The State of the Union: Does Labour require a self-conscious unionism?

Of the pools of ink spilled on the multifaceted crises faced by the newly elected Labour government, very little of it has been used to talk about the break-up of Britain. Indeed, it would seem that the territorial union is one of the few areas of public policy in which Labour ought not to employ crisis thinking – the results of the General Election saw the party establish significant majorities in England, Scotland and Wales, and the myriad Brexit-related challenges to the union appear to have receded.

In such a climate, it is perhaps hard to envision the value of an interrogation into the relationship between the Labour Party and the concept of ‘unionism’. Recent tracts on the history of the party have largely avoided any formal excavation of Labour’s political thought on the union, in favour of discussions of the concepts of ‘modernisation’ and the ‘inequality paradigm’.^[i] A more cynical view, that the study of unionism is widely perceived as ‘dull and monochrome’ or ‘an intellectual dead end’, may also apply here.^[ii]

In any case, attempts to understand what unionism means in the context of the contemporary Labour Party are thin on the ground, with the most relevant resources being more general studies of territorial politics in the UK or more narrow analyses of the thought practices and strategies of the Scottish and Welsh Labour parties.^[iii] This stands in stark contrast to the Conservative Party, whose approach to the union and territorial politics has been well studied in recent years.^[iv]

This essay cannot possibly fill this lacuna. There is clearly a need for an in-depth study of Labour’s approach to territorial politics and the exact form and character of its ‘unionism’, that would seek to update the excellent, though now outdated, literature from the 1970s and 1980s on this topic.^[v] Instead, it seeks to interrogate an important, though rarely asked, question – does the Labour Party require a self-conscious unionism? In other words, should the Labour Party articulate a cohesive and internally consistent vision of the future of the union, or should it maintain its historical position of averting a decisive reckoning with questions of nation and state?^[vi]

In proposing this question, this essay seeks to convey four key points. The first is that analyses of Labour’s unionism need to pay close attention to its relationship with the party’s wider ideological traditions and seek to understand the challenges of reconciling social democracy with multinational unionism (or, indeed, the challenges social democratic parties have in conveying national solidarity alongside class solidarity).^[vii]

Secondly, it seeks to emphasise that the Labour Party, historically and contemporaneously, possesses competing unionisms which, in times of stability are oblique, but are rendered visible at crisis points. Competing visions and conceptualisations of unionist politics are natural in a big-tent, expansive political party, but the cohabitation between different unionisms has been profoundly stress-tested both in the devolution battles of the 1970s and in the recent post-Brexit era of territorial political tensions.

Thirdly, it seeks to engage with the unionist credentials of the current iteration of the Labour Party. It concludes that the current Labour hierarchy demonstrates shades of post-war unionism which posits economic vitality as the fundamental solvent for the union. Such an approach, which can be understood as a ‘passive unionism’, seeks not to engage with complex questions of constitutional change or national identity and instead relies solely on governing competence and economic stability.

Lastly, it critiques the notion that such a passive unionism will be resilient in the face of future challenges to territorial stability in the UK. While the waters are currently calm, there are several future political forces (such as demographic change, geopolitical shocks and continued social disorder) that could reintroduce territorial tensions and, once again, shine a light on the competing unionist visions that exist within the party. In this vein, it calls for more thinking, in both the academic and public policy spheres, on what 21^st-century Labour unionism could, and should, look like.

Unions and unionisms

In the UK context, unionism takes on an elliptical character. It has been readily conceptualised as an ideology, a political practice, a ‘process of nation-building’ or in the context of political strategy.[viii] Its definition takes on further complication given that it is understood differently in different parts of the United Kingdom – the emotionally fraught connotations of ‘unionism’ in Northern Ireland are far removed from decidedly more banal and less politicised manifestations of unionism elsewhere in the UK.^[ix] Despite these challenges, unionism is most widely conceived of as an ideology. More specifically, it is seen as a variant of nationalism, which, unlike assimilationist and homogenising nationalisms elsewhere, accepts the plurinational nature of the British state and affords institutional recognition to the various nations that compose the union.^[x]

Michael Freeden’s influential approach to nationalism as ideology may serve to facilitate a better understanding of contemporary unionism.^[xi] His conceptualisation of nationalism as a ‘thin-centred’ ideology which, in comparison to liberalism, socialism and fascism, ‘is limited in ideational ambitions and scope’ and does not provide comprehensive answers to questions of social justice, economic distribution or the exercise of political power.^[xii] Nationalism can therefore only be made fully intelligible when considered in conjunction with more expansive ‘host’ ideologies.^[xiii]

Applying this approach to unionism justifies the exploration not of a singular unionism, but unionisms.^[xiv] Approaching unionism as a thin-centred ideology necessitates dedicated study of unionism in the context of Labour’s social democratic traditions, as such a unionism will necessarily take on a different character to conservative, liberal, fascist or communist variants. Grappling with the concept of Labour’s unionism therefore requires an understanding of the party’s wider intellectual and ideological traditions, as well as the ‘sedimented layers [of] its past’ that may enable or disable new unionist visions to emerge.^[xv]

As above, lack of the study of Labour unionism in recent years is made all the more striking when compared to its competitor parties, whose respective positions on the union are much easier to identify and characterise. The (re-) emergence of ‘muscular unionism’ within the Conservative Party has been presented as a novelty by some but is, in reality, a reversion to the mean after the brief caesura of devolutionary accommodation adopted under David Cameron’s leadership (which looks particularly jarring when situated in the post-Thatcher history of the party).^[xvi] Whilst there are small federalist and passionate devolutionist pockets within the party, the default setting of the post-Thatcher Conservative Party has been to stubbornly resist (or, at least, remain sceptical) of devolution. This scepticism exists for reasons of statecraft (devolution would pave the road for secession) and free-market dogma (devolution represents an unnecessary extra layer of statism).[xvii]  

Easier to decipher still is the unionist credentials of the Liberal Democrats. The party has steadfastly maintained a commitment to a federal UK (embedded in the party constitution and arising from its older Home Rule tradition), which aligns with other revisionist positions they have adopted on matters of state, which include the House of Lords and electoral reform.[xviii] In this sense, the federalist stance is but a manifestation of a wider critique of the sclerotic character of the unreformed British state.

Labour’s unionism

It is undoubtedly true that Labour is a unionist party, insofar as it believes in the preservation of the UK as a multinational state. However, beyond this statement, it is incredibly difficult to articulate exactly what characterises Labour’s unionism – both the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties possess a degree of unionist coherence that is decidedly absent within Labour. The contemporary history of the party demonstrates a tension between a centralising (and, in many respects conservative) vision of nation and state and a reformist desire for greater institutional and political recognition of the UK’s multinational character.

It was the former that was predominant in the post-war era, which has been retrospectively conceptualised as the apotheosis of ‘banal unionism’, ‘steady-state unionism’ or, indeed, the ‘British Nation’.[xix] Between 1945 and the shock election of Plaid Cymru and SNP candidates  (at Labour’s expense) in the mid-1960s, Labour’s older Home Rule tradition was jettisoned in favour of the view that a large degree of political centralism was required to successfully execute socialist planning and maintain the universalism of the welfare state.^[xx] Whilst alternative, more devolutionist, conceptions of the union lurked beneath, the official position of the party was steadfast support for a British political tradition that venerated a strong government at the political centre with the ability to rapidly deliver on matters of social and economic policy.^[xxi] Such a policy approach does not equate to assimilationism (Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland retained their historical distinctiveness throughout) but reflected a desire to avoid excessive deployment of nationalism as a symbolic resource, in favour of a class-based and distinctively ‘British’ platform.^[xxii]

The full extent of the territorial identity crisis the party experienced in the 1970s cannot be done justice here, though it is safe to say that the emergence of the SNP (and to a lesser extent Plaid Cymru) as political forces made apparent the tensions between various factions with competing visions of the future of the union; traditionalists (who believed in maintenance of the status quo), devolutionists (who believed in the merit of devolution as a matter of principle) and the government itself, which was divided on the issue but was simultaneously animated by electoral imperatives.^[xxiii] These tensions reached their apogee in the debates preceding the failed referendum on Scottish and Welsh assemblies in 1979, in which predominantly English Labour MPs imposed the fateful Cunningham amendment which eventually felled Scotland’s devolution referendum and led to the downfall of the Callaghan government.^[xxiv] Labour’s inability to decisively reconcile competing visions of the union ultimately played a significant part in their banishment into opposition for 18 years.

The decline of the SNP’s Westminster influence and the Labour party’s post-election descent into self-recrimination and fragmentation saw union issues lose political saliency in the decade following 1979. However, the unpopularity of the Thatcher governments in Scotland, as well as the influence of a younger generation of more consciously Scottish Labourites in Gordon Brown, Donald Dewar and Robin Cook, led to a ‘tartanisation’ of the Scottish Labour Party and saw the introduction of the notion that the Thatcher governments possessed ‘no mandate’ in Scotland.^[xxv]  The Labour elite in Wales, similarly jaded with Thatcherite dominance, experienced a similar conversion to ‘unionist-nationalism’ in the 1980s, though there was less public demand for devolution than in Scotland.^[xxvi] As Arthur Aughey has highlighted, there was clearly an imperative for a future Labour government to recognise the demands for devolved institutional recognition, whilst also retaining the party’s traditional role as a ‘self-consciously unifying force’.^[xxvii]

Just as New Labour’s ‘Third Way’ sought to achieve triangulation between new right capitalism and social democracy, so too did its devolutionist stance represent a triangulation between the prevailing model of centralising unionism and a formal, federal constitution. In both Scotland and, eventually, Wales, legislative devolution was granted, though the sovereignty of the Westminster parliament remained sacrosanct. Retrospective analyses of the views of the party hierarchy demonstrated that devolution emerged more as a result of political compromise than deeply felt belief, with Tony Blair himself decidedly sceptical of the merits of devolution (and whose centralising disposition is well known).^[xxviii] This position stood in contrast to a more ardently regionalist strain of thought, embodied in John Prescott, a more actively ‘Scottish’ party hierarchy north of the border or elements of the wider centre-left milieu who were more supportive of a more expansive and cohesive programme of constitutional reform.^[xxix] The eventual devolution programme represented a compromise that glossed over these different visions of the union.

Just as was the case with devolution referendum of 1979 (and the debates that preceded it), the recent ‘crisis of the union’ (which can roughly be dated from the Scottish Independence Referendum in 2014 to the agreement of the Windsor Framework in 2023) shone a light on Labour’s lack of an overarching strategy to territorial politics.^[xxx]

The political challenges to the union in this period are well documented; the narrow-run victory in the 2014 IndyRef; the SNP electoral landslide in the 2015 General Election; the lack of agreement across the nations in the Brexit referendum; the Conservative government’s approach to Brexit negotiations, which riled devolved leaders; the fraught conflict over the Northern Ireland Protocol and the emergence of the so-called ‘Irish Sea Border’; the frequent contravention of the Sewel Convention (which stipulates that Westminster will ‘not normally’ legislate against the wishes of devolved parliaments); the passage of the UK Internal Market Act; the Supreme Court case into a future independence referendum; and the Conservative government’s decision to functionally veto gender self-ID legislation passed by the Scottish parliament. Not since the debates over Irish Home Rule a century earlier had territorial politics in the UK been so fraught and contested.

Tensions in Labour’s approach became manifest in all four corners of the union. The Independence Referendum demonstrated Labour’s struggles in articulating an affective case for the union to accompany their economic critique of nationalism.[xxxi] Post-Brexit, Labour was politically sandwiched between the SNP’s pro-European nationalism and the ‘muscular unionism’ of the Conservative Party and was unable to square the central party’s desire to promote national cohesiveness at the UK level and the Scottish Labour Party’s soft-nationalist credentials.^[xxxii] The admission by former Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale of voting strategically for the SNP is indicative of the constitutional turmoil the party found itself in over the twin issues of independence and Brexit.^[xxxiii]

Wales was decidedly less problematic from an electoral point of view, but scholars have noted a hardening of Welsh Labour’s quasi-federalist constitutional stance, which contests the muscular approach of recent Conservative governments and deviates greatly from the perspective taken by most of the central Labour Party hierarchy.^[xxxiv]

The party of the Good Friday Agreement possessed little in the way of imaginative critique of the Conservatives’ approach to the challenges of managing Northern Ireland’s exit from the EU. Indeed, scholars have noted the collective self-delusion and ignorance of the unionist parties when it comes to Northern Irish politics.^[xxxv]

And Labour’s internal vacillation over Brexit, and eventual endorsement of a second referendum, undoubtedly damaged its reputation amongst the self-consciously ‘English’, who tended to favour Brexit.^[xxxvi] Whilst the development of a political strategy and unionist vision that satisfied all four parts of the UK was a unicorn, Labour’s approach to territorial politics throughout Brexit was anomic – buffeted by political trends as opposed to animated by a cohesive unionist vision.

As such, few could argue that the party has possessed a coherent conception of the British state and the union throughout its recent history. Since the 1960s, its policies and communications, often responsive to short-term political trends, have at no point demonstrated a self-confident and internally coherent articulation of what the UK territorial state should look like.

It is here that the relationship between Labour’s nature as a broad-based, ideologically diverse political party and the various visions of the union advanced by party members and groupings requires further interrogation. Labour’s differing approaches to the union are best understood relative to the socialist, liberal/pluralist, social democratic and centrist traditions within the party.[xxxvii] Unlike the Conservatives, whose ideological diversity has been historically paved over by a collective belief in ‘statecraft’ and the inherent value of the UK’s unique constitutional arrangements, Labour contains differing traditions that take radically different positions on the nature of the British state and the desirability of reform.[xxxviii] It is eminently possible, and indeed likely, that Labour’s historic inability to arrive at an internally consistent unionism is partially a result of the often uneasy cohabitation of these different traditions within the party. Future scholarship on Labour’s ideological history and approach to territorial politics ought to be more alive to how the former informs the latter.

Starmerism and unionism

Despite the recent challenges to the maintenance of the union, the political leadership of Kier Starmer’s Labour Party have elected to say substantively little on the future of the union. Political tailwinds, in the form of unpopular incumbent governments in both Holyrood and Westminster, have allowed the party to win significant majorities in England, Scotland and Wales without addressing difficult questions about national identity and constitutional reform.

Labour’s pronouncements and manifesto commitments on issues of territorial politics have been modest in scope and centred around two pillars. The first is economic revitalisation. This has been evident in the statements made by some of the most important figures in Labour’s territorial policy  – Scottish Secretary Ian Murray, Welsh Secretary Jo Stevens and trade minister Douglas Alexander – who have emphasised economic revitalisation under a Labour government as a solvent for the union.[xxxix] Their position is somewhat analogous to Labour’s post-war stance that effective social democracy, not constitutional tinkering, should underpin the party’s territorial strategy.

The other pillar is to restore a collaborative and amenable working relationship between central and devolved governments following Brexit-related challenges and to offer some, albeit minimal, extended devolved powers to each devolved assembly.^[xl] Most of the proposed changes seem apt from a public policy perspective, but do not in any way represent a significant electoral ‘offer’ to people in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.^[xli] Moreover, the manifesto is decidedly sparse on union-related policy when compared to Gordon Brown’s much heralded constitutional review, published in late 2022, which was initially endorsed by Starmer.^[xlii]

But rhetorical overtures to a more consensual and co-operative union sit uncomfortably with some of the actual policy positions taken by the party. Labour’s failure to commit to changes to the UK Internal Market Act (the unpopularity of which in devolved administrations is hard to overstate), its backing of the Conservative decision to issue a Section 35 order with regards to Scotland’s Gender Recognition Act and its planned continuation of central government spending in devolved areas carry the hallmarks of the Conservatives’ ‘muscular’ approach to the union.[xliii] Their flagship policy on territorial politics, the Council of Nations and Regions, is an odd beast, in that it assembles English metro mayors (who have limited executive powers) and the leaders of the devolved administrations in one intergovernmental forum, a decision that could be read as an affront to the status of devolved nations.[xliv] Moreover, the jettisoning of the more radical elements of the Brown Review and the Labour leadership’s frosty response to the Independent Commission on the Constitutional Future of Wales are evidence that the party leadership is hesitant to make substantive reform of the territorial union a priority.[xlv]

And, unlike the last Labour government, there is little representation of the wider union in the upper echelons of the party. Starmer’s first cabinet is as English as previous Tory iterations, with Pat McFadden (an MP for an English constituency since 2005) the only senior non-English figure out with the territorial secretaries. For some, this is no doubt a welcome rebalancing, given the disproportionate influence of Scottish ‘big beasts’ (Gordon Brown, Robin Cook, George Robertson and John Reid, amongst others) in the New Labour project but does raise questions of whether the party is adequately geared towards territorial issues, or indeed, the extent to which MPs representing Scottish or Welsh constituencies can legitimately hold ‘England-only’ cabinet positions in health, education and transport.^[xlvi]

As for Starmer himself, his recent authorised biography (written by sympathetic journalist Tom Baldwin) does not indicate that the preservation of the union is a fundamental component of his politics. Indeed, aside from analysis of Starmer’s legal work in Northern Ireland (where he, once upon a time, developed a sympathy for a united Ireland), there are remarkably few discussions of territorial politics within.^[xlvii] His own pronouncements on the union deviate little from the general party line, with emphasis on economic vitality (the decision to situate the new GB Energy body in Aberdeen is telling) and good intergovernmental relations, as indicated by his early engagement with devolved leaders.[xlviii] There is little evidence to suggest that Starmer intends to venture into difficult questions of national identity and the territorial constitution.

The future of the union

To what extent does this matter? The lead-up to the General Election involved myriad figures out with, but sympathetic to, the party leadership advocating for the need for an overarching political ‘vision’ (or what Tony Blair termed, an ‘irreducible core’) that would act as a lodestar for policymaking and communications.^[xlix] Alas, the campaign eschewed such grandiosity and delivered a historic majority.

The same rationale could be applied to unionism. Does Labour need to articulate a cohesive and internally consistent ‘vision’ for the union in the face of tepid opposition movements in Scotland and Wales? Or is such a project one of self-indulgent naval gazing, better left to academics and the media, whilst the party gets on with the long-awaited business of governing? Indeed, Labour’s has historically avoided such projects, with cohesive and visionary thinking on union politics only emerging in the 21^st century, largely at the behest of Gordon Brown. Scholars have noted that Brown’s ‘neo-unionism’, which sought to articulate a modern, values-based conception of Britishness was a project fraught with intellectual and political challenges that are best left ignored.^[l]

The counterpoint, held by unionists on both sides of the left-right divide, is that the union is far less safe than what the recent election results indicate.^[li] In Brown’s words, ‘in the long run, the forces pulling Britain apart are greater than the forces holding it together, unless something is done about it’.^[lii]This is a rallying cry against complacency on Labour’s part and reads as a repudiation of the contention that effective Labour government is the antidote to nationalist discontent. In this sense, there is a tension between ‘passive unionism’ (the position of the Labour hierarchy) and Brown’s more ‘active unionism’.

The incumbent question is whether a passive unionism, centred on governing competency, economic delivery and respect for intergovernmental relations, is resilient enough to survive the ‘forces’ described by Brown that may test the UK’s territorial arrangements in the coming years. Can such an approach stimulate active support (or at the very least, maintain tacit consent) for the union project in the face of future challenges?

Of these, the most obvious (and from a unionist perspective, worrying) is demography. Since the post-war unionist heyday, there has been a definitive activation of exclusively Scottish and Welsh national identity and there are large proportions of populations there who see their Scottishness and Welshness as more powerful than their Britishness (and many who do not feel British at all).[liii] Polling indicates that support for independence in Scotland and Wales and reunification in Northern Ireland is strong amongst younger voters, who have grown up with devolved institutions exercising control over vast swathes of public policy (though there is debate about whether such support will soften with ageing).[liv] One recent, comprehensive polling study damningly asserts that ‘attitudes towards the union are ambivalent: with support or ambivalence towards territorial independence the majority in every nation’, with much of the existing support of the union conditional, not absolute.^[lv] Whilst trends are complex and polling data is changeable, the decline in support for Britain as both a marker of identity and a legitimate governance unit amongst vast swathes of the population would represent an insurmountable challenge for the union.

There is also the question of the rise of ‘political Englishness’ and its consequences.^[lvi] It has long been held that English identity necessarily must subsume itself beneath a sense of Britishness for the UK’s complex and unbalanced territorial constitution to function. The extent to which this rise is a real challenge to the UK’s constitutional future, or something of a red herring, is hotly debated amongst psephologists, though there is little doubt that the various Farageist parties that have maintained a solid base of support for the last decade, have instrumentalised English grievance.^[lvii] In a telling recent intervention, Douglas Alexander has suggested that political Englishness, not Scottishness, is the major threat to the union, a demonstration of Labour’s historic challenge in engaging with Englishness as a cultural identity.^[lviii] While the idea of a resurgent and powerful English nationalism is perhaps overstated in contemporary media, there is no doubt that a concrete and sustained increase in political Englishness in the coming years (without a parallel increase in unionist solidarity) would be destabilising for the union as it currently exists. This may especially be the case if (as occurred in 1964, 1974 and 2005) Labour win a future Westminster majority without winning a majority of English votes.^[lix]

Moreover, this summer’s riots, and the response of the Labour leadership, have raised questions about the telos of the British state.^[lx] There has been a clamour from commentators for Keir Starmer to deliver a response that goes beyond law and order and seeks to articulate a progressive vision for a multicultural Britain.[lxi] Not only would such an approach re-open the complex Blair-era debates about British values and multiculturalism but it would simultaneously require making the type of open conceptualisation of Britishness that, for reasons described above,  Labour has historically avoided. Some have pointed out that the riots were, by and large, an English phenomenon and therefore the appropriate conversation to be had is about Englishness, not Britishness.^[lxii] In any case, any conversation, however fruitful, about multiculturalism in the UK will invariably involve considerations of the differences (or lack thereof) in attitudes and policies in this sphere across the four nations.^[lxiii] A ‘state of the nation’ approach begs the question, which nation?^[lxiv]

Perhaps the most significant long-term stressor of the union is its relationship with the EU. Indeed, much of the animus for secessionist sentiment in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales concerns the potential of independent states to wed themselves to a more prosperous and progressive multinational project. Brexit has had a paradoxical effect on territorial politics in the UK, raising the stakes of secession significantly. Prior to 2016, an independent Scotland or Wales or a reunified Ireland would still be able to trade as normal with the UK, whereas the new reality is a stark choice between two competing unions. It is hard to avoid the fact that the negotiation of a more comprehensive economic and political relationship with the EU (or, indeed, rejoining) would go some way to negating the perceived advantages of secession in post-Brexit Britain. On the contrary, the continuation of what many Brits outside England believe to be an economically and geopolitically bankrupt Brexit project, may stimulate support for secession, especially amongst younger voting cohorts. As such, Labour’s stance on a future relationship with the EU will go some way to informing the tenor of territorial politics in the UK.

Renewed geopolitical instability, and the UK government’s responses, will undoubtedly impact the future dynamics of union politics. The union was, in part, formed to insulate England from France and, as Linda Colley lucidly describes, geopolitical rivalries have been historically crucial in cementing a collective sense of Britishness.[lxv] In this light, emphasis of the undoubted security benefits UK membership entails is one of the most potent resources Labour possesses in terms of the union. But this sword is double-edged. Controversial foreign policy endeavours, most notably Brexit and Iraq, have been gifts to secessionist politicians. Recent polling in Scotland suggests that independence supporters are far more multilateral and less militarist in their disposition to foreign policy, a conclusion that instinctively translates to Wales and Northern Ireland, given the policy profile of their respective secessionist parties.[lxvi] The imposition of a perceivably ‘English’ foreign policy on the wider Union could prove unsettling to the Union.

Lastly, couching their case for the union in narrow, economically ‘deliverist’ terms places Labour in an incredibly vulnerable position if economic vitality is not restored in the short to medium term.^[lxvii]  Labour’s overtures to ‘productivism’ or ‘securonomics’ have a post-war gloss to them, in that they present British industrial capacity as a vector for national cohesion.[lxviii] In Scotland and Northern Ireland especially, young voters will be tempted by constitutional change as an electoral option if Labour do not provide tangible improvements in their economic prospects and may soon become chagrined by what they perceive as an ‘austerity-lite’ economic programme that delivers little in the way of transformative change.

Towards a new unionism?

Each of the above factors has the potential to destabilise the union. At such a point of rupture, it can be expected that the party’s internal contradictions on territorial policy will be made visible once more, just as they were during the crises of the 1970s and 2010s.

At this point, it is hard to see how Labour’s existing, passive approach to unionist politics would pass muster. In such a crisis, the party would likely find itself in a similar position to the post-Brexit crisis, devoid of any kind of ideational lodestar that acts as a guide to tricky questions of territorial politics and outflanked by a more self-consciously unionist, and indeed Anglo-centric, Conservative Party. As one prominent scholar has argued, Labour needs a confident, and coherent, story and a new ‘stance on the union that does not stand for the status quo, for the union as an end in itself, but for the union as a means to an end’ of greater social justice and a more perfect democracy.^[lxix] This is undoubtedly challenging, but a necessary endeavour.

This challenge is not unique to Labour. Centre-left parties across the world face the Gordian knot of trying to engender a progressive form of state nationalism in the face of globalisation-induced erosion of state capacity from above and identity-based fragmentation from below. However, Labour’s challenges are made more complicated insofar as it has to negotiate the complexities of the UK’s idiosyncratic multinational constitution. The widespread, albeit capacious, claim that the political left need to foster a sense of inclusive, progressive patriotism is fundamentally problematised in the UK’s multinational context.^[lxx]

Despite these challenges, Labour possesses two resources that could be instrumental in fashioning a cohesive vision for the union. The first is the politics of security. One of the resounding pull-factors for the UK union is the security benefits that emanate from its military prowess, intelligence services and diplomatic networks. In previous, more geopolitically benign eras, the lack of a military argument for secession was not a serious impediment to the popularity of secessionist parties – indeed, in the SNP’s case, it has been a lighting-rod for support.[lxxi] However, post Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Labour Party can make a virtue of the absence of a significant national security case for secession. Whilst the foreign policy challenges the UK faces are alarming and  complex, historically, national security threats have been a boon for unionist solidarity.

The second is the politics of ‘place’. Post-Brexit introspection amongst the majority of the remain-supporting political class has led to a much greater focus on understanding public policy from a place-based perspective and has led to renewed calls for the reallocation of power and responsibility to tiers of government closer to the people they serve.[lxxii] This zeitgeist was most prominently exhibited by the Conservatives’ ‘levelling-up’ agenda, whose central tenets, if not its name, have been maintained by the new Labour government. This ‘politics of place’, centred around devolution in England, community power, regional economic revival and a respect for local traditions and identities, is interoperable with a more hands-off approach to devolved politics, that respects the right of devolved centres of power to experiment in public policy and develop priorities that may be different from central government. However, fully embracing this approach would require Labour finally letting go of its historic centralism. Indeed, the tension between the new ‘politics of place’ and Labour’s ‘mission-driven’ centralism will surely be one of the animating features of this parliament.^[lxxiii]

Whether the Labour Party elects to reckon with the politics of the union whilst, in comparative terms, the sun is shining remains doubtful.  However, a self-conscious unionism, anchored in the politics of security and place, may prove valuable when territorial politics inevitably returns to the political agenda. As two insightful scholars of unionism argued in 2005 ‘a union state without unionism can survive for a long time. But not, perhaps, forever’.[lxxiv]The Labour Party should reflect carefully on these words.

Notes

^[i] Colm Murphy, Futures of Socialism: ‘Modernisation’, the Labour Party and the British Left, 1973-1997, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2023; Karl Pike, Getting Over New Labour the Party After Blair and Brown, Agenda, New York, 2024

^[ii] Colin Kidd, Union and Unionisms: political thought in Scotland, 1500-2000, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2008

^[iii] For general studies of the contemporary politics of the Union see Michael Kenny, Fractured Union: Politics, Sovereignty and the Fight to Save the UK, London, Hurst, 2024 and Michael Keating, State and Nation in the United Kingdom: the Fractured Union,  Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2021; for studies of devolved Labour parties see Gerry Hassan and Eric Shaw, The Strange Death of Labour Scotland, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2011; John Gilbert Evans, Labour and Devolution in Wales, Y Lofla, Talybont,  2019;  for recent analyses of the Labour Party and the concept of unionism, see Coree Brown Swan, ‘“ We’re socialists not nationalists”: British Labour and the national question(s)’, Nations and Nationalism, Vol.29, No.2, pp467-481,2023; David Torrance, ‘Standing up for Scotland’: Nationalist unionism and Scottish party politics, 1884-2014, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh,  2020, ch.7; Gerry Hassan and Eric Shaw, The People’s Flag and the Union Jack: an Alternative History of Britain and the Labour Party, Biteback, London, 2019

^[iv] Mark Sandford, ‘“Muscular Unionism”: the British Political Tradition Strikes Back?’ Political Studies, Vol.72, No.1, pp.1160-1171, 2023; Michael Kenny and Jack Sheldon,  ‘When Planets Collide: the British Conservatives Party and the Discordant Goals of Delivering Brexit and Preserving the Domestic Union, 2016-2019’, Political Studies, Vol.69, No.4, pp.965-984, 2021; Andrew Gamble, ‘The Conservatives and the Union: the “New English Toryism” and the Origins of Anglo-Britishness’, Political Studies Review, Vol.14, No.3, pp.359-367, 2016; Paul Anderson and Coree Brown Swan, ‘An unstable Union? The Conservative Party, the British Political Tradition, and devolution in Scotland and Wales, 2010-23’, Parliamentary Affairs, pp.1-26, 2024

^[v] See Michael Keating and David Bleiman, Labour and Scottish Nationalism, Macmillan, London, 1979; Barry Jones and Michael Keating, Labour and the British State, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1985; Henry Drucker and Gordon Brown, The Politics of Nationalism and Devolution, Longman, London, 1980

^[vi] ; Ciaran Martin has referred to this approach (albeit not specifically in the Labour context) as ‘muddling through unionism’: Ciaran Martin, ‘The Union and the State: Contested visions of the UK’s future’, Bennett Institute for Public Policy and Institute for Government, 2024. See also: Arthur Aughey, Nationalism, Devolution and the Challenge to the United Kingdom State, Pluto Press, London, 2001

^[vii] Emmanuel Dalle Mulle and Tudi Kernalegenn, ‘The Left(s) and Nationalism(s) in contemporary Western Europe’, Nations and Nationalism, Vol.29, No.2, 2022, pp405-413

[viii] Michael Keating, State and Nation in the United Kingdom: the Fractured Union, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2021; James Mitchell, ‘Contemporary Unionism’ in Catriona M MacDonald (ed), Unionist Scotland, 1998, pp117-140

^[ix] Coree Brown Swan, ‘“We’re socialists not nationalists”: British Labour and the national question(s)’, Nations and Nationalism, Vol.29, No.2, pp.467-481,2023;  Iain McLean and Alastair MacMillan, State of the Union: Unionism and the Alternatives in the United Kingdom since 1707, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2005

^[x] Michael Keating, The Independence of Scotland: Self-government and the shifting politics of Union, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2009, ch.2

^[xi] For another usage of this approach, see James Mitchell and Alan Convery, ‘Unionism’ in Peter Kane and Harshan Kumarasingham (eds), The Cambridge Constitutional History of the United Kingdom, 2023, pp520-539

^[xii] Michael Freeden, ‘Is nationalism a distinct ideology’, Political Studies, Vol.46, No.4, 1998, pp748-765, p.750

^[xiii] Michael Freeden, ‘Is nationalism a distinct ideology’, Political Studies, Vol.46, No.4, 1998, pp748-765, p.759

^[xiv] Colin Kidd, Union and Unionisms: political thought in Scotland, 1500-2000, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2008

^[xv] Arthur Aughey, Nationalism, Devolution and the Challenge to the United Kingdom State, Pluto Press, London, 2001, p88

^[xvi] For discussions of ‘muscular unionism’, see: Ciaran Martin, ‘The Union and the State: Contested visions of the UK’s future’, Bennett Institute for Public Policy and Institute for Government, 2024 and Mark Sandford, ‘“Muscular Unionism”: the British Political Tradition Strikes Back?’ Political Studies, Vol.72, No.1, 2023, pp.1160-1171

[xvii] This point has been made a yet to be published chapter by Michael Kenny and James Vitali.  

[xviii] Adam Evans, ‘Federalists in name only? Reassessing the federal credentials of the Liberal Democrats: an English Case Study’ British Politics, Vol.9, No.1, pp.346-358, 2024

[xix] Colin Kidd, Union and Unionisms: political thought in Scotland, 1500-2000, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2008; David Edgerton, The Rise and Fall of the British Nation, Penguin, London, 2019; Richard Rose, Understanding the United Kingdom, the Territorial Dimension in Government, Chatham House Publishing, London, 1982.

^[xx] Michael Keating and David Bleiman, Labour and Scottish Nationalism, Macmillan, London, 1979, pp150-154

^[xxi] Arthur Aughey, Nationalism, Devolution and the Challenge to the United Kingdom State, Pluto Press, London, 2001, pp85-95

^[xxii] David Torrance, ‘Standing up for Scotland’: Nationalist unionism and Scottish party politics, 1884-2014, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh,  2020, ch.7

^[xxiii] See Michael Keating and David Bleiman, Labour and Scottish Nationalism, Macmillan, London, 1979, pp154-189 for an in-depth discussion of Labour Party internal dynamics during this period.

^[xxiv] Jack Sheldon, ‘A Brexit “people’s vote”? Lessons from the 1970s’, Bennett Institute for Public Policy Blog, 2018

^[xxv] Jack Geekie and Roger Levy, ‘Devolution and the Tartanisation of the Labour Party’, Parliamentary Affairs, Vol.42, No.1, 1989, pp399-411

^[xxvi] Graeme Morton, Unionist-nationalism: the historical construction of Scottish national identity, 1830-1860, University of Edinburgh, 1994; Richard Wyn Jones and Bethan Lewis, ‘The Welsh devolution Referendum’, Politics, Vol.19, No.1, 1999, pp37-46

^[xxvii] Arthur Aughey, Nationalism, Devolution and the Challenge to the United Kingdom State, Pluto Press, London, 2001, p94

^[xxviii] On Blair’s misgivings see Michael Kenny, Fractured Union: Politics, Sovereignty and the Fight to Save the UK, Hurst, London 2024. In a recent interview with Holyrood Magazine, Blair does not come across as a devolution zealot, but defends his record on the grounds that the UK has remained together:  Mandy Rhodes, ‘Tony Blair: “The SNP can no longer avoid scrutiny of its record in government”’, Holyrood Magazine, https://www.holyrood.com/inside-politics/view,tony-blair-the-snp-can-no-longer-avoid-scrutiny-of-its-record-in-government,  17 June 2024

^[xxix] Colm Murphy, Futures of Socialism: ‘Modernisation’, the Labour Party and the British Left, 1973-1997, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2023; David Torrance, ‘Standing up for Scotland’: Nationalist unionism and Scottish party politics, 1884-2014, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh,  2020, ch.7

^[xxx] Michael Kenny and Nicola McEwen, ‘Intergovernmental Relations and the Crisis of the Union’, Political Insight, Vol.12, No.1, 2021

[xxxi] Ben Jackson, ‘Labour and the nation’, Fabian Society, https://fabians.org.uk/labour-and-the-nation/, 6 October 2016

^[xxxii] Michael Kenny and Jack Sheldon,  ‘When Planets Collide: the British Conservatives Party and the Discordant Goals of Delivering Brexit and Preserving the Domestic Union, 2016-2019’, Political Studies, Vol.69, No.4, pp.965-984, 2021; Coree Brown Swan, ‘“We’re socialists not nationalists”: British Labour and the national question(s)’, Nations and Nationalism, Vol.29, No.2, pp.467-481,2023

^[xxxiii] Nick Eardley, ‘Former Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale admits voting SNP’, BBC News,  https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-68185435, 5 February 2024

^[xxxiv] Gregory Davies and Daniel Wincott, ‘Ripening time: The Welsh Labour government between Brexit and parliamentary sovereignty’, The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, Vol.25, No.3, 2022, pp462-479; Richard Rawlings, ‘Wales and the United Kingdom: a territorial constitutional policy drive’, Territory, Politics, Governance, Vol.10, No.5, 2022, pp714-732

^[xxxv] James Mitchell and Alan Convery, ‘Unionism’ in Peter Kane and Harshan Kumarasingham (eds), The Cambridge Constitutional History of the United Kingdom, 2023, pp520-539

^[xxxvi] See John Denham and Daniel Devine, ‘England, Englishness and the Labour Party’, The Political Quarterly, Vol.89, No.4, 2018, pp621-630 for an interesting discussion of Labour and political Englishness.

[xxxvii] Jon Cruddas, A Century of Labour, Polity, Cambridge, 2024

[xxxviii] On statecraft see Jim Bullpit, ‘The discipline of New Democracy: Mrs Thatcher’s Domestic Statecraft’, Political Studies Vol.34, No.1, pp19-39, 1986; on Conservative ideology see Andrew Gamble, The Conservative Nation, Routledge, London, 1974

[xxxix] Katrine Bussey, ‘Budget will bring “era of growth” for Scotland vows Murray’, The Independent, 27 October 2024; Jo Stevens, ‘The loss of steelmaking is a threat to our security. But Labour will rekindle Wales’s proud industrial roots’ GB News, https://www.gbnews.com/opinion/wales-steelmaking-closure-security-threat-labour-jo-stevens, 25 April 2024; Douglas Alexander, ‘The fight to save the fractured Union’, New Statesman, https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/book-of-the-day/2024/04/fight-save-fractured-union-scottish-independence, 15 April 2024

^[xl] The Labour Party, Change: Labour Party Manifesto 2024, https://labour.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Change-Labour-Party-Manifesto-2024-large-print.pdf, 21 June 2024

^[xli] Michael Kenny, ‘What will Labour do to the British constitution?’, New Statesman, https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/election-2024/2024/07/what-will-labour-do-to-the-british-constitution, 11 July 2024;  Chris McCorkindale and Aileen McHarg, ‘The Territorial Constitution and the 2024 UK General Election’ UK Constitutional Law Association, https://ukconstitutionallaw.org/2024/06/20/chris-mccorkindale-and-aileen-mcharg-the-territorial-constitution-and-the-2024-uk-general-election/, June 20 2024.

^[xlii] Commission on the UK’s Future, A New Britain: Renewing Our Democracy and Rebuilding Our Economy, The Labour Party, 2022

[xliii] Kirsteen Paterson, ‘Labour will “modernise” gender laws but would not lift Section 35 veto, Ian Murray says’, Holyrood Magazine, https://www.holyrood.com/news/view,labour-will-modernise-gender-laws-but-would-not-lift-section-35-veto-ian-murray-says, 3 June 2024; Coree Brown Swan, Thomas Horsley, Nicola McEwen and Lisa Claire Whitten, Westminster Rules? The United Kingdom Internal Market Act and Devolution, Centre for Public Policy at the University of Glasgow, 2024; Kieran Andrews, ‘How Labour would turbo-charge the Scotland Office,’, The Times, 13 June 2024

[xliv] Mike Small, ‘The Council of Nations and Regions Debacle’, Bella Caledonia, 11 October 2024

[xlv] BBC News, ‘Senedd should not get Welsh police powers: Senior Labour MP’, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-68056282, 22 January 2024

^[xlvi] Michael Kenny, Fractured Union: Politics, Sovereignty, and the Fight to Save the UK, Hurst, London 2024.

^[xlvii] Tom Baldwin, Kier Starmer: the Biography, William Collins, London, 2023.

[xlviii] James Delaney and David Porter, ‘GB Energy to be headquartered in Aberdeen’, BBC News, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c7v5y6gnjeyo, 3 September 2024; Dan Hardie, ‘Starmer’s reset with devolved leaders is welcome – but may prove the easy part’, LabourList, https://labourlist.org/2024/07/starmer-first-ministers-mayors-devolution/, 7 July 2024; for an overview of Starmer’s views on Scotland the the Union see Kier Starmer, ‘Exclusive: Why Sir Keir Starmer wants to smash through the ‘class ceiling’ with vision for Scotland’, The Scotsman, 15 August 2023

^[xlix] Toby Helm, ‘Keir Starmer “lacks clear sense of purpose” claims Labour ex-policy chief’, The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/dec/30/keir-starmer-detached-labour-party-jon-cruddas, 30 December 2023

^[l] Michael Keating, ‘The Strange Death of Unionist Scotland’, Government and Opposition, Vol.45, No.3, 2011, pp365-385; Arthur Aughey warns against overly emotive, high-handed unionist rhetoric: Arthur Aughey, The State of the Union: Lessons for shared, prosperous future, Policy Exchange, 2018; for a discussion of the criticisms of neo-unionism see Gerry Hassan and Eric Shaw, The People’s Flag and the Union Jack: an Alternative History of Britain and the Labour Party, Biteback, London, 2019, pp194-201

^[li] Henry Mance, ‘Gordon Brown: “I really didn’t think we could go as far backwards as we’ve gone”’, Financial Times,  https://www.ft.com/content/7c0fb9cf-737c-4e43-99c2-4ccae461bc63, April 15 2024; Stephen Daisley, ‘Gordon Brown isn’t always wrong’, Substack, https://stephendaisley.substack.com/p/gordon-brown-isnt-always-wrong, April 16 2024

^[lii] Emphasis added.

[liii] Bobby Duffy, Kirstie Hewlett, Julian McCrae and John Hall, Divided Britain: Polarisation and fragmentation trends in the UK, King’s College Policy Institute, 2019

[liv] Lindsay Paterson, ‘Independence is not Going Away: The Importance of Education and Birth Cohorts’, Political Quarterly, Vol.94, No.4, pp526-524, 2023;Suzanne McGonagle, ‘Border poll: Voters in Northern Ireland under 45 would opt for a united Ireland says survey’, The Irish News, 19 February 2024; Redfield and Wilton Strategies, ‘Welsh Westminster, Senedd & Independence Referendum Voting Intention’, August 16, 2023

^[lv] Ailsa Henderson and Richard Wyn Jones, The Ambivalent Union: Findings from the State of the Union Survey, Institute for Public Policy Research, 2023

^[lvi] Michael Kenny, The Politics of English Nationhood, Oxford University Press, Oxford,  2014.

^[lvii] Aisla Henderson and Richard Wyn Jones, Englishness: the Political Force Transforming Britain, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2021; John Curtice, ‘The myth of a growing sense of English identity’, The Constitution Unit Blog, https://constitution-unit.com/2018/12/14/on-the-myth-of-a-growing-sense-of-english-identity/, December 14 2018; Richard Hayton, ‘The UK Independence Party and the Politics of Englishness’, Political Studies Review, Vol.14, No.3, 2016, p400-410

^[lviii] Douglas Alexander, ‘The fight to save the fractured Union’, New Statesman, https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/book-of-the-day/2024/04/fight-save-fractured-union-scottish-independence, 15 April 2024

^[lix] Gerry Hassan, ‘Is Scottish Labour back – and does it have a future?’, Compass, https://www.compassonline.org.uk/is-scottish-labour-back-and-does-it-have-a-future/, 13 October 2023

^[lx] Michael Keating offers an incisive discussion of the concepts of ethos, demos and telos in relation to the British state: Michael Keating, State and Nation in the United Kingdom: the Fractured Union,  Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2021

[lxi] See Daniel Trilling, ‘This time it’s worse’, London Review of Books, https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2024/august/this-time-it-s-worse, 6 August 2024; Nesrine Malik, ‘After the riots, Keir Starmer should tell us the truth about our country. This is why he won’t’, The Guardian, 19 August 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/aug/19/riots-keir-starmer-racist-anti-immigration-narratives-truth

^[lxii] Marco Antonsich and Michael Skey, ‘The trouble with England – why rioting in the UK has not spread to Scotland and Wales’, The Conversation, https://theconversation.com/the-trouble-with-england-why-rioting-in-the-uk-has-not-spread-to-scotland-and-wales-236423, 8 August 2024

^[lxiii] Michael Keating, State and Nation in the United Kingdom: the Fractured Union,  Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2021

^[lxiv] Jill Rutter, Sunder Katwala, Andrew Dixon, Jamie Scudamore, Emeka Forbes and Brendan Cox, After the riots: Building the foundations for social cohesion, British Future, Belong and Together, 2024

[lxv] Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1992.

[lxvi] Claire Duncanson, Timothy Gravelle, Thomas J Scotto, Good Global Citizens? Scottish and English Attitudes to Foreign Policy, Scottish Council on Global Affairs, 2023

^[lxvii] Michael Keating, ‘All still to play for in Scotland’, Centre on Constitutional Change, https://www.centreonconstitutionalchange.ac.uk/UK-Election-2024-Scotland, 17 July 2024

[lxviii] The Labour Party, ‘Rachel Reeves Mais Lecture 2024, https://labour.org.uk/updates/press-releases/rachel-reeves-mais-lecture/, March 19 2024; David Edgerton, The Rise and Fall of the British Nation, Penguin, London, 2019.

^[lxix] Gerry Hassan, ‘Is Scottish Labour back – and does it have a future?’, Compass, https://www.compassonline.org.uk/is-scottish-labour-back-and-does-it-have-a-future/, 13 October 2023

^[lxx] Jurgen Habermas and Yascha Mounk are amongst the most high-profile proponents of this notion. See: Jurgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy, MIT Press, Cambridge 1998; Yascha Mounk, The People vs Democracy: why our freedom is in danger and how to save it, Harvard University Press, Cambridge,2018.

[lxxi] For instance, the existence of nuclear weapons on Scottish soil has long been used by the SNP to mobilise support: Nick Ritchie, ‘Nuclear identities and Scottish independence’, The Nonproliferation Review, Vol.23, No.5-6, 2016, pp653-675

[lxxii] Will Jennings, Adam Lent and Gerry Stoker, Place-based policymaking after Brexit: in search of the missing link?, University of Southampton and New Local, 2018.

^[lxxiii] Steph Coulter, ‘Five questions on the future of English devolution’, The Constitution Society, https://consoc.org.uk/five-questions-on-english-devolution/, 15 August 2024

[lxxiv] Iain McLean and Alastair MacMillan, State of the Union: Unionism and the Alternatives in the United Kingdom since 1707, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2005, p.256