What until recently sounded largely theoretical has become a little less so.

Meeting in Cardiff this week, the leaders of the SNP, Plaid Cymru and Sinn Féin signed an agreement asserting the right of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to determine their own futures. They called on Westminster to prepare for constitutional change and declared, in striking language, that “Westminster’s time is coming to an end.”

They also said that they see the future of their nations in the European Union.

This does not mean that the United Kingdom is about to disappear. The three movements are at very different stages. Scotland has already held one independence referendum. Northern Ireland has a route to a future border poll under the Good Friday Agreement. Welsh independence remains considerably more distant.

But the significance of Cardiff should not be dismissed. For the first time, the principal nationalist parties governing Britain’s three devolved nations are openly coordinating around the principle of self........

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