United Kingdom
In Northern Ireland, Sinn Féin and the Social Democratic Labour Party achieve between them over 40% of the vote at elections, with both parties supporting Northern Ireland leaving the United Kingdom and being reunited with the Republic of Ireland.
In Scotland, the Scottish National Party (SNP) won an outright majority at the 2011 Scottish Parliamentary elections. It hopes to hold a referendum on Scottish independence before the next parliamentary elections in 2015.
In Wales, Plaid Cymru believes in an independent Wales.
In England, there are movements, such as the English Democrats, calling for a devolved English Parliament. There are also movements, such as the Wessex Regionalists, calling for devolution of power to the English regions. Movements seeking autonomy or independence are also present in the peninsula of Cornwall.
There is also a strong independent movement in the UK headed initially by the Independent Network (which is not a political party) and most recently by the Jury Team. These movements hope to create a Parliament more accountable to the electorate by helping independent candidates get elected.
Read more about this topic: Politics Of Europe, Secessionist and Devolutionary Pressures
Famous quotes containing the words united and/or kingdom:
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)
“He is a strong man who can hold down his opinion. A man cannot utter two or three sentences, without disclosing to intelligent ears precisely where he stands in life and thought, namely, whether in the kingdom of the senses and the understanding, or, in that of ideas and imagination, in the realm of intuitions and duty.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)