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Plaid Cymru leader: Welsh independence movement catching up with Scotland

Adam price spearheads the institutional campaign for Welsh independence

The leader of Wales’s main nationalist party has gone on the offensive by for the first time drawing an explicit comparison with the situation in Scotland.

Adam Price, who is the leader of Plaid Cymru (Party of Wales), told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show (February 14), that “more and more” people in Wales are supportive of independence because of the “state of the economy and the level of inequality in Welsh society”.

Price, who has led Plaid Cymru since 2018, claimed independence will put Wales “on a better path”.

But the most striking aspect of Price’s interview was his direct comparison with the situation in Scotland by way of lending an air of inevitability to eventual Welsh independence.

Price told the BBC’s Andrew Marr that the level of support for Welsh independence is on a par with the situation in Scotland “ten years ago”.

 "A few short years after that, Scotland came within touching distance of voting yes in the independence referendum", Price added by referencing the Scottish independence referendum of September 2014.

More broadly, the resurgence of Welsh nationalism appears to have impacted the strategic calculus of people inside the Welsh government, with key leaders now raising the prospect of greater devolution if not full independence.

To that end, the deputy minister for Culture, Sport and Tourism, Lord Dafydd Elis-Thomas, has said there is a “great need” to “strengthen” devolution in Wales. 

Talking to BBC Radio Cymru (February 14), Elis-Thomas – who is a former leader of Plaid Cymru but is now an independent member of the Welsh Parliament – asserted that the Covid-19 pandemic had shown the UK is a “country of four nations” and there was a need to “intensify” that reality.


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