Written by Amelia R. Lange
Trouble in Paradise? - St Kitts and Nevis has been selling itself as one nation. Now it seems Nevis is not so sure
To the outside world, St Kitts and Nevis presents a single face. The two islands (albeit St Kitts is far larger) have one passport, sold to investors for four decades. One flag, one Prime Minister, one seat at the United Nations. Yet across the two-mile strait that separates the islands, Nevis’ residents seem to have started to see a different story: that the decisions shaping their island’s future are made in St Kitts, with St Kitts’ interests at heart.
Nevis’ Premier Mark Brantley has a word for it: ‘islandism’. In a Facebook post on 28 September, he argued that national policies are too often framed “with zero input from Nevis, zero consultation with Nevis and zero regard” for their impact on the island. They are, he wrote, “in reality St. Kitts policies masquerading as national policies”.
The grievance has deep roots. Under the 1983 Constitution, Nevis has its own Island Assembly, its own Premier and a right to leave the federation altogether. St Kitts has none of these, because the federal Cabinet governs it directly. That Cabinet is drawn from a party holding six of the eight St Kitts seats and none of the three on Nevis. When Basseterre (St Kitts’ capital) decides what is good for the nation, no elected Nevisian sits at the table.
Nevis’ Premier raised a simple test for his grievance. Geothermal energy found in Nevis could sharply reduce the federation’s reliance on imported fuel, yet it languished for more than 20 years before the current government took it up. “Can you imagine if geothermal energy lay beneath the soil of [St Kitts’] Tabernacle or Old Road?” Brantley asked. “My wager is that it would have been developed a long time ago.”
The money tells its own story. For years, Citizenship by Investment (CBI) – i.e. money from selling ‘golden passports’ to high-net-worth foreigners – bankrolled the federation, peaking at some US$250m in 2022. But by the Nevis Island Administration’s figures, Nevis (home to around a quarter of the population) received 8% of those inflows between 2010 and 2022, much of it early on as loans. Last December, Nevis finally secured an agreed 25% share, just as receipts fell by EC$126.4 million under mounting international scrutiny. "The question is 25% of what?" Brantley asked.
The writing was on the wall long before that deal was struck. In February 2025, the Prime Minister’s office announced a World Bank plan for sharing revenue between the two islands. A month later, Brantley said: “Nobody has shared a report with me.” The Nevis Island Administration says it was not consulted on the drafting.
Imagine Washington DC carving up federal funding, and California learning the size of its slice via a press release. The outcry in Sacramento would be immediate. And justified.
Infrastructure follows the same pattern. Nevis has lined up around US$20 million in concessional finance from Taiwan to expand its airport, a loan the island alone will repay. It needs only a federal guarantee, which had still not been signed by the end of September. Basseterre moved faster on its own account in April 2025, signing a Taiwanese loan of up to US$13 million for a desalination plant on St Kitts. When Brantley briefed business leaders on the expansion, one Kittitian’s first question was “what will that mean for traffic at RLB [airport] in St. Kitts?”
The pattern continues, Nevisians say. There is a proposed US$1.2 billion development on Nevis’s southern coast – optimistically called ‘Destiny’ – which would be the largest private investment in the federation’s history. An Oxford Economics assessment cited by Brantley points to growth and job creation “of a scale never before seen in our Nation”, and new revenue for a federation facing a fiscal black hole of lost CBI income. Yet the project has sat with federal ministers for the best part of 10 months. Four federal concerns were raised in July, and Brantley says the Attorney General has since signed off on their resolution. "So what is the delay?" he asked last month. “I don’t know.” Basseterre’s Cabinet is still considering the proposal, now with input from a panel of citizens. It is understood that not one of its members lives on Nevis. Similarly, none of the 14 organisations invited to advise on the legal framework underpinning Destiny were based on Nevis.
Education faces the same challenges. Taiwan generously donates 40 full scholarships abroad for St Kitts and Nevis residents. This year, Brantley says just two were Nevisian. One rejected applicant asked him: “Lord you mean not even 10 of the 40 could have been allocated to Nevis?”
Basseterre insists it must protect matters the Constitution reserves to it, such as immigration and citizenship. "The Constitution is supreme," it said in July. That is a fair principle. Yet there is an increasing feeling that a Constitution that gives Nevis its own government in theory is poorly served by processes that consult almost everyone except Nevisians in practice.
With a general election due by August 2027, the question of whether Nevis is a partner or a passenger will not go away. For the federation, the risk is that Nevisians conclude ‘national development’ means nothing of the sort.
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