First Minister asks pro-independence lobby for answer on ‘simple’ finance question

FIRST Minister Mark Drakeford has called on those seeking an independent Wales to answer one simple question, writes Will Hayward.

In an interview with the Western Mail, Mr Drakeford was asked if the coronavirus crisis had made him more persuaded by the arguments for an independent Wales.

In response, he said that there was a question he wanted advocates for independence to answer.

“I often just want to ask one simple question,” he said. “Explain to me what currency would an independent Wales use?

“When we go to the shop, what will we be using? It doesn’t seem to me to be an obscure or difficult question. If you want to say that Wales should be independent, just explain to me when my pension arrives what currency will it come in? When my wages arrive what will I be paid in? If the answer is ‘pounds sterling’ then any idea that you are independent just evaporates.

“You wouldn’t be independent in any meaningful sense because you would be tied to the UK central bank, have no control over interest rates and other macroeconomic things.

“If the answer is that it is not the pound sterling, then you can’t avoid the fact that every time you cross the border you will be having to to change your currency.

“Every time you go from Wrexham to Chester there will have to be border arrangements that will allow you to spend your money in a country that no longer has the same currency as you do.”

The First Minister added that people calling for independence in a “slogan way” were trying to “have their cake and eat it”.

He said: “People who advocate independence and use it in that slogan way, I think the questions are for them to answer at this point.

“The current crisis has certainly brought the debate to the surface but I think that often it is conducted with an absence of even the smallest depth behind what that slogan might mean. There are many other questions I could ask but just that one simple one could be enough.

“People want to have their cake and eat it. You can have everything you can claim independence can bring and nothing else will change. You can have all the advantages you have today and you have all these

other things and I am afraid it just ain’t so.”

There has been a rapid growth of support for devolution in the past four years. This has been in part driven by the coronavirus crisis and Brexit. The WalesOnline/YouGov poll today found both Mr Drakeford and the Welsh Government were polling higher than Boris Johnson and the UK Government over the handling of coronavirus.

Despite opposing independence, Mr Drakeford said he still thought there was further to go in terms of devolution in Wales.

“I have always been a very strong supporter of devolution,” he said. “I have always believed that it is right that decisions which only affect people in Wales should be made by people in Wales and I don’t believe that the devolution journey is over. In that sense I have always been within a particular spectrum within my own party. These views 30 years ago would not have been mainstream in the Labour Party.”