Sub-State Nationalist and Regionalist Party Strategies on Brexit in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland: A Comparative Analysis

The paper will measure and characterise the strategies of nationalist and regionalist political parties in the Scottish Parliament, National Assembly for Wales and Northern Ireland Assembly on the implementation of Brexit. This includes a focus on five parties that are organised on a sub-state basis only: the Scottish National Party; Plaid Cymru; Sinn Fein, the Social Democratic Labour Party and the Alliance Party in Northern Ireland. It will also include analysis of branches of British or state wide parties where they have shown consistent support for the development of self-government in recent times and currently have elected representatives. These include: in Scotland Scottish Labour, the Scottish Liberal Democrats, and the Scottish Greens; in Wales Welsh Labour, and the Welsh Liberal Democrats; and in Northern Ireland the Green Party. The paper will apply the approach developed by Basile (2016) for theorising and researching party strategy and specifies a set of issue dimensions of Brexit party strategy that will be studied for each party. These dimensions relate first to preferred external relationships to the EU after Brexit (for example relations with the single market); and then secondly, to desired internal territorial dimensions of Brexit following its completion (for example transfer of EU powers to devolved jurisdictions). The paper will measure for each party first, the saliency attached to this range of issues raised by Brexit, secondly, the positions they hold on each of these dimensions, and then thirdly it will consider the way in which those positions are framed. On this basis it will define parties’ strategies according to a Europhile-Eurosceptic EU relations scale, as well as a transformative-no change internal territorial relations scale. The paper will draw on documentary and interview evidence from both the period prior to and after the triggering of article 50 by the UK Government. The analysis will compare strategies between parties within each of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and will seek to clarify the extent of consensus and the features of party competition in each of the three devolved jurisdictions over how Brexit should be implemented. It will also compare across jurisdictions, seeking to clarify comparative findings on how sub-state nationalist and regionalist parties in the UK seek to both shape the framework of relationships with the EU after Brexit and exploit opportunities for self-government and/or independence through Brexit as well as through subsequent relationships with the EU. More broadly, the paper will assess the relationship between sub-state nationalist and regionalist party strategies on the one hand and public attitudes in each of the territories towards leaving the European Union on the other, recognising that while Scotland and Northern Ireland had remain majorities Wales did not. The paper will conclude by reflecting on how sub-state nationalist and regionalist party strategies can be assessed in terms of the framework of analysis adopted in the paper; as well as the utility of this framework of analysis for further comparative study of sub-state nationalist and regionalist parties across the EU.