Let old Britain die, Plaid leader Price tells the SNP
PLAID Cymru leader Adam Price has told the SNP conference in Glasgow that he looks forward to the two parties working together to deliver independence for Wales and Scotland.
He said: “Our histories are intertwined, like a Celtic knot.
“I remember canvassing in a Glasgow tenement in the referendum four years ago. An elderly gentleman – who must have been in his nineties – struggled up three floors, with his walking stick, his lungs heaving, to find me simply so that he could shake my hand and thank me for doing what I was doing.
“Well, it’s me that should thank him, all of you and the entire Scottish nation for the inspiration that you have been to me and all those hundreds of Welsh activists that campaigned here and the thousands more at home.”
Mr Price said the first duty in any democracy was to be clear and honest with one’s own people: “So we have to say this – there is no sustainable solution to the problems and challenges we face without independence. That is as true in Wales as it is here in Scotland.
“We have to be honest, too, about the destructive potential of a brittle, bitter Brexit.
“The British political establishment have proven themselves singularly unable to deliver anything for our nations – and Brexit is no exception.
“The land of milk and honey promised by the Brexiteers now looks more like it will be sustained by Spam and potato peel pie.
“We know from the Iraq war that the British political establishment are compulsive liars. But in the case of the dodgy dossier there was at least some pretence of having to provide evidence, albeit evidence that had been entirely fabricated.”
By the time Brexit came along, said Mr Price, there was no dossier, no evidence – just a series of fantastical claims that have been comprehensively exposed as bare-faced lies by a campaign that literally broke the law and has been reported to the police for what amounts to a criminal conspiracy to undermine democracy.
He said: “Let’s take one of those fake views on which they built their campaign. We were promised shiny new trade deals with EU and non-EU countries, the former being the ‘easiest trade deal ever negotiated’, it was claimed.
“The average time for negotiating a free trade agreement, according to the Peterson Institute for International Economics, is 18 months, with a further three and a half years to get to the implementation stage.
“These figures are the average for bilateral trade deals between two partners. If Brexit happens, the UK will need to agree a trade deal with the EU and separate ones with its trading partners, of which there are over 50.
“No country on the planet has been in a position where it’s had to negotiate over 50 free trade agreements at the same time under these circumstances.
“The current Government has spent two years negotiating a deal with the EU and has failed to make any progress. The idea that negotiating 50 such deals at the same time will be a walk in the park is utter fantasy.”
Mr Price said: “The Scotsman newspaper, in typically upbeat language, said I was here to forge an alliance to break up Britain.
“But as Brexit has laid bare in excruciating detail, that Britain’s already broken; its democracy dysfunctional, its economy unbalanced, its society unequal.
“The old Britain is dying. Let it die. “Our project is not to break up but remake this island as a home for three free nations, not the palace and the property of one. History is in our hands.
“Our future is in front of us. And it’s we who hold the key.”