Devolution in the UK and the Combined Challenges of Pandemic and Brexit
Devolution in the UK and the Combined Challenges of Pandemic and Brexit

Author(s): Przemysław Biskup
Subject(s): Politics, Governance, Government/Political systems, International relations/trade, Welfare systems, Health and medicine and law, EU-Accession / EU-DEvelopment
Published by: PISM Polski Instytut Spraw Międzynarodowych
Keywords: UK; pandemic; COVID-19; Brexit; domestic policy; foreign policy;
Summary/Abstract: Brexit and the pandemic pose the two most important challenges for UK domestic politics today. While Brexit policy has been controlled by central-government institutions, the response to the pandemic has been formulated by a number of mutually independent central, national, and regional institutions. Consequently, the national and regional elections in May 2021 have been increasingly concentrating on devolved health and education policies as well as on partly decentralised economic and fiscal ones. In the pandemic context, these policies have become the most important catalysts for separatism in Britain in the last 30 years. In Scotland, the election may open the way to its independence and the destabilisation of Britain as an important ally of Poland.

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