What exactly is it about Westminster politics that Welsh Independence supporters are rejecting?

Feels to me that there is a need to better articulate what it is about Westminster politics that makes it something Welsh citizens want to be free of. For me, Westminster has been drifting slowly but surely into being an embodiment of extreme Neoliberalist dogma, and that’s what I want to be freed from.

Westminster stinks, it is a boiling cauldron of extrinsic values that are activated and reinforced so frequently and strongly that policies to address social and environmental problems are either: (a) terribly designed because policymakers assume the population is as narcissistic and self-interested as they are; (b) thinly veiled and inadequate greenwash; or (c) straight up nasty callousness that don’t address the problems in any meaningful way at all.

And, Westminster is still getting stinkier; I think it will sink even further into Neoliberalism – the disaster capitalism that we’re seeing right now is evidence of that. In fact, Neoliberalism might morph into something even worse as it drops any pretence that ‘liberalism’ refers to anything other than economic liberalism. Populism leading to Authoritarianism and all that that foreshadows. Yuck.

The key thing for Wales - and the Independence movement - is whether Westminster is being rejected because Wales rejects Neoliberalism full stop? Or, is Westminster being rejected because Wales is on the losing side of the extreme version of Neoliberalism that has taken root? Judging by their ‘Independence in your pocket’ pamphlet I suspect, for Yes Cymru, it is the latter.

By arguing that Wales is ‘Big Enough, Rich Enough, Smart Enough’, Yes Cymru is saying that Wales can be on the winning side of Neoliberalism, it isn’t questioning Neoliberalism as a paradigm. It is saying (implicitly) that if the Senedd ‘did’ Neoliberalism to the people of Wales, the results for Wales would be better than if we continue to let Westminster ‘do’ Neoliberalism to Wales. I.e. by being independent, we’d have more say in the form of Neoliberalism that is followed here, giving us the option to do Neoliberalism ‘lite’ if we wanted to - to dampen down the worst of the externalities the extreme version creates.

I don’t think Yes Cymru is conscious of this, or that it wouldn’t step outside the Neoliberal paradigm if the wind started to blow that way, but it seems to be what it is defaulting to.

A Neoliberalist Wales, whether it is ‘lite’ or ‘extreme’ isn’t something that appeals massively to me; it will still be riddled with extrinsic values with all the problems that causes for policymaking, it will still measure success in GDP growth terms, it will struggle to address inequality in a meaningful way, it could easily become very Cardiff-centric; and, as Wales struggles to establish itself on the world stage, it will favour Nationalism over Internationalism which will do little to lower Wales’ contribution to ecological collapse, climate change, and social injustice at national and global levels.

So, maybe the task is to engage Independence supporters in an interrogation into their reasons for rejecting Westminster[1] and to do it through a values lens. I think that could help them to articulate for themselves what it is about Westminster politics that they don’t like. Which might then help the Independence movement as a whole to articulate that too. Leading (hopefully) to a shared consensus that – more than anything else – it is Neoliberalism and its values that we want to be free of. The implication of that is that Independence would create an opportunity to build something genuinely new and different in Wales; we don’t want a mini version of Westminster in Cardiff Bay do we?

What that something new is, is for the Indy movement to co-design and co-imagine once they have done the foundational work on values – which I’m hypothesising would result in a growing awakening that compassionate values are more important to the majority of people than is currently perceived.

It feels critical to me that the values work happens first because, without it, ideas like citizens assemblies, doughnut economics, rewilding, degrowth, democratic confederalism, etc, etc… whatever floats your boat… don’t make as much sense to those who are coming new to them. These ideas also tend get poo-pooed for being too idealistic about human nature (the values-perception gap problem) or unrealistic. 

Once the conversation about a new, exciting, optimistic politics for Wales has started, the Independence movement will be pivoting towards a more positive way of making its case.

What I’m saying, I think, is that the disillusionment people are feeling about Westminster politics is an opportunity to dig into the assumptions about human nature that Neoliberalism and its policies are built on.

Obviously, it is not only Wales that is disillusioned with Westminster, but it would be harder to engage say ‘the North’, or Cornwall in this sort of exercise because self-government is a lot less tangible. In Wales (and Scotland) independence is a distinct possibility so engaging in this sort of exercise wouldn’t feel like a futile exercise.

However, if Wales (and Scotland) were to do this and were to start showcasing new ideas, England would notice and listen and that could lead to changes at Westminster too. Maybe?[2]  

You can buy Annibyniaeth t-shirts, bags, hoodies, etc, at: https://crysauti.cymru/ ‘Annibyniaeth’ = Independence.

[1] I recognise that rejection of Westminster politics isn’t the only thing that motivates people to support Independence, there are other reasons, there’s a dose of Nationalism and a minority of Xenophobia, both general and distinctly anti-English. 

[2] I’m choosing to ignore the influence the Right-wing press would undoubtedly have; they’d be pissing all over our chips, but I remain hopeful that they can be defeated.