Brexit Dominoes

A United Kingdom it ain't.

   Britain has begun the process of leaving the European Union. Scotland, where voters said they wanted to stay, may now say goodbye to Britain and reclaim its independence.
   If England and Wales split from the EU and Scotland opts for independence so it can stay in the EU, where will that put Northern Ireland, which decided to remain part of the UK when the rest of Ireland became an independent republic? The Northern Irish, along with the Scots, voted to stay in the EU but were outvoted by citizens of England and Wales.
   Confused yet?
   
   To start with, remember that the full name of the country goes back to the year when King James VI of Scotland also became King James I of England when his cousin Queen Elizabeth I died. Puzzle: Should he be known as King James of Scotland and England, or King James of England and Scotland? Which should get first rank? And what about Wales, actually a principality dominated by England? Or the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man?
   To resolve the puzzle, since James united the two kingdoms, they came up with this: The United Kingdom of Great Britain.
   A couple hundred years later, to deal with the obstreperous Irish, they persuaded the folk in Dublin to dissolve their own Parliament around 1800 and take seats in London, thus setting the stage for a new national name: The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
   That lasted until the 20th Century, when the Irish reclaimed their independence, but six northern counties preferred to stay with the UK. So the island was split. The Republic of Ireland was born with full independence, but that required a border, with all that entails, between the Republic of Ireland and the six counties that stayed in the UK.
   The monarch now presided over the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
   Still confused? But wait, there's more.
   If and when the UK leaves the EU, that means the border between Northern Ireland the Republic of Ireland, which came down when the UK joined the EU, will have to go up again.
   No mention has yet been made of building a wall, but there will certainly be border crossings, with guards checking passports and visas for the Irish who have been free to travel back and forth on their own island for several decades.
   And speaking of walls, will the Scots or the English need to establish new border crossing procedures, or will they simply revive the two walls that the Romans built some 2,000 years ago to keep out marauding Scots?
   Perhaps it will be the Scots who do that to keep out marauding Brits.
   
   History note: The two walls are known as Hadrian's Wall and the Antonine Wall, after the Roman emperors who built them.
   Comment: In the long run, walls don't work. The Great Wall of China didn't work, the Berlin Wall didn't work, and the proposed wall between the U.S. and Mexico won't work.
   Moreover, if the U.S. builds a wall on the American side of the border, that would give away the Rio Grande to Mexico, and many Texas ranchers would lose a major supply of water.