Welcome back to The Rejoinder, the\u00a0New World\u2019s weekly newsletter about the effects of Brexit and Britain\u2019s future relationship with the European Union.<\/p>\n
What impact might Brexit have on this May\u2019s huge elections for the national parliaments in Scotland and Wales and council chambers across England?<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s start with the latter of those. In England, the answer is: probably none. At present, the big winners across town halls look set, alas, to be Nigel Farage\u2019s Reform.<\/p>\n
And despite leaving the EU being Nigel Farage\u2019s one big driving belief in politics and the founding purpose of his since-rebadged Brexit Party, it is not something he nor anyone in his party talks about (Reform devoted 157 words to Britain\u2019s relationship with Europe in its 2024 general election manifesto).<\/p>\n
Labour retains what we will politely call a confused position on Brexit. The Liberal Democrats, who have long since used opposition to it as a key tool in their bid to win over the so-called \u2018Surrey shifters\u2019 in the once true-blue Home Counties, have now moved on to a more overt anti-Trumpist agenda. The Conservatives are campaigning on\u2026 well, answers on a postcard, as they say. Local politics in England, at least, seems inured from wider global shifts.<\/p>\n
In Wales, too, which, under the expanded Senedd\u2019s radically changed electoral system is looking like a straight shoot-out between Plaid Cymru and Reform, Brexit is barely on the agenda, despite the nation being hit particularly hard by the Brussels funding tap getting turned off.<\/p>\n
Reform, obviously, aren\u2019t talking about it here either \u2013 as much as they have an agenda in Wales, it seems to be about ending integration schemes for Ukrainian refugees and stopping the planting of \u201cgender-neutral trees\u201d in Uganda (which, unfortunately, we don\u2019t have time to go into here \u2013 suffice to say, it is bonkers).<\/p>\n
But even Plaid, an avowedly internationalist, pro-European party, are not going to go there lest it take it down a constitutional path it doesn\u2019t want to take. Canny leader Rhun ap Iorwerth, navigating a \u2018ming vase\u2019 strategy not dissimilar to that of Keir Starmer in 2024, wants to focus on bread-and-butter issues, even parking independence \u2013 Plaid\u2019s\u00a0raison d\u2019\u00eatre, one might think \u2013 until at least a second term.<\/p>\n
Which leaves Scotland \u2013 and here Brexit may be in play.<\/p>\n
Scotland remains heavily pro-membership of the EU, having voted decisively against it in 2016 but getting dragged out regardless. And the signs are that first minister and SNP leader John Swinney, who will never shy away from independence demands, believes that coupling the two issues together provides a salience for a \u201cScotland in the EU\u201d approach \u2013 a positive approach that sees independence not as leaving something, but\u00a0joining\u00a0something.<\/p>\n