Not far from my farmhouse in Piedmont, Count Cavour schemed Italy into existence.

This weekend, three politicians in Cardiff, Wales, started scheming to make a nation disappear.

The first ministers of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland met in the Welsh capital and signed a joint declaration. They demanded the right to hold independence referendums. They told new British Prime Minister Andy Burnham to prepare for constitutional change. John Swinney of the Scottish National Party said Burnham may go down as “the final prime minister of the United Kingdom.”

The papers called it the separatists’ summit.

In Italy, Cavour’s historical gambit is called the Risorgimento (resurrection or rising action). For the UK, this is the reverse. It’s no longer about devolving power from the central state to the home countries. This is the intended breakup of the union.

For two centuries, European nations tied themselves together. Italy in 1861. Germany in 1871. France has that effect on peoples. But now the oldest union of them all, born in 1707, is tugging at its own knots.

As Sir Francis Bacon once wrote, “The best advisors are dead.” To understand why, let's visit two dead poets and two dead schemers.

The Poets Who Voted No

In 1796, Goethe and Schiller published a set of short, barbed verses called the Xenien. One of them asked, “Germany? But where is it? I cannot find the country.”

The two greatest Germans alive couldn’t locate Germany on a map. That’s because “Germany” was a language, a literature, and a few hundred squabbling principalities with, bless them, competing tax policies. It wasn’t a state.

The poets liked it that way.

Another verse told Germans they hoped in vain to become a nation. It’s better to become freer human beings instead. Amen to that!

Goethe doubled down late in life. He told his secretary, Eckermann, that he loved Germany’s many small capitals. Weimar, Dresden, and Munich each had their own theater, library, and orchestra. He warned that if you cram all that into one imperial capital, the provinces would become lifeless.

Goethe said to Eckermann:

I do not fear that Germany will not be united; our excellent streets and future railroads will do their own. Germany is united in her patriotism and opposition to external enemies. She is united, because the German Taler and Groschen have the same value throughout the entire Empire, and because my suitcase can pass through all thirty-six states without being opened. It is united, because the municipal travel documents of a resident of Weimar are accepted everywhere on a par with the passports of the citizens of her mighty foreign neighbors. With regard to the German states, there is no longer any talk of domestic and foreign lands. Further, Germany is united in the areas of weights and measures, trade and migration, and a hundred similar things which I neither can nor wish to mention.

Bismarck ignored the poets. In 1871, he welded Germany together with iron and blood. He wanted one capital, one army, and one Kaiser. In history’s greatest case of “be careful what you wish for,” within 75 years, that unified state had dragged the world into two abominable wars and reduced itself to an American vassal state.

The poets look wiser every year. Culture doesn’t need a state. In Germany's case, the state killed it.

The Schemers Who Voted Yes

Italy took the other road, and it started here in Piedmont.

Cavour, the prime minister of Piedmont-Sardinia, was Europe’s coldest calculator. He didn’t dream of Italy. He engineered it, with French alliances, rigged plebiscites, and railway timetables.

Garibaldi was his opposite, a romantic in a red shirt. In 1860, he landed in Sicily with a thousand volunteers and went on to conquer half the peninsula. Then he did something no conqueror ever did before. He met King Victor Emmanuel at Teano and handed over the south.

In 1861, the Kingdom of Italy was born. Massimo d’Azeglio is said to have remarked at the time that Italy was made, and now Italians must be made. (Incidentally, they tell a joke in Venice: What’s the most common foreign language spoken in Venice? Answer: Italian!)

So, Italy’s still working on it. Over a century and a half later, the south remains poorer than the north, Rome still pumps money down the boot, and the northern regions still grumble about paying for it. Unification built a state, but it never quite built a nation.

Why Nations Tie and Untie

Nations unify because men at the top like Cavour and Bismarck profit from scale. They want bigger markets, bigger armies, one currency, and one tax base.

Nations also untie because of their leaders. When the periphery’s leaders can win power by blaming the center, the union becomes their favorite enemy. This is the Curley Effect. Sometimes, a politician profits more from grievance than from prosperity, most notably when the central government stops handing him goodies.

In short, incentives guide Ministers Swinney, ap Iorwerth, and O'Neill. Each one holds office because voters back home want someone to shake a fist at London. Every year the grievance stays alive is another election won. That's why Monday's declaration set no timetable and no deadline. A resolved grievance is a fully depreciated asset, like cured patients are for psychiatrists.

But the numbers are ugly.

Scotland's own government publishes its notional books every year. The latest figures show a deficit of 10.9% of GDP, about £25 billion, against 4.2% for the UK as a whole. Wales and Northern Ireland run even bigger gaps. England covers the difference every year.

And yet, all three want to join the European Union, whose rules cap deficits at 3% of GDP. (Except for France. The rules don’t apply to them for some reason.) They propose leaving the union that pays their bills and joining one that would order them to slash spending on Day 1.

It’s worth remembering Scotland joined England in 1707 because Scotland’s failed Darien colonial expedition had bankrupted its ruling class. In return for unification, London paid their debts. The union began as a bailout. But now, the bailout feels like an insult instead of a rescue.

What It Means for Europe

The precedent: Catalonia, Flanders, Corsica, and the Basque Country are all taking notes. Brussels has always kept separatists at arm's length because Madrid and Paris demanded it. If Scotland gets a legal path into the EU, that dam cracks.

The money: A national divorce is a currency event. What currency does an independent Scotland use? What backs its bonds? Where does the UK’s nuclear submarine base at Faslane go, and who pays to move it? Politicians hate questions like these, and the market will force sterling to wear a higher risk premium long before any referendum.

The mirror: When a distant capital taxes a lot, delivers little, and looks down its nose at the periphery, the periphery is incentivized to leave. The Swamp should keep an eye on Cardiff, though it won’t. The Congress Creatures will be too busy mocking it.

Political unions are paper promises. Promises get repriced when the knots come loose.

Wrap Up

Nothing may happen for years. Burnham has already said a referendum is off limits, and the 2014 Scottish independence vote failed 55 to 45.

Those lucky lawyers will bill by the decade, not the hour.

But this isn’t about tartan and dragons. It’s about 3 governments whose leaders profit from the quarrel and 3 treasuries that can’t afford the divorce they’re demanding.

Goethe knew a nation was its people. Cavour knew a state was a balance sheet with an army. This episode proves them both right, for different reasons.

Welcome to Schrödinger’s UK. It’s alive and dead simultaneously.

Have a great day ahead.