The Dalriada Document: Towards a Multinational Compromise that Respects Democratic Diversity in the United Kingdom

In: The political quarterly, Band 87, Heft 4, S. 518-533

Abstract

AbstractNorthern Ireland and Scotland could and should stay within the European Union while remaining inside the United Kingdom. This proposal need not prevent, and may facilitate, England and Wales in leaving the EU, and it is in accordance with the respective preferences of the peoples of the two Unions who voted in the advisory referendum held on 23 June 2016. Prime Minister May and her Cabinet should address carefully the question of whether to trigger Article 50, or instead to give notice that only parts of the UK—England and Wales—will be leaving the EU. The price of enforcing the entirety of the UK's exit from the EU may be lasting damage to the two Unions that make up the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.