Member-only story
An Independent Wales
To what end?
Yes Cymru, the grassroots organisation campaigning for Welsh independence, has had a good couple of weeks. In fact, they’ve had an exceptional couple of weeks. Having started this year with little more than two thousand members, they were up to 6,000 by the time I joined in August. On Sunday evening they hit their 10,000 target, and by Tuesday their numbers had already passed 13,000. To put this in context, if spread proportionately across the UK it would almost equate to the memberships of the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties combined.
The problem is, the reason for this surge is that Wales hasn’t had a good couple of weeks. And what’s worse, these weeks haven’t been exceptional, either.
Many new members have credited the Tory Westminster government and their contemptuous treatment of Wales for their motivation to join. In recent weeks it’s been nakedly obvious how little they think of us, but this isn’t new — and it isn’t just Wales.
Aside from their gross mishandling of the coronavirus crisis, resulting in countless unnecessary deaths, Westminster has gone out of its way to undermine both the Welsh Government and the concept of devolution. They began the crisis by effectively stealing testing kits destined for Wales, because they hadn’t been organised enough themselves. When Wales’ Prif Weinidog, Mark Drakeford, wrote to the Prime minister requesting they prevent people from heavily hit areas of England from travelling to Wales, he refused — via the media. But things have come to a head over the last week.
After spending weeks attacking the Welsh Government for their latest ‘draconian’ and ‘authoritarian’ national lockdown, Boris Johnson performed a characteristic U-turn and followed suit. When Wales had requested the Job Support Scheme be brought forward, it wasn’t possible — Welsh businesses, workers and families would simply have to suffer, and this was the fault of the Welsh Government. However, as soon as the south east of England were thrust back into lockdown, suddenly they found a way and the rhetoric returns to ‘we’re all in this together’.
