Wales finds greater belief in self-government amid pandemic response

This is the third part of an FT series asking whether the UK is heading for break-up. Follow UK politics & policy with myFT to be alerted when new parts are published.

Lleucu Haf Wiliam is getting a special birthday present this year: her first vote.

On May 6, the day she turns 16, she will use it to support Welsh independence. The schoolgirl will cast her vote in elections to the Welsh parliament for Plaid Cymru, the party calling for Wales to leave the UK.

Wiliam, who lives in Barry, a seaside resort in south Wales, said the UK was “London-centric”, with policies framed to help the capital city. “By being able to manage our own finances and resources we will be able to manage things more efficiently and fairly,” she added. “Other countries do.”

Opinion polls show younger people expressing support for Welsh independence, as surveys also suggest Plaid Cymru could secure a power-sharing role alongside the Labour party in the country’s government after the elections next month. Such an outcome in Cardiff would add to pressures on UK prime minister Boris Johnson, who is braced for the pro-independence Scottish National party winning parliamentary elections in Scotland on May 6.

Support for Welsh independence currently stands at 24 per cent, according to the Financial Times’ poll tracker. A Savanta ComRes poll published last month found a record 35 per cent in favour of Wales leaving the UK.

Although support for Welsh independence is nowhere near a majority view, the coronavirus crisis appears to have given Wales a much greater belief in the virtues of self-government.

Mark Drakeford, first minister of Wales and leader of the Welsh Labour party, has won plaudits for much of his work overseeing the country’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic. This is reflected in how Drakeford’s approval ratings in surveys are far higher than Johnson’s.

It is a stark contrast with Wales’s past attitude to self-government. In a 1979 referendum, the people of Wales voted four to one against having their own legislature. In 1997 they narrowly voted for such a parliament.

The pandemic has highlighted the sheer relevance of the devolved administration led by Drakeford to people’s lives: it has set the terms of coronavirus restrictions, as well as provided financial support to businesses.

And at the same time as the Welsh government has come to the fore in the pandemic, London has been imposing itself on Cardiff following the UK’s full exit from the EU at the end of last year.

For example, the UK government pulled out of the EU Erasmus scheme allowing British students to study in the bloc’s universities without consulting Cardiff, even though education is a devolved matter. The Welsh government has responded by creating its own scheme.

While Wales voted to leave the EU by 53 per cent to 47 per cent in the 2016 referendum, Johnson’s hard Brexit has galvanised younger voters to consider independence for their country, said Lord Peter Hain, who had a leading role in establishing the Cardiff parliament as a member of former Labour prime minister Tony Blair’s government in the late 1990s. 

“Boris Johnson is acting as the prime minister of England, not the UK,” he added.

Support for Welsh independence was until recently concentrated among Welsh speakers in rural west Wales.

But the cause is becoming a young, urban phenomenon. A ComRes poll last month found 45 per cent of 16- to 24-year-olds favoured independence, while a YouGov survey pinpointed support in the M4 motorway corridor around Cardiff and Newport.

Yes Cymru, a cross-party campaign for independence established in 2014 and now claiming more than 18,000 members, has brought fresh momentum to the cause.

Mark Hooper, Yes Cymru’s Cardiff organiser, said Wales’s union with England had failed to tackle deep poverty and inequality in his country. Gross domestic product per person in Wales is about 75 per cent of the UK average. 

He said Wales, by having its own central bank, currency and trade deal with England, could “make sure the economy works for everyone”.

Labour hopes to counter increased support for independence by pressing Johnson for greater powers for the Welsh parliament, while emphasising the benefits of the UK to Wales.

Drakeford told the Financial Times that Wales could never have secured so many Covid-19 vaccines as a small independent nation, and also questioned how the country could have its own currency, given the 160-mile long border with England was crossed by hundreds of thousands of people each day.

Then there is Wales’s weak fiscal position: in 2018-19 the country had a deficit of £13.5bn, according to the Office for National Statistics. Wales raised £2,147 per head less in tax than the UK average, and spent £863 more.

Drakeford accused Johnson of ignoring the Welsh government, and complained about the UK prime minister’s hoarding of powers repatriated from Brussels after Brexit. “He is the best recruiting sergeant for independence they have,” said Drakeford.

Labour has dominated Welsh politics for a century, and been in government in Cardiff continuously since the devolved parliament was established in 1999. But polls suggest it could lose eight of its 29 seats in the 60-member parliament on May 6, which would be its lowest total ever.

Drakeford, who has been criticised for some of his decisions during the pandemic, admitted it will be a “challenging election”. “Labour . . . has had to take extraordinary decisions that have had a profound impact on people’s lives,” he said.

Plaid Cymru and the Welsh Conservatives could both gain seats at the elections, although Labour is expected to remain the biggest party.

Since Drakeford has ruled out working with the Tories in the Welsh parliament, the most likely outcome after May 6 is a coalition with Plaid Cymru, as has happened once before, after the 2007 election.

Drakeford said the previous coalition with Plaid Cymru had worked well. “The key thing is whether there is a policy platform on which we can agree,” he added. 

Plaid Cymru is pledging to hold an independence referendum if it wins the elections, but Adam Price, party leader, did not make a plebiscite the price of a power-sharing deal with Labour.

“You don’t hold negotiations in advance of the negotiations,” he told the FT. He would only join a government that would set Wales “on a very different path”, said Price.

Plaid Cymru is promising free school meals for all primary school children, a £6bn green infrastructure programme including electrification of the railways, and financial support concentrated on homegrown start-ups rather than big inward investors.

Andrew Davies, leader of the Welsh Conservatives, hopes to build on the Tory gains made in the UK general election of 2019, especially in Brexit voting areas.

“Wales does not need five years arguing about constitutional change,” he said. “It needs a government focused on the economy, transport and education.”

Richard Wyn Jones, director of the Welsh governance centre at Cardiff University, said more devolution rather than independence was “the sweet spot of the Welsh electorate”.

He added that Labour was being squeezed in a polarised era, caught between a vibrant independence movement and a “recentralising” Conservative government at Westminster.

But Jones said the cause of independence in Wales would be boosted significantly if Scotland chose to leave the UK.

“Young people [in Wales] look at the Conservative government [at Westminster] and do not identify with it,” he added. “It does not reflect the kind of country they want to live in.”