The Dis-United Kingdom Thread - (Indyref 2, United Ireland poll, Welsh independence)

[Lang Spoon]

The thing that you always have to ask a british communist, is what is their plan for getting all the home owners of england to hand over ownership of their property to the state? If you have a plan for that that doesn't involve mass killings I'm curious to hear it.

1970s Hungary had more privately owned gaffs and less social housing than 1970s Scotland.

[ursus arctos]

A possible starting point would be hedgies and fin tech "disrupters" foreclosing on the second and third mortgages they took out to keep up with their neighbours

[Bizarre Löw Triangle]

Same with Welsh history. Earlier this year the Welsh Government decided not to me Welsh history and essential part of the syllabus. (And of course we have the leader of the Welsh Conservatives claiming the Welsh Not is overstated and there was no campaign to eradicate the Welsh language, which was then picked up and cited on this board by some of our English posters.)

Loathe as I am to agree with RT he's not totally wrong. Or on a strictly technical level he's wrong, but what Welsh history is taught in schools often creates the impression that the history of the Welsh language moves from the defeat of Glyndŵr to the Laws In Wales Act, to Brad y Llyfrau Gleision to Tynged Yr Iaith in a straight line and that creates a misleading picture (something Welsh history on the curriculum would do some good in correcting imo).

There was a campaign to eradicate the Welsh language after the reconquest of Wales following the defeat of Glyndŵr which continued until the Elizabethan Settlement. Since then, the policies of the British government towards the Welsh language have largely to treat it as an inconvenience to work around and certainly to do nothing to prevent or discourage language shift.

After the Elizabethan settlement, the main pressure on Wales was religious conformity and that meant there was a strong drive to promote Welsh literacy. That led first to Welsh replacing Latin as the medium of religious instruction (the imposition of English on the Church in Cornwall was probably the death knell for Cornish) and the drive for religious conformity manifested itself in a massive literacy drive in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (in particularly Griffith Jones' system of circulating schools) that saw Wales enter the nineteenth century as one of the most literate countries in Europe with a booming secular and religious print culture, and a growing Welsh-speaking middle class. This created the conditions for the religious and cultural revivals of the nineteenth century and the emergence of a national consciousness.

In the nineteenth century obviously there was a great deal of institutional hostility and discrimination towards Welsh speaking nonconformists but the bigger threat to the Welsh language came from inward migration from the rest of Britain and Ireland as part of the industrial revolution. Which is why areas of Wales that were not industrialised, or where the migrants were from other parts of Wales such as the slate quarries of the north west remained extensively Welsh-speaking, whereas the coal-mining valleys anglicised.

[Patrick Thistle]

For context, this was said at an annual lecture for the Aneurin Bevan Society, which the FM took as an opportunity to promote his unionist position.

https://twitter.com/NationCymru/status/1452940843665567744?t=h3Q1fMK0pzTqm930Y19QNg&s=19

[Patrick Thistle]

A larger quote

The dominant strain – not the only strain, but the dominant one – in the first majority Conservative Government since devolution has been, for nearly two years, determined and aggressive unilateralism.

“Their theory is plain to see: ‘Devolution has undermined the United Kingdom. It has placed too much power and too much prominence in the hands of opponents with which they do not agree.

Successive UK Governments have been too placatory in the face of the ungrateful and ever-demanding subsidy junkies of the Celtic fringe – and it is time to demonstrate who is boss.

It’s what I describe as the ‘show them’ playbook. A mixture of Ruritanian dressing up and a very real and very direct assault on devolved responsibilities and budgets.

[Bizarre Löw Triangle]

https://twitter.com/RWynJones/status/1452975564835393547?t=YhG3paagWq2OkSyBFRoJHA&s=19

[Lang Spoon]

English voters are definitely not going to be amenable to any more "pandering" to whinging Scots and sponging Welsh. Further devolution is a non-starter, no matter how many smudgy sheets of foolscap Brown has been churning out for Starmer on Reforming Britain. It was always going to be the rise of English Nationalism that would make the Union untenable.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

A larger quote

I've got to say that reads quite a lot like someone on the path to becoming a reluctant independence supporter. He's got to see where his comments eventually lead.

[Patrick Thistle]

If you read the Nation article they included all his comments like that and nothing else. You wouldn't know he was pro-Union if you just read what they quoted.

[Lang Spoon]

I've got to say that reads quite a lot like someone on the path to becoming a reluctant independence supporter. He's got to see where his comments eventually lead.

Former Slab Scottish FM Henry McLeish has been playing footsy with being openly pro independence pretty much since he retired as an MSP.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

If you read the Nation article they included all his comments like that and nothing else. You wouldn't know he was pro-Union if you just read what they quoted.

That's very sneaky and underhand. However he did put all those quotes in what was supposedly a pro union speech so, you know.....what does he expect

[Patrick Thistle]

I wasn't approving of them doing it

[Bizarre Löw Triangle]

I've got to say that reads quite a lot like someone on the path to becoming a reluctant independence supporter. He's got to see where his comments eventually lead.

I think Drakeford's skill as a political operator obscures the weakness of his hand.

If Welsh politics polarises between independence/unionism, Labour are in trouble in Wales as their vote is pretty much evenly split on the issue and jumping one way or the other would surrender either the eastern parts of the country to the tories or the western parts to Plaid Cymru.

So they have to maintain the position that the current majority position - increased autonomy within the UK - is a tenable one.

Unfortunately that involves driving at top speed towards a wall of aggressive British nationalism and hoping Keir Starmer can dismantle it by the time they reach it. All the while Keir Starmer is busily repointing the brickwork and applying a fresh coat of paint.

Of course letting the contradictions play out to their conclusion might make the process of jumping one way or the other easier for Welsh Labour. And the coming electoral reforms will make any blowback less painful electorally for Drakeford's successor.

[Patrick Thistle]

My Twitter feed just now

[Patrick Thistle]

If Welsh politics polarises between independence/unionism, Labour are in trouble in Wales as their vote is pretty much evenly split on the issue and jumping one way or the other would surrender either the eastern parts of the country to the tories or the western parts to Plaid Cymru.

That's a bit of a Northern view

Down here it feels more like an urban / rural split with the Tories winning in the far west because of the retirees and in the country because of the range rover brigade. (Perhaps a better split would be between valleys and vales? I don't know) I can't see anywhere going to Plaid down here.

[Lang Spoon]

Have Plaid done any serious work at having a ground game in urban Wales? It took over a generation of organising in the council schemes more or less taken for granted by SLab before the SNP had a proper base in the central belt, but now that has completely supplanted the old NE Nat heartland.

[Gas In Name Only]

I think Drakeford's skill as a political operator obscures the weakness of his hand.

If Welsh politics polarises between independence/unionism, Labour are in trouble in Wales as their vote is pretty much evenly split on the issue and jumping one way or the other would surrender either the eastern parts of the country to the tories or the western parts to Plaid Cymru.

So they have to maintain the position that the current majority position - increased autonomy within the UK - is a tenable one.

Unfortunately that involves driving at top speed towards a wall of aggressive British nationalism and hoping Keir Starmer can dismantle it by the time they reach it. All the while Keir Starmer is busily repointing the brickwork and applying a fresh coat of paint.

Of course letting the contradictions play out to their conclusion might make the process of jumping one way or the other easier for Welsh Labour. And the coming electoral reforms will make any blowback less painful electorally for Drakeford's successor.

Is there a chance that PC inclined voters could bolster Labour in certain areas if they went indy? Or, otoh, that Tories could do the same if they went full Unionist (as appears to be the case in some parts of Scotland)?

[Etienne]

I think it's fair to say the Tories have already gone full Unionist.

[Discordant Resonance]

A sizeable proportion of the Tories' Senedd candidates went full abolitionist before this year's election in order to outflank Abolish, Reform etc, and while they achieved that goal, the limits of that position were shown, as the seat returns were below their own expectations. Looking at those results, to answer LS, the urban Welsh regional seats that Plaid won came from Labour voters splitting their tickets, as the constituency outcomes show, so they've a significant amount of rebuilding to do.

[Gas In Name Only]

I think it's fair to say the Tories have already gone full Unionist.

"They" was referring to Labour

[Lang Spoon]

Is there a chance that PC inclined voters could bolster Labour in certain areas if they went indy? Or, otoh, that Tories could do the same if they went full Unionist (as appears to be the case in some parts of Scotland)?

If anything SLab have lost votes to the Tories even since going full square Red White and Blue Underpants. There's regional pockets where they have been successful, like Jackie Baillie's Holyrood Constituency (but Baillie is pretty much a Tory anyway, esp with Falsane in her constituency) or Ian Murray at WM, but though there's some tactical voting for Anyone but the Nat, Slab can't really win a Who's More Unionist dog whistle contest with the Tories.

[Patrick Thistle]

Have Plaid done any serious work at having a ground game in urban Wales?

In my opinion? No.

[Gas In Name Only]

If anything SLab have lost votes to the Tories even since going full square Red White and Blue Underpants. There's regional pockets where they have been successful, like Jackie Baillie's Holyrood Constituency (but Baillie is pretty much a Tory anyway, esp with Falsane in her constituency) or Ian Murray at WM, but though there's some tactical voting for Anyone but the Nat, Slab can't really win a Who's More Unionist dog whistle contest with the Tories.

Yeah it was Murray I was thinking of specifically tbh. Obvs the reverse is going to have happened elsewhere

[Patrick Thistle]

Going back to the urban strategy for Plaid, I don't think any of the parties have a clear vision for the cities. Cardiff council seem intent on laying waste to areas and building bigger and bigger monoliths. The latest is a giant arena down in the Bay, bulldozing an entertainment centre that has been bypassed by other developments but is only 20 years old. Meanwhile the city centre properties, like the arcades which people like to visit, are all owned by hedge funds that don't care about the tenants at all. Or culture. Or creating a diverse space to live. There are huge blocks of flats being thrown up everywhere creating soulless residential zones where most of the properties end up on Airbnb. This is all stuff that would provide Plaid with an urban agenda to challenge the Labour hegemony. How can we build cities that are uniquely Welsh instead of having generic urbania that could be anyfuckingplaceuk. But there is no urban strategy beyond "boo, Llafur swc!" I'm not even sure the Plaidcore really understand cities as most of them don't live in one, which is why engaging in the cities is so alien to them.

[Patrick Thistle]

And there is also the urban edgelands, the dormitory towns full of city-dwellers-who-sleep-elsewhere and cram onto 50 year old pacer trains that scream down the banking valley lines every morning before piling out of the city centre stations and into the call centres and other people sheds that occupy the business towers. Plaid doesn't speak to their needs as they travel 20 miles each way every day on infrastructure left over from the exploitation of the coalfields. Nobody speaks to their needs.