Brexit: Opportunity or Threat for Devolved Administrations?

This paper analyses how Brexit has impacted on centre-periphery relations in the UK, keeping in due consideration the specific characteristics and conditions of Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Before Brexit, a series of devolution reforms (1998-2016) had clearly differentiated the UK political system from the unitary and centralised features of the Lijphart’s Westminster model. These changes have led scholars to define the UK as a quasi-federal system. In fact, the flexible British constitution has allowed competing views on the territorial arrangements of the UK to co-exist, albeit in a polemical relationship. The paper shows how this precarious equilibrium has been unsettled by Brexit. It focuses on some ‘critical events’, which highlight the institutional victories of the centre over the peripheries and the ensuing attempts by some political forces in the peripheries to fight back. The first key event falls within the Cameron II government and concerns the imposition of a UK-wide Brexit referendum (and the failure of the peripheries to include a double-majority clause). The second key event falls under the May I government and concerns the judicial/constitutional clash between the devolved administrations and the UK government for the triggering of art. 50. The third crucial event falls under the May II government. It concerns the political negotiations and then the judicial/constitutional clashes between the devolved and the central administrations on Clause 11 of the EU Withdrawal Act 2018 (i.e. on the treatment of the repatriated powers that would fall under the jurisdiction of the devolved administrations). The final crucial case falls within the Johnson government and concerns the the pro-independence reaction staged by the SNP in Scotland. All cases will be analysed with the use of various primary sources, such as election and referendum results, parliamentary records (both in Westminster and in the devolved legislatures), public speeches (as reported by the media), party documents, Supreme Court’s documents and governments’ documents (both UK and devolved governments). In addition, these data will be triangulated with elite interviews conducted in London, Belfast, Cardiff and Edinburgh.