Here’s another edition of this series of “looking at arguments against Welsh independence/Owen creates a strawman”.
Today, I’ll look at the belief that there are too many problems facing the world for Wales to consider independence – whether that’s at this particular moment in time or ever.
It’s not an easy question to answer. This may be one of the strongest (low key) arguments against independence – more so than finances, borders and the rest of it. “What’s the point of independence on a slowly dying planet?”
People probably don’t expect me to be an optimist but it’s better to have at least some hope that we can be better than we are than none at all.
Even when it comes to seemingly insurmountable challenges – like climate change or biodiversity loss – there are perhaps more reasons to be optimistic than you might think. It’s more a case of not doing enough quickly enough – or choosing the wrong options for the right reasons – than not doing anything. We’re about 30 years behind where we need to be on decarbonisation, for example, but things are slowly moving in the right direction.
There’s an assumption that social progress advances in a diagonal line when it’s more like a mountain range with ups and downs (and we’ve been in a “down” over the last few years).
I don’t view independence as some sort of “lifeboat” either, or think that we need rescuing from an increasingly out-of-touch Union in freefall. The UK isn’t some sort of evil hellscape; badly governed, certainty. An independent Wales wouldn’t be a utopia either.
If we’re going to address some of the challenges that have plagued Wales for decades or longer then we’ll have to do it ourselves instead of expecting someone else to do it for us. Likewise, we have to pull our weight in helping to solve those big global problems.
The main solution here is for all those who believe in a clear vision for independence – or a Welsh solution to some of these big problems – to actually do some work.
I’ve done a bit – not covered everything by any means, but given it a go while barely touching the surface in most cases. I’m not going to do that forever and it’s not enough by itself.
There’s no shortage of think tanks and thinkers out there – inside and outside the political bubble – who’ve had more than enough to say on independence and what should or shouldn’t happen. What’s been lacking is a clear, workable plan condensed into a TL;DR version for wider consumption and cut-through.
That could be independent studies funded by political parties or campaign organisations, think tanks actually thinking, some sort of constitutional convention, citizens assembly on independence – whatever as long as it goes beyond hot takes on Twitter.
