Westminster’s insistence on over-centralising power is once again pulling the UK apart

It time for a new wales 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 it’s time to be free

Had email am from English friend, wondering whether he could be bothered to read 50 pages of "clarity".

"The central problem at the heart of UK politics is the reluctance of Westminster to let go of power. This has been at the root of all of the UK’s constitutional problems over the past few decades." No. Just plain wrong. Based on a misunderstanding of how the English think. Go back to Heath, Major and on. The problem is that the Welsh will not unite and demand self-rule. We are divided and fight one another and we don't really think enough about our own economy. If Wales were to organise and demand, say, Dominion status (3/4 of the way to Indy) the English would fine. they were fine with NZ, even Ireland etc etc doing this. As it is, the English quite naturally despise us for being spineless. And we don't tackle the basis Labour tactic - keeping Wales dependent on London so as to keep the status quo.

Centralisation of power in Westminster has very ancient roots. England (and I do mean England) became a strongly centralised state a thousand years ago whilst most of the current states in the rest of Europe were a patchwork of city states and complex fiefdoms. What is now France could not have attempted to put together the Domesday Book for hundreds of years after the Normans did it in England. Neither could what are now France, Germany, Italy, Spain or even smaller states like the Netherlands or Belgium. In many other countries power was given by smaller units to the centre. In England a powerful centre was usually sble to control how much it felt like giving away, or not. For instance, Germany and the US, which you mention, became federal countries by a process of individual states coming together and deciding to give up some powers to a central body. They were able to build in protection against that central state overplaying its hand because they held the reins. In England, which as we know took over Wales in C16, from at least the Conquest onwards, the process has been one in which a centre which grabbed all the reins by force decides in miserly fashion how far to loosen them. There were mediaeval attempts by barons to grab back power and Magna Carta gave them some protections. But through all the turmoil of the centuries the centre has held. That centre didn’t take over Scotland. The eventual union of Parliaments was a voluntary union, not a coup, and Scotland's position is very different from Wales’s , But the strongly rooted centralising Westminster mindset, with its roots in deep history, plus the general know-nothingness our current generation of politicians makes them blind to that. I have no optimism that they will have a clue what to do to avoid constitutional turmoil. They seem to believe that the law is whatever they decide on the dpur of the moment and that any legal or constitutional restraints on them should be swept aside. I haven’t forgotten NI but that would be a very long essay

Welsh Indy Parties now lagging behind the people?

I completely agree that the UK Government believes that what is right for London and the South East of England is right for the rest of the UK. This applies not only to the current situation but to many other decisions that have been taken in the past. Before I moved to Wales I lived in Yorkshire and it was apparent that the UK Government do not understand the needs of areas outside of the South of England.

The international commentariat are giving the UK government an absolute pasting... once again. As for politicians, they seem genetically incapable of sharing or delegating real power, whether in Washington, Beijing, Moscow, Brussels, London, Cardiff or Edinburgh, they seek to centralize, standardize and control. It has to be the kind of people who are attracted to and succeed in politics. Unless someone else has a better explanation.

The problem in Westminster isn't necessarily the whole establishment but mainly the Conservative part. Other parties are now beginning to realise that a new sort of union in the British Isles needs to be established. So long as the Tories are in power it will never happen though Westminster Wales needs to now take the matter in it's own hands and claim Self Determination regardless what those in London think. Now is the time.

Ifan, it's not just a reluctance over the last few decades, it's a problem going back centuries and the Tories/English Establishment's 'bone-headed' belief that they have a God-given right to rule!!! Just ask any, now free from this shower in their 'Precious Empire'?

One intriguing development over the last three days or so is that while Westminster government ministers continue to bang on blithely as if their jurisdiction was absolute in all things across every part of the UK, the UK-wide media have started routinely employing the rider 'in England'/'in the case of England'/'applying to England' in their references to the easing of lockdown first heralded by Bunter on Sunday evening. I noticed it in various TV news bulletins in the last couple of days, and on UK news websites such as 'The Independent'. If the distinction wasn't much made before, it is being made now.