016. Scotland voted to remain. Wales voted to leave, but has since changed its mind—recent YouGov polling shows Plaid Cymru surging to 37% in Senedd voting intention, fourteen points clear of Reform UK, with Labour collapsed to 10%. Northern Ireland voted to remain and has been quietly building the institutional architecture for reunification ever since. Ireland, of course, is already in the EU, because Ireland made the correct decision, a phrase I have used approximately four hundred times at dinner parties.
Now assume—and this is not fantasy; this is demographic inevitability filtered through electoral mathematics—that the UK breaks apart. What happens?
Ireland is already home. Northern Ireland reunites with it through the mechanism enshrined in the Good Friday Agreement and walks back into the EU as part of a united Ireland. Scotland, which the SNP has explicitly committed to returning to the European Union, applies for membership under Article 49. Wales, where support for independence has reached a record 26% and climbing, follows the same path. And England—isolated, diminished, stripped of its Celtic appendages and its pretence to greatness—eventually crawls back to Brussels because there is nowhere else to go.
The UK breakup/EU return is not a theory. It is a timetable.
Scotland: The One That Got Away (From England)
I have particular feelings about Scotland, because Scotland is what I would be if I were a country: European in spirit, dragged out of the EU against its will, and absolutely furious about it for the correct number of years, which is all of them.
The May 7th election is shaping up to be extraordinary. The SNP leads comfortably in every poll, with John Swinney positioned to claim a fifth consecutive term. According to Courthouse News Service, Swinney has stated that an SNP majority would put the party in a “much stronger position” to negotiate a mandate for a new independence vote. He has described Brexit’s outcome on Scotland as “truly disastrous” and declared that independence is the only way Scotland can “regain the benefits of EU membership.”
These are words I have said. These are words I said in 2017, at The Dubliner, to a group of British expats who were on their fourth pint and nodding along because they always nod along by the fourth pint. But John Swinney has the advantage of being a First Minister, whereas I am a freelance EU affairs consultant who writes briefing documents for small trade associations. The substance is the same. The platform differs.
The Institute for Government notes that nearly half of Scottish voters consistently say they would vote yes in a second independence referendum. The political landscape has fundamentally shifted since 2014, when the Better Together campaign told Scots that staying in the UK was the only way to remain in the EU. Two years later, England voted to leave. The betrayal is mathematical. I have a spreadsheet.
A YouGov poll found that majorities in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Denmark would support Scotland’s entry into the EU. My Belgian colleagues agree. Well, they tolerate the idea. Tolerance is a form of agreement in Belgium. I have lived here long enough to understand these things.
Wales: The Quiet Revolution
Wales is doing something remarkable and doing it quietly, which is the Welsh way. I say this with affection and also with the authority of someone who visited Cardiff once, in 2012, for a conference on EU structural funds.
Plaid Cymru is on course to become the largest party in the Senedd for the first time in the history of Welsh devolution. The January 2026 YouGov poll is staggering: 37% for Plaid, with seat projections putting them within four seats of an outright majority. Labour, the party that has governed Wales for all twenty-six years of devolution, is polling at 10%. Ten. I have written briefing documents with higher readership than Labour’s Welsh vote share.
Plaid leader Rhun ap Iorwerth has been sensible enough to rule out an independence referendum in his first term—the Welsh public is not quite there yet, with only 26% supporting independence. But as the TLDR analysis notes, this is about groundwork. And groundwork is what we Europeans understand. Jean Monnet once said—I rotate three quotes, but this one is appropriate—“Nothing is possible without men; nothing is lasting without institutions.” Wales is building institutions. England is losing them.
The Institute for Government’s analysis of Welsh independence confirms that the cross-party Independent Commission on the Constitutional Future of Wales found independence to be “a viable option for the future.” A government commission. Using the word “viable.” In a sentence about Wales leaving the United Kingdom. I read this three times and then texted my mother, who did not respond, because she is still processing the text I sent her in 2016 about the moral implications of her vote.
Northern Ireland: The Slow Certainty
Northern Ireland is perhaps the most fascinating case, and I am going to explain it with the care of someone who has read the Good Friday Agreement in full and not just the summary, which is more than most British politicians can say.
Sinn Féin has achieved what TLDR News describes as a “historic hat-trick,” becoming the largest party at Westminster, Stormont, and across local government. Michelle O’Neill serves as First Minister. Catholics now outnumber Protestants for the first time in Northern Irish history. The demographic trajectory is clear. The proportion of those identifying solely as Irish is rising. The proportion identifying as British is falling.
The combined nationalist vote share has hovered around 40% since 1998, while the unionist share has dropped from over 50% to 40%. The rise of the non-sectarian Alliance party suggests that an increasing number of people are not wedded to either camp—but “not wedded to unionism” is, for practical purposes, a step toward reunification. The status quo requires active commitment. Indifference favors change.
Sinn Féin’s call for a referendum by 2030 may be optimistic, but the Good Friday Agreement enshrines the mechanism. The Secretary of State must call a border poll if it appears likely that a majority would vote to leave the UK. This is not aspirational language. This is law. I know the difference because I have a master’s degree in European Studies from the London School of Economics, which my supervisor described as “ambitious.”
The Crown Jewels Are Looking Rather Tarnished
And then there is the monarchy, which I mention because it is the symbolic adhesive of the union, and the adhesive is dissolving in real time.
A February 2026 Savanta poll shows support for the monarchy has fallen to just 45%. As recently as 2020, it was 63%. Among 18 to 24 year olds, support drops to 23%. Among 25 to 34 year olds, 28%. The institution that was supposed to outlast every political crisis is now less popular with young Britons than the European Union ever was.
The Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor situation—I will not call him “Prince,” because he is not one, having been stripped of his titles by a King who moved too slowly according to 72% of the public—has metastasised from a personal scandal into an institutional crisis. Ipsos polling from February 2026 shows that 37% now say abolishing the monarchy would make the country worse, down from 47% just three months earlier. Prince William’s approval has dropped nine points. King Charles’s confidence rating has fallen to 46%.
The monarchy was the one thing that made the United Kingdom feel like a kingdom rather than an administrative arrangement between nations that increasingly dislike each other. Without it, or with a diminished version of it, the emotional case for union evaporates. What remains is an economic argument that Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland have already rejected.
I find myself, for the first time since June 24, 2016, experiencing something my therapist—I see a therapist; we discuss the referendum, though she has asked me to also discuss other things—describes as “hope.”
The European Tide Is Coming In
And it is not just the UK. The European project is experiencing what I can only describe as a gravitational pull, drawing nations closer rather than pushing them apart.
Just yesterday—literally yesterday, as I write this—Iceland’s Prime Minister Kristrún Frostadottir announced that Iceland will hold a referendum on restarting EU accession talks “in the coming months,” accelerating a timeline that was already ambitious. Gallup Iceland shows 55% now support holding the referendum. The geopolitical pressures—Trump’s threats against Greenland, the war in Ukraine, the rising cost of living—have made EU membership not an ideological question but a practical one.
Iceland already participates in the single market, the Schengen zone, and had previously closed 11 of 33 negotiating chapters before freezing talks in 2013. European officials estimate remaining chapters could be finalised within a year. This is a country that could be in the EU before the next UK general election.
Do you see the pattern? Do you see what is happening? The periphery is coming home. Iceland is coming. Scotland will come. Wales will follow. Northern Ireland will come through Ireland. And England—poor, stubborn, magnificent, stupid England—will eventually come too, because the alternative is being a medium-sized island nation with declining institutions, a tarnished monarchy, and no one to blame but itself.
I say this as someone who loves England. I do. I grew up in Surrey. My parents still live there. They voted Leave. Christmas is still tense. But I love England the way you love a family member who has made a catastrophic decision and needs time to realise it. You do not stop loving them. You simply move to Brussels and wait.
The Homecoming Clive Has Been Rehearsing
I have thought about this moment more than I should admit. The moment when the United Kingdom—or whatever successor states emerge from its dissolution—returns to the European Union. I have thought about it on the tram to work. I have thought about it at The Dubliner on Thursday nights. I have thought about it while feeding Monnet, who is named after Jean Monnet, a founding father of the EU, a fact I mention at every opportunity because it tells you everything you need to know about me.
It does.
My mother asked me last Christmas if I was ever coming home. I said, “I am home, Mum. I’m European now.” My father left the room. He always leaves the room. But here is what I did not say, because I had not yet seen the TLDR video, and because the polling data had not yet crystallised into certainty: home is coming to me.
Scotland will join the EU, and I will no longer be the only Briton in my building who chose Europe. Wales will join, and the woman at the bakery will finally have to acknowledge that my decision in 2016 was not, as she once described it, “a bit dramatic.” Northern Ireland will reunite with Ireland and rejoin the community of nations that understands what borders are for, which is to say, not very much. And England will follow, because England always follows eventually, having first spent several decades insisting it was leading.
The United Kingdom is falling apart. I didn’t leave Britain. Britain left me. But now, at last, Britain is on its way back.
I should probably text my mother. She still hasn’t responded to the one I sent in 2016. But I think—and I say this as someone who has fully integrated into continental life—that this time, the message will be different.
This time, I’ll be right. I’ll have been right all along. And being right, as we Europeans understand, is the only thing that matters more than being together.
Although, honestly, I would settle for both.
My hands have stopped shaking. Monnet is asleep on my keyboard. The radiator is making its sound. Brussels is cold, and my flat is small, and my balcony overlooks the tram line, and I am forty-four years old, and I live above a Turkish grocery, and I am European, and for the first time in nine years, I think everything is going to be fine.
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