3 hours ago
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Wales is a wonderfully unusual country and that is why I love it. But one quirk about Wales I really dislike is how increasingly often I hear it said that its inhabitants should have less say over their lives. As if any people would ever want less power.
Time and again you hear this view espoused – most recently by Reform UK’s sole member of the Welsh Senedd, Laura Anne Jones. In her former incarnation as a minor Tory, Jones entered the public consciousness in Wales only a few times. Once was when she used a racist slur to describe Chinese people. Another was when she defected from the Conservatives to join Reform in July because she “just suddenly felt that the Conservative party was unrecognisable”. I am sure this had nothing to do with the fact that the Tories are facing near wipeout in Wales in next May’s election. And what has Jones done since in her role as the lone Reform MS? Well, at the first Reform party conference this week she quickly announced that the party is “not ruling out” abolishing the Senedd.
Jones is not the first politician to consider abolishing Wales’s parliament, the foundation of which was the culmination of decades of campaigning and a declaration of Welsh nationhood. Less than a year ago the then leader of the Welsh Tories, Andrew RT Davies, was ousted after he flirted with an anti-devolution stance. Just a month ago former Reform MS Rupert Lowe called for the “Assembly” (it hasn’t been called that for half a decade) to be abolished. Though why the MP for Great Yarmouth felt his opinion was worth anything on this topic is a mystery. When I spoke to Lee Anderson last year at the Reform party’s Welsh conference he told me that he was “not a fan” of devolution and that it was a “disaster” but at least it will give his party a chance to “win lots of seats” at the next election “which they can use to their advantage”. It is clear from the many conversations I have had with people within Reform, that they see the Senedd as a chance to massively increase their party’s resources ahead of a future general election.
These comments underscore an arrogance, hypocrisy and disdain that is all too often applied to Wales and our hard-won right to manage many of our own affairs. Devolution for Cymru was introduced in 1999 after a referendum in 1997 in which the people of Wales voted narrowly in favour of it. Then in 2011 there was another referendum on whether the then National Assembly of Wales should receive full law-making powers in the 20 areas over which it had control. This second referendum was much more conclusive, with more than 63% in favour.
In the last Senedd election the anti-devolution party Abolish got less than 2% of the vote. The Welsh have repeatedly voted for devolution in referendums. It seems that for Jones et al, it is fine to dismiss the democratic will of the people as long as they are Welsh.
That I find this annoying (to say the least) doesn’t mean that I think there are no issues with how devolution is now constructed – there absolutely are. The state of Welsh public services is a national embarrassment. I fail to see how anyone can look at Welsh Labour’s stewardship of Wales and conclude it is anything other than a failure. You can’t have the worst performing NHS and the worst education results after two and a half decades in power and pretend this is working well.
When polled, a not insignificant minority of people in Wales have said they want to scrap our Senedd. I totally understand why some people in Wales look at devolution and say, “this is not working”. But the answer isn’t to scrap it. If your car breaks down you don’t say, “oh well, better just walk from now on”. You repair or upgrade it.
The argument seems to be that because Welsh public services are bad, the Welsh should no longer manage their own affairs. This attitude underscores how Wales is viewed within the union. If Scotland’s government performs badly, the argument from (often London-based) commentators is rarely, “let’s abolish the Scottish parliament”. It is rather, “the Scots need to get rid of the SNP”. When Westminster presides over abysmal waiting lists or pays billions on Covid contracts to the mates of cabinet ministers, no one says, “let’s abolish Westminster”. They argue to reform it, or change the voting system, but not that we should abolish UK democracy altogether. Only in the case of Wales is it apparently acceptable to say that a UK nation is uniquely unqualified to make decisions about its own future.
What is frustrating about Wales having to continually justify its right to its own parliament is that it distracts from the fact that the system absolutely needs change. Be under no illusions: you could put the most competent government in history in power at Cardiff Bay and it would still struggle to tackle Wales’s challenges. The system currently sets Wales up to fail. While the Welsh government has a £23bn budget and control over our health service, it has less borrowing power than a council. It also has strict limits on how much of its budget it is able to carry over, which artificially hamstrings the Welsh government and punishes prudent spending.
Back in 2023 the Welsh government asked the Tories in Westminster to be allowed to carry over an extra £150m that it hadn’t spent. This was rejected and the Treasury took that money away from Wales. While you could blame the Welsh government for its poor financial planning, this system of funding is bonkers. How can any government operate effectively in these circumstances?
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What the people of Wales need more than anything else is a system that works. We need a system of funding based around what Wales needs, not the opaque system we have now which is linked to what England decides to spend. We need the system to be rationalised so that it makes logical sense. We need it to be fair so that Wales doesn’t get shafted over rail funding, among other things.
What Welsh democracy doesn’t need is charlatans who only see Wales as a tool for generating social media engagement. We shouldn’t have to spend our time justifying our rights to the same status as other UK nations. Let’s stop discussing whether Welsh democracy is allowed to exist, and focus on how to make it work.
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Will Hayward is a Guardian columnist. He publishes a regular newsletter on Welsh politics and is the author of Independent Nation: Should Wales Leave the UK?
