12 Comments

I'm going to be cheeky and post a link to an article I wrote about this - https://itcouldbesaid.substack.com/p/it-could-be-said-8-how-do-you-solve. I think the size of England is absolutely an issue, but the traditional solution is the right one - encourage England to express its patriotism through a British framework that encourages it to be generous to its neighbours

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I would suggest that people tend to following where investment is creating jobs and therefor major projects like HS2 which have a dis-benefit to Wales will likely see population increase outside of London but still a greater pull towards England and away from Wales. Investment into Wales under this UK government seems dependent on it also benefiting English regions on the border but that doesn't solve any part of the problem.

I wonder what your thoughts are on Mark Drakeford's 20 step plan to save the Union? I know it's difficult to find because only the Spectator and Guardian reported on it but could be an interesting follow up to this piece.

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Hmm, what about:

– the Kingdom of the Netherlands, with 98% of the population in the constituent country also called the Netherlands

– the Kingdom on Denmark, with 98% in the constituent country also called Denmark

– Antigua and Barbuda, with 97% on Antigua (those are not technically administrative subdivisions, but they have six parishes of which Saint John has 60% of the population)

– Trinidad and Tobago, with 95% on Trinidad (again, not technically administrative subdivisions)

Not quite as extreme, but the Punjab dominance of Pakistan has been a sore point historically for the other provinces and autonomous territories.

I also just learned the factoid that Mauritius has one first-order subdivision, consisting of the whole of Mauritius. (What does that mean?)

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Your canton references reminds me of another chart worth mentioning, i.e. this missive from the 2011 UK census. https://brilliantmaps.com/national-identity-uk/

2 things jumped out at me from this.

(a) Ireland, perhaps ironically, maybe forced to protect the last remaining presence of "Britishness", which still exists in a tiny patch of land in the corner of NI (the purple patch in the linked identity map), under a reunified, shared Island. In other words, the Irish constitution, which was changed in 1998 to respect all diverse cultures and traditions in an Irish Nation is aligned with the Good Friday Agreement which guarantees protection, in perpetuity, for all communities/traditions on the Island.

(b) A canton structure in a federal unified Irish nation, like the Swiss setup, might actually work better and be more acceptable for the orange (and young earth creationist) community in NI than a monolithic United Ireland.

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Some other datapoints:

In 1989, the RSFSR (ie Russia) was 51.4% of the USSR.

Right now, Russia (the oblasts, federal cities and krais) is 80.2% of the Russian Federation, the 22 republics, 4 autonomous okrugs and one autonomous oblasts are the rest. This is done excluding Crimea, which is officially the 22nd republic.

The distinction is between the bits that had meaningful autonomy (before Putin centralised in 2017) and the bits that never did.

Spain before the civil war had devolution to Catalonia and the Basque country and nowhere else, but I can't find population figures for 1931-35

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Stanley, capital of the Falkland Islands, is on a similar scale - its population of 2,500 is 74% of the total Falklands population, although of the organised settlements on the islands, it makes up 97% (there are two other hamlets with populations of a few dozen, and the rest is isolated farms).

Curiously, it is underrepresented in the Legislative Assembly - making up one of two constituencies (Stanley and not-Stanley, called Camp) and receiving 5/8 seats, or 62.5%.

Tiny statelets tend to be good for this - the two constituencies of Oberland and Unterland in Liechtenstein are divided roughly 2/1 by population, while Edinburgh of the Seven Seas (capital of Tristan da Cunha) contains about 90% of the island's population.

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I was going to say that the position of England within the UK is similar to Russia's in the old USSR, but even that's not really true, at least not in terms of population. In 1989 Russia accounted for 51% of the USSR's population (147 million out of 287 million).

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