A British Brexit for British People?

On 23 June 2016, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland voted to leave the European Union. Or did it?

Brexit does not mean Brexit.

By its very definition, “Brexit” excludes one of the four regions of the United Kingdom: Northern Ireland. That is just under 3% of the UK’s population – over 1.8 million people – whose views might appear to have been disregarded by their own government.

In not using the term “United Kingdom”, the media is ignoring the significance of Northern Ireland in the referendum and in UK-wide politics on the whole.

But is this really a new phenomenon? Brexit merely represents the latest dismissal in a long history of Anglo-centric policy.

The UK was assigned the country codes of GB and GBR by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), while their Olympic team competes under the team name Great Britain, branded Team GB since 1999 by the British Olympic Association (BOA).

But Northern Ireland is not alone. Brexit demonstrates just how little Northern Ireland and Scotland are valued in the UK.

Almost 56% of people in Northern Ireland and 62% of people in Scotland voted to Remain in the EU.

So far, Teresa May has insisted Brexit negotiations are for her Government to undertake alone – rejecting the Scottish government’s demands to be treated as an “equal partner”.

Today marked the first time the joint ministerial committee – bringing together Prime Minister Teresa May, Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, Welsh First Minister Carwyn Jones, and Northern Ireland’s First Minister Arlene Foster and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness – met since 2014, more than four months after that fateful day in June.

The meeting coincided with the publication of a report by the Institute for Government (IfG) think-tank saying imposing a settlement on Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland may be “legally possible, given that the UK Parliament remains sovereign”.

But it warns: “This would run contrary to convention and to the spirit of devolution, which recognises the right of the three devolved nations to determine their own form of government.

“It would seriously undermine relationships between the four governments, and increase the chances of Scottish independence and rifts in Northern Ireland’s fragile power-sharing arrangements.”

“The result may be a serious breakdown in relations between the four governments (and nations) of the UK,” it continues.

Relations that are already wearing thin as evidenced by Nicola Sturgeon’s bill to hold a second Scottish independence referendum and a high court case in Belfast which argues that Brexit will undermine the UK’s domestic and international treaty obligations under the Good Friday Agreement, ratified by a referendum in 1998.

Teresa May is the Prime Minister who will take the United Kingdom out of the EU, but she also risks being the Prime Minister who breaks up the United Kingdom.

The multiple identities and political contradictions of the United Kingdom, never mind Europe, have only been further exacerbated since David Cameron’s announcement in February.

As semi-autonomous parts of the United Kingdom, confusion over the status of Northern Ireland and Scotland already plague concepts of identity. If the validity of your region is called into question by your own government, how can you be expected to defend your UK nationality accordingly?

Some may say I am being pedantic. The very same, no doubt, have never picked up a newspaper, listened to the radio, or overheard a drunken debate in a pub that repeatedly denies not only your own country’s importance, but its very existence.

A nation repeatedly reminded that their opinion does not matter, that their vote does not matter, that they do not matter.

What hope is there for a country to make it on its own, free of the red tape of the European Union yet so vastly divided that it cannot even see past its own borders?

Perhaps it is not physical borders that we have to worry about, but the borders of the mind.

Perhaps Brexit is not an “exit” at all but a reaffirmation of how far we have yet to come, of how far Westminster is willing to go to remain in its egocentric Eden.

Brexit means Brexit, after all. Or does it?