Last week in Cardiff, something genuinely historic happened, and barely anyone in a dozing Cyprus noticed. The First Ministers of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland sat down with the president of Sinn Féin, who also leads the official opposition in the Republic of Ireland, and signed a memorandum of cooperation pushing for constitutional change in the United Kingdom, clearing the way for referendums on self-determination and independence.
John Swinney of the SNP, Rhun ap Iorwerth of Plaid Cymru, Michelle O’Neill and Mary Lou McDonald of Sinn Féin all put their names to a document that spells out, in plain terms, that their nations have their own histories, their own identities, their own political traditions. “Each of our nations has the right to determine its own future, by democratic means and in line with the will of its people,” it says. There could be no clearer sign that Westminster’s time is up than this. For the first time ever, the leaders of these governments are backing independence from a washed-up “United Kingdom.”
With their people’s backing, the three parties’ leaderships aren’t shy about what they’re after: a stronger, fairer economy, the development of their own energy resources, and a future inside the European Union, free of London’s dead weight. The memorandum doesn’t hedge: “No Westminster government has the right to obstruct democracy or undermine the principle that our peoples will decide their own future for themselves.” It calls on the British government to prepare to plan and facilitate constitutional change in each nation.
This is a revolutionary moment, and yes, it concerns Cyprus too, however much our leaders feel our relationship with England is somehow different. Cyprus has a decision to make: does it keep playing “unsinkable aircraft carrier” for a washed-up United Kingdom, even as it comes apart at the seams? Does it keep doing the bidding of a country in freefall, one that isn’t even European and has been consistently friendly towards Turkey, all under the fantasy that the Treaty of Guarantee still means something for the Cyprus problem? Our Irish, Scottish and Welsh brothers, meanwhile, have seized their moment and are fighting for their self-determination. And while they do, at the Presidential Palace of the Republic of Cyprus, a country with two British bases on its soil, the coat of arms of English colonialism still looms large. History, as ever, shows no mercy.
