AN English independence movement will be formed in the next couple of years, the founder of Believe in Scotland has said.
Following a stabbing attack in Belfast this week, racist riots erupted in Belfast and across Scotland in Glasgow and Edinburgh as far-right agitators led disorder which saw arson, assaults, and clashes with police officers on Tuesday evening.
The finger has been pointed at Reform UK and Nigel Farage for "fanning the flames of division".
There were also riots in Southampton last week close to where student Henry Nowak was stabbed to death. Police were pelted with stones and bricks as they held up riot shields.
Speaking to The National's podcast, Believe in Scotland founder Gordon MacIntyre-Kemp said he believed that with each of the devolved nations of the UK now led by pro-independence first ministers, an English independence movement will be formed that will take the shape of violent scenes we have seen this week.
Speaking firstly about the Scottish independence movement, he said: "I think that over the last couple of months there’s been an increase in the morale of the independence movement. People are up for it and that little spark can be turned into a fire."
He was then asked about whether the Celtic Alliance of pro-independence parties in the UK had boosted that momentum and went on to say how this will also change the conversation in England.
"People do realise it changes the entire conversation around the UK and here’s the thing I think a lot of people haven’t quite realised yet, is that that’s also going to change the constitutional conversation in England," MacIntyre-Kemp said.
“English people are going to look at this and they’re going to go ‘those three nations are all thinking of leaving … why?’ and a lot of them are going to go ‘well, stuff them’, and so you’re going to see an English independence movement arise over the next two years.
“But it’s not going to be an independence movement like we know it or the Welsh know it. It’s going to be an independence movement like we’re seeing on the streets right now. It’s going to be people wearing balaclavas and that sort of thing because that is where we’re heading.
"The UK is broken, the UK is limping along and there is no solution to what is happening."
Three men, one aged 31 and the others aged 18, were arrested on Wednesday in Glasgow following an evening of unrest, in which three members of the public and two police officers were hurt, Police Scotland said.
There is set to be an anti-racism rally held in Glasgow this weekend in response to the riots.
The National reported in 2024 how former Green Party leader Caroline Lucas argued England would need to start talking about its future outside of the UK.
In her book Another England: How To Reclaim Our National Story, she argued that while every other nation of the UK has, to varying degrees, addressed the fact the UK likely has an end date, England has continually refused to entertain that notion and, in doing so, has lost its identity as a separate entity from Britain.
She said English identity has been hijacked by the right, and MacIntyre-Kemp warned that fascism is now indeed rising because "of the failure of society"
“We’re never going to go back to times of plenty, this is as good as it’s going to get and there are environmental issues, around climate change. The political elites at the centre are unable to come up with any solutions, so they started looking left and they started looking right and the right has won and now Western society is leaning to the right," he said.
“Fascism is rising, but fascism can never rise of its own power because it’s not that appealing. It only rises out of the failure of society.”
