The leaders of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland meet in Cardiff on Monday to sign a joint declaration on self-determination and a memorandum calling on Westminster “to prepare, plan and facilitate constitutional change in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.”
John Swinney of the Scottish National Party, Rhun ap Iorwerth of Plaid Cymru, and Michelle O’Neill of Sinn Féin are the First Ministers of their three nations, but they will sign at St David’s Hotel in Cardiff Bay in their capacities as party leaders rather than as heads of government. Sinn Féin president Mary Lou McDonald, the leader of the opposition in the Irish parliament, is due to attend.
The memorandum commits the three parties to working together on the economy, energy, Europe, and international cooperation alongside constitutional change, and is meant to press the UK government to recognize the right of each nation to decide its own constitutional future. Sinn Féin said the summit would address “how each of our nations has the right to shape its own future through democratic means, guided by the will of its people.” Ap Iorwerth described it as a search for common ground. “We can work together as First Ministers across these islands, I think, in a positive way,” he said.
All three parties now lead governments. The SNP has run Scotland since 2007. Ap Iorwerth became Wales’s First Minister in May at the head of a minority Plaid Cymru government, the first from outside Welsh Labour since devolution in 1999. O’Neill has been Northern Ireland’s First Minister since 2024, the first nationalist to hold the post.
Downing Street has already answered. A UK government statement said the Prime Minister “believes strongly in the Union” and is “committed to delivering change across all four nations.” On Thursday, Andy Burnham told Swinney in writing that independence and a referendum are “off limits,” a day after telling the House of Commons that a vote in Scotland would follow a shift in public opinion. Scotland’s education secretary, Mairi McAllan, said this weekend that “an independence referendum is not off the table.”
The summit has also opened a dispute inside Northern Ireland’s own government. Under Northern Ireland’s power-sharing system, the First Minister and deputy First Minister hold a joint office with equal powers, and deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly of the Democratic Unionist Party said O’Neill “has not sought any agreement or permission from me to travel, attend or sign anything as First Minister.”
The United Kingdom has four governments. On Monday the leaders of three of them will put their names to the proposition that each of their nations has the right to decide its own constitutional future. Downing Street said no to one nation on Thursday. It is about to be asked by three.
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