The UK suspiciously reeks of the late-stage USSR

“The era of Westminster is coming to an end!” the nationalist leaders of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland declared this week.

John Swinney, Rhun ap Iorwerth, and Michelle O’Neill gathered in Cardiff to sign an agreement asserting their nations’ right to self-determination, as they called on London not to obstruct referendums and outlined their preferred futures beyond the UK, including EU membership for an independent Scotland and Wales, and Irish reunification for Northern Ireland.

In Russia, the meeting has already been dubbed Britain’s version of the Belovezha Accords, and the comparison is tempting because, as in 1991, political leaders from three of a state’s constituent parts gathered around a table to discuss a civilized divorce.

But the resemblance largely ends there, given the driving force behind the Soviet Union’s dissolution was its largest republic, Russia, represented by Boris Yeltsin. He joined his counterparts in dismantling the state that Moscow built, but no representative of England attended the Cardiff gathering, and Westminster has shown little enthusiasm for presiding over its own retreat.

The participants were also considerably more cautious than their Soviet predecessors, so they signed as party leaders, making the declaration a joint political initiative rather than an agreement binding their governments to secession.