Last month, the nationalist first ministers of Scotland, Wales, and the North of Ireland – representing the Scottish National Party, Plaid Cymru, and Sinn Féin respectively – held what has been dubbed the ‘Celtic summit’ in Cardiff.
Precitably, the bourgeois media was awash with catastrophic declarations about the end of the sacred United Kingdom. “Beware the quiet Anglophobia of the ‘Celtic alliance’”, warned The Times. The Daily Mail even alleged that Putin himself may be behind this “reckless summit”.
Needless to say, this is all a load of sensationalist guff. The first ministers’ Memorandum of Understanding basically just committed the three parties to strengthening cooperation with each other, building ‘fairer economies’, and re-joining the European Union.
It did, however, also contain some vague proclamations that “no Westminster government has the right to block democracy”, and that “Westminster’s time is coming to an end”.
So why did this summit take place, and what does the emergence of this Celtic Alliance mean for the future of politics in Britain and Ireland?
Crisis of the SNP
The SNP has been in power in Scotland since 2007, and recently formed the latest Scottish government. However, behind this apparent strength and stability, a much shakier picture emerges.
The SNP’s support relies on two things: their promise to break from the hated Westminster establishment and form an independent Scotland; and their promises to make Scottish workers’ lives better through passing reforms and protecting people from austerity.
However, on both of these fronts they are faltering. While the Scottish government used to spend significantly more on education and health than Westminster, this gap has since narrowed, and the SNP is now unable to offset the brutal austerity that’s been raging since 2010.
And the worst is still to come, with a recent Audit Scotland report showing that almost a billion pounds worth of cuts or tax rises will be made by Scottish Local Authorities by 2028.
Due to its inability to provide Scottish workers with the reforms they did in the past, as well as the air of corruption and sleaze surrounding the party, the SNP haemorrhaging support: its membership has plummeted from 126,000 members in 2016, to just 56,000 last year.
In terms of its promise to break with the Union, the SNP is also faltering. Since 2017 its policy has been to kindly ask the British government again and again to allow Scotland to hold another independence referendum.
The fact that every past, current, and prospective prime minister has said they will refuse to grant a referendum has not swayed the SNP leaders’ approach.
Then, every election, Scottish workers are told that the election is a de facto independence vote, and if they return a pro-independence majority of MPs or MSPs, independence will surely be on the cards.
But Scottish voters have delivered pro-independence majorities in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2019, 2021, and 2026 – and yet the promised referendum never comes.
The SNP has no serious strategy for achieving independence, because the law is quite clear in its stance that anyone daring to leave the United Kingdom must be given express permission to do so by London.
While the SNP likes to pose as an anti-establishment party, its leaders are not prepared to break the law and hold an illegal referendum, despite 45 percent of Scots and 72 percent of SNP voters supporting this.
So the SNP has a major problem, resulting in mounting pressure from within the party (including the formation of a new pressure group), and from Scottish workers more widely.
A useful distraction
This is the context for the emergence of the Celtic Alliance in Scotland. It is a way for the SNP to appear as though they’re doing something to deliver on their promise of independence, while remaining within the confines of bourgeois law.
💪 The Celtic alliance has never been stronger.
🏴🏴🇮🇪 Across Scotland, Wales and the North of Ireland, people are showing that Westminster’s time is at an end.
🌼 Da iawn @Plaid_Cymru! https://t.co/KukK48AG2T
— Jenny Gilruth MSP (@JennyGilruthMSP) October 3, 2026
They can sign promises, declare that “Westminster’s time is coming to an end”, and spend time visiting each other’s countries cutting ribbons and posing for photographs – as with First Minister John Swinney’s cringe-worthy visit to Dublin in November, or the Deputy First Minister’s trip to Plaid’s conference).
This flurry of activity makes it look like things are going on behind the scenes – when, in fact, nothing is really happening at all.
The response to the alliance in Scotland has been mixed. A layer of workers and young people responded with relief that the SNP appears to at least be doing something, and were galvanised by the hostile reactions to the Celtic Alliance in the press and from the establishment parties.
How long this will last remains to be seen. Other layers are less hopeful, and view the Celtic Alliance as a glorified publicity stunt, which does little to change the situation in any of the three countries.
For example, despite all the talk of “working in the shared interests of our peoples” this week the Scottish government continued to defend the decision to send over 200 Scottish Police to try and allow the sectarian Orange Order to terrorise the community living near Garvaghy Road, even as Sinn Féin leader and First Minister Michelle O’Neill stood on the other side of the police lines.
This shows that, while the SNP leaders are happy to pour out flowery words of support for Irish unification, when push comes to shove Swinney still won’t break from the establishment’s unionism.
The fight for self-determination
However, it would be a mistake to imagine that the Celtic Alliance will have no impact on British politics at all. We are living through an extremely unstable period. For the first time in over a century support for Labour and the Tories has crumbled away, as people are only willing to vote for anti-establishment parties that purport to offer some kind of a way out.
In this situation, the Celtic Alliance parties could galvanise a certain layer of support behind them, or – and this is their preferred approach – leverage their position as king-makers in a hung parliament, which could be on the cards come the next general election.
As revolutionary communists, we uphold the right to national self-determination as a basic democratic demand. The ruling class is determined to preserve their United Kingdom, and has made use of all of its tools – including the media, the banks, and the British Supreme Court – to ensure that Scotland, Wales, and the North of Ireland are denied this democratic right.
However, we understand that neither Welsh and Scottish independence nor Irish unification will be achieved by signing mild-mannered agreements, nor by politicians prancing around on official tours of one anothers’ countries.
The only way to achieve genuine national self-determination is through a mass movement of workers and youth – which would involve all of the nations of Britain and Ireland – that not only takes aim at the rotten United Kingdom, but at the capitalist system as a whole.
