One sovereign state, four countries, and British law still hesitates over the word
England, Scotland and Wales field their own football teams and compete separately at the Commonwealth Games, yet none of them appears on the international standard list of countries. The UK government has described the arrangement as countries within a country. British law itself has never settled on one word for the parts.
Since 1922 the United Kingdom has consisted of England, Scotland and Wales, which together make up Great Britain, plus Northern Ireland, variously called a country, province, jurisdiction or region. Before that, from 1801, the whole island of Ireland was part of the union; it was divided in 1921, and the southern part left the following year. The Channel Islands, the Isle of Man and the overseas territories belong to the Crown in various ways but are not part of the UK at all.
Although it is a unitary state, the UK contains three separate legal systems: England and Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. Since 1998, the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Senedd and the Northern Ireland Assembly have taken charge of many devolved matters, while Westminster keeps reserved powers. England, home to most of the population and land, has no devolved government of its own and is run directly by the UK Parliament.
The vocabulary has shifted with each major statute. Acts passed under Henry VIII in 1535 and 1542 annexed Wales to England, and from 1746 until 1967 the law simply used England to cover both. The Acts of Union of 1707 called England and Scotland parts of a united kingdom, and the 1800 Acts used country for Great Britain and Ireland when discussing trade. The Government of Ireland Act 1920 called Great Britain and both parts of Ireland countries for tax purposes, while the Northern Ireland Act 1998 uses no label at all.
Even the definitions are uneven. The Interpretation Act 1978 defines England, Wales and the United Kingdom, the last meaning Great Britain and Northern Ireland since 12 April 1927, but no current statute defines Scotland or Northern Ireland. In international standards lists, England, Scotland and Wales are called countries, while Northern Ireland is labelled a province.
Source: Countries of the United Kingdom
