From 1764 to 1776, there was a political crisis regarding the authority of the British Parliament over America. Yet the British case for parliamentary sovereignty was not particularly clear, and by 1774, most Americans argued that Parliament had no authority over internal affairs in America. Even English politicians and lawyers, such William Pitt the Elder and Lord Camden, argued that Parliament had no ability to tax the American colonies. In 1776, the American colonies declared their independence and a war of independence ensued, that Britain lost. But what could explain this disagreement over sovereignty? This chapter looks to several factors for explanation. These include the fact of Britain’s uncodified Constitution, which rendered it unclear which laws were in any case ‘constitutional’. There was also disagreement as to how the British Constitution applied in the colonies. Many Americans asserted that only a shared monarch connected American colonies legally to Britain and to each other, and that colonial assemblies were comparable to Parliament. There was, however, no acceptance of this in Britain, where the doctrine of undivided and unlimited sovereignty was increasingly employed by those in power.

The legacy of nineteenth-century constitutionalism hampers the effective realization of democracy in the UK. Bagehot’s eulogizing of the fusion of the executive and legislature now appears to grant far too much power to the government, given the context of parliamentary sovereignty and a ‘first past the post’ electoral system. But democracy is a far richer notion than one which requires merely that power should be exercised by a majority of elected representatives. Democracy also requires that individuals and minorities have certain fundamental protections from majoritarian interests. Democracy in Britain has also been weakened by vagueness as to the role of direct democracy (and how it relates to popular sovereignty) and referendums in the UK. The UK Cabinet Manual (which, absent a codified Constitution, is the closest Britain comes to codifying its constitutional principles) does not specify the role of referendums in British governance, nor suggest that a referendum vote might override other constitutional principles. However, the Brexit referendum, although advisory in status, was nonetheless perceived as binding and implemented. If referendums are to become a more frequent feature of British constitutional practice, there is an urgent need for clear principles regarding their use to be articulated.

The concept of federalism, and examples of federalism, are considered. Although, over 100 years ago, British Imperial federalists argued the empire must ‘federate or disintegrate’, the imperial federation movement did not succeed. Nor did its close relation, the ‘Home Rule All Round’ movement. Instead, the UK has become a devolved State, which transfers power from the centre without relinquishing sovereignty. The main obstacles to federalism in the UK appear to be the ‘England problem’ and parliamentary sovereignty. It has long been recognized that the disproportionate size of one federal unit can destabilize federalism by affecting the capacity of other territorial units to influence central government. However, the main obstacle lies with an insistence on preserving absolute parliamentary sovereignty in the UK. Dicey insisted that ‘limited sovereignty’ was a ‘contradiction in terms’ and that federalism was ‘absolutely foreign to the historical and, so to speak, instinctive policy of English constitutionalists.’ But this chapter argues there is no reason why sovereignty must be understood only as unlimited and indivisible. The obstacle is a lack of political will and not legal impossibility.

Unions take a variety of forms and it is not always clear what species of legal entity one is dealing with. They need not require a unitary State and may exist along a spectrum of State connectivity, from an affiliation of separate States, through to their complete fusion. This chapter examines other Unions – either past, for example Austria-Hungary, or present, such as the USA and EU. The UK Union itself only dates from 1707, is voluntary in nature, and (unlike some Constitutions) there is no legislation prohibiting secession by one part of the UK, nor any constitutional provision asserting and mandating constitutional integrity. This chapter argues it is preferable to understand the UK as a ‘Union State’ – that is, a State where the centre does not directly control every part of the territory – rather than unitary in nature, because there are different constitutional arrangements in different parts of the UK. Unions tend to do better if more elastic and less constraining. But current understandings of UK parliamentary sovereignty make such elasticity very difficult for the UK Union. The doctrine of unlimited sovereignty places an almost insurmountable barrier to resolution of issues threatening the Union today, particularly those of devolution.

The legal and constitutional relationship between Ireland and England (and latterly Britain) was unclear for many centuries. Although Ireland enjoyed a good deal of legislative sovereignty under Grattan’s Parliament from 1782, the Acts of Union in 1801 set up direct rule from Westminster. During the nineteenth century, there was a campaign and draft legislation for Irish Home Rule (which Dicey, an ardent unionist, vehemently opposed). This campaign is worth reconsidering in the Brexit/Scottish independence context, given the varied legal and constitutional arrangements that were explored and vigorously debated. However, Home Rule never came about, rendered pointless by subsequent events. Since the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement and devolution in 1998, Northern Ireland has a had a variegated but pragmatic settlement of consociation and compromise quite different from the traditional British constitutional settlement. The EU has played its role in the peace process, providing structures for its continuation. Brexit now presents considerable challenges for Northern Ireland and the Republic.

The union of Scotland and England was the founding act of the UK in 1707, and consensually agreed between two sovereign parties. Scotland was never a colony of England and post-union retained considerable autonomy, including its distinct and separate legal and education systems and Church. As a result of the 1707 union, the UK Parliament (which was not simply the English Parliament enlarged) came into being. The doctrine of unlimited parliamentary sovereignty is not accepted by everyone in Scotland, where there exists an alternative Scottish tradition of popular sovereignty, and the belief that Scotland’s place in the UK Union rests on its consent. Since devolution in 1998, Scotland has developed some progressive constitutional forms, as well as more pro-European inclinations that challenge the unitary constitutional approaches of London. Brexit, however, has placed the UK union under strain, and there have been demands for a second Scottish Independence referendum. Surprisingly, despite the threat of Scottish independence, there has been little debate about what the ‘Union’ or ‘Britain’ is or should be.

Sovereignty is obviously key in the Brexit context, and in many ways lies at the core of this book’s argument – a main part of which is that Britain has never been able to justify its assertion of unlimited parliamentary sovereignty. This book endorses the view that the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty no longer carries the weight that Dicey accorded it, nor should it. Indeed Dicey was himself inconsistent, and, in his energetic opposition to Irish Home Rule, was prepared to depart from the application of parliamentary sovereignty. And in any case, Dicey’s theory is not watertight historically, and Westminster sovereignty is also territorially challenged. However, it might be argued that EU membership posed the greatest challenge to UK parliamentary sovereignty. However, Britain never lost its external sovereignty (i.e. what is frequently described as ‘national’ sovereignty, whereby a country is sovereign and recognized as independent by the international community) as Britain voluntarily joined the EEC, and also voluntarily exited, with Brexit. But Parliament did constrain its own sovereignty through the ECA 1972, and although that Act has now been repealed by Brexit, there is no reason why Parliament should not place further constraints on its own sovereignty in future.

Lord Bingham noted that the Common Law was not an isolated island, and that English law had always shown a receptiveness to ‘the experience and learning of others’. Brexit might appear to have set back that optimism. However, British relations with continental Europe are deep and historical. British lawyers played a very strong role in the creation and founding of the European Convention on Human Rights, so ECHR rights (now incorporated in the Human Rights Act) are not alien, foreign devices. Furthermore, Britain was not forced into EEC membership, but joined voluntarily, persisting after its first two applications were rejected by General de Gaulle, because it perceived that it would be socially and economically enriched by such membership – a perception that turned out to be accurate. EU membership also provided an external support system for UK devolution, facilitating common approaches within the UK and conciliation between the UK and Ireland. The EU and ECHR provided external guarantees and entrenchment of human rights, many of which are now at risk post-Brexit.

Human rights have had a fragile status in Britain, given the overpowering doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty, which has enabled a parliamentary majority to achieve any policy in the absence of entrenched constitutional protections. Plans to repeal the 1998 Human Rights Act are evidence of this. Dicey wrote that parliamentary sovereignty was tempered by the rule of law in the UK, but it is unclear from his work how the rule of law could operate to override the will of a despotic parliamentary majority. Brexit adds to this precarity, by removing EU human rights protection from UK law (which had something close to an entrenched status, while the UK was an EU member). This calculated deletion of fundamental rights – involved in the deliberate exclusion of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights from UK law post-Brexit – is almost unparalleled in the Western world (although perhaps the US Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, which removed the protected status of the right to abortion from US constitutional law, comes close, at least for that right).

On 1 July 1997, Britain transferred its sovereignty over Hong Kong to the People’s Republic of China. But even after British withdrawal from Hong Kong, its residents’ engagements with Britishness did not cease. This chapter explores Hong Kongers’ continued engagements with Britishness in the recent two decades. Drawing from findings of previous chapters, this chapter explains why, albeit the unfairness of colonial rule, rosy impressions of British colonialism linger, and Britishness continues to mean more than just a legal status in post-1997 Hong Kong. It also discusses the contemporary relevance of historic notions of Britishness beyond Hong Kong. What constitutes Britishness is still as much a debate today as it was in colonial Hong Kong. After empire, after Brexit, as Britain searches for a new world role, Britons also search for what it means to be British. Seeing how Britishness existed in multiple, varied forms in 1910–1945 Hong Kong, a colony where whiteness was supposed to matter most, help us unravel what it means to be British today.

British neoliberalism was taken up by democratic parties in an open society, so this chapter explores what, if any, lessons about its political consequences can be drawn from the political evolution of the Soviet Union. Political parties in Western Europe by the 1970s were struggling to keep pace with the changing social needs and preferences of their electorates when neoliberalism emerged. This social dis-embedding of parties would only worsen in the UK, however, when neoclassical economic diagnoses became the bipartisan methodology, and electoral choices around economic strategies were duly narrowed. The chapter traces how, as the tide of neoliberal developmental failures has risen, the Conservative Party embraced the same political strategies as late Soviet regimes. The ‘combat task’ rhetoric of economic change was replaced with the charismatic politics of nationalism, and governments increasingly resorted to demonstrable lies and invented realities to deflect from the real effects of policy and after 2016, its most utopian expression: Brexit. The chapter also reviews the rise of political corruption under neoliberalism, another Soviet affinity, as ideology morphs into alibi.

This chapter examines the potential impact of Brexit on the future of the Union, providing a snapshot of public opinion and attitudes as the full implications of the UK’s departure start to become clear. In the first section, an overview of devolution in the UK is provided. In the second section, data on public opinion are provided from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, as well as consideration of attitudes to the Union in England and to Irish unification in Ireland. In the third section, the case of Northern Ireland is examined in more depth. In conclusion, it is argued that the future of the Union depends upon a combination of factors: the UK government’s policy towards Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland; the economic impact of Brexit; demographic change in Northern Ireland; and attitudes in Ireland to unification.

The English have found it difficult for most of their history to separate themselves from a British identity. That is in good part because they created two empires: the empire of the United Kingdom and the more familiar overseas British Empire. As an imperial people, they have merged their identities in their creations. But with the loss of the overseas empire and the possible break-up of the United Kingdom itself, they have been forced to consider the question of who they are and what is a specifically English as opposed to a British identity. Brexit has made that task even more urgent. The problem is the relative lack of a tradition of reflection on English national identity. There is no lack of cultural resources to draw on, but the work remains to be done.

The parameters of British literature, much like the bonds of British unionism, are becoming increasingly mutable and open to renegotiation. As a multinational state, the United Kingdom is looking more like a disunited kingdom in the wake of independence referendums, withdrawal from supranational constellations and the emergence of post-pandemic nationalisms. Given such tumultuous geopolitical developments, not least the EU referendum result of 2016, the question of whether British literature is still capable of synthesising English, Scottish, Welsh, Northern Irish and wider transnational affiliations into a coherent whole becomes more urgent. Drawing on the diverse perspectives of major literary voices, this chapter will question the purpose and value of British literature in a divided cultural landscape and consider whether writers are anticipating the disintegration of the United Kingdom or seeking ways of reimagining a national structure of feeling.