The State of the Union in Wales | Sam Hall
Wales is a 3 million-strong constituent of the United Kingdom. One fifth is of its surface is in a National Park, and it contains around 172,000 Further Education students. It is a land of stunning beauty; of wordsmiths; and of fierce pride in one’s home. Indeed, the first line of its national anthem reads ‘Mae hen wlad fy nhadau yn annwyl i mi’ or ‘This land of my fathers is dear to me’. As part of its membership of the United Kingdom, Wales has access to one of the largest economies in the world, as well as the freedom to easily work, live, and travel in the four corners of this United Kingdom. What then does the union hold for Wales?
Wales spends more than it raises in tax – according to former First Minister of Wales, Carwyn Jones. That money – raised from the wealthy south-east of England – subsidises not just Wales but also the North-East of England. This money is spent on free prescriptions and on subsiding the tuition fees for students who live in Wales. It does not have North Sea oil or gas; and in a sweet twist of irony, opening a new coal mine was banned two years ago by Welsh Labour – who have been in power for the entire duration of the devolution settlement.
Wales only sends 40 MPs to Westminster compared to 60 Members to the Senedd in Cardiff; and has more than 730 town and community councils with 8000 councillors. It used to additionally send 4 MEPs to the European Parliament. This compares to 17,700 councillors in England, for a population of 54 million. Any idea that Wales is poorly represented is a non-starter!
Unfortunately, it was the only UK nation to see an increase in child poverty last year: a child living in a household where the income is below 60% of the median income. Health-wise, it has taken almost 2000 days for a North Wales Health Board to be taken out of special measures. An enquiry is now ongoing a series of failings may have put the lives of mothers and babies at risk at two South Wales maternity units. Meanwhile, having been run by Welsh Labour for the entirety of the time healthcare has been devolved, Wales' health boards have paid out more than £265m to patients and their families following medical errors in the last four years- without the figures from two health boards!
What of education – another key area that is devolved?
Back in November 2016 shortly after the current Welsh parliament was elected, again with a Labour majority, it was pointed out that the last three Pisa tests demonstrated a worrying decline of education standards in Wales compared to other parts of the UK. In GCSE performance Wales is lagging behind as well - Wales was ahead of England in 2000 as devolution was in its infancy, but in the following decade that was reversed. Spreading and promoting the Welsh language has not fared well either. By 2011 the number of Welsh speakers had dropped 2% over a decade. In some places, this was as high as 6%. If the Welsh government meets its dubious target of doubling the number of Welsh speakers to a million by 2050, clearly it will not be an even geographical spread.
Radical Separatists like Plaid Cymru will try and dupe voters into believing there are simple solutions to these problems of health, education and economics, as if an independent Wales will be an Garden of Eden-esque paradise. Political solutions are rarely as simple as ‘leave the UK’ or leave the EU.
Add to that that in the highest ever poll only 41% favoured independence and thankfully the chances of sectarian success remain low. To be clear, making Offa’s Dyke a more permanent feature of the British Isles would constitute a horrific butchering of our shared home, for several reasons, not limited to:
Major decisions affecting Wales such as health and education have already been made in Wales for the best part of two decades, by people who were born and continue to live in Wales- and that hasn't turned out to be a magical paradise for the people of Wales or the Welsh language. The Welsh Parliament, under Welsh Labour, has not use the powers it has effectively. Why would more powers be an improvement?
The Welsh deficit is equivalent to almost 20% of its GDP higher than Greece’s during the government debt crisis. The reason why Wales isn't facing equivalent problems is because it's part of the United Kingdom and therefore has something of a buffer zone. It is ordinary working people that would suffer for Plaid Cymru’s pipe dream.
There are communities of people who live and work on both sides of the border, supporting the economies of both England and Wales- putting a border in some cases straight through a town would only create more divisions and hamper family and economic life. The Welsh boarder was not designed to be an international boarder.
The creation of a border on the island of Ireland did not magically make problems vanish- if anything it exacerbated religious and political tensions with no solution to completely satisfy both camps available. Separatists want to divide Welsh communities.
Wales will remain a member of the United Kingdom for the foreseeable future. Its place in the Union goes back centuries, and that is particularly relevant for border communities, for whom the existence of a physical hard border would be as equally disastorous as for our Celtic cousins on the island of Ireland. Wales has had major decisions affecting its future like health and education made by the people of Wales in Wales for the best part of two decades; and thanks to continuous one party rule by Welsh Labour, it has failed to live up to the promises made less than a generation ago. Therefore, we must ask ourselves why the separatist, overly simple solution of giving more powers and ultimately independence to Wales will necessarily change that?
A Welsh exit from the UK will not solve any more of its problems than the United Kingdom leaving the EU will. There are also all the problems creating an entirely new country: establishing embassies; acceptance to the UN; leaving NATO and much more. Separatists have also not answered some key questions that being asked North of the border in Scotland. Does Wales re-join the EU as an independent state provided the EU accepts it? In which case it is not truly independent. What currency does an independent Wales use- it cannot use the pound sterling, the currency of the country it has just snubbed. The fact is, an independent Wales would be politically, economically and culturally as disastrous as a border on the island of Ireland has been. It is diversion politics, for politicians who want to reduce complex arguments and ideas of politics down to simplistic ‘silver bullet’ solutions.
Whatever the future of Wales holds, the fiscal might of the United Kingdom to support it must be unwavering. Separatists will say that Wales is rich enough, intelligent enough, and perfectly capable of governing its own affairs. But even with the powers it does have, under Welsh Labour, limited self-government has been a monumental car crash. Many things are possible in international politics — but that does not always mean they are a good idea. Welsh independence is one such example.
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