‘Wales can prosper if it’s master of its own dreams, says Price
WALES will never be able to solve its economic problems until it becomes an independent state in charge of its own destiny, Plaid Cymru leader Adam Price told delegates to his party’s conference in Cardigan.
During a passionate speech he called on everyone who cares about Wales to join Plaid and help build a new, more prosperous nation.
In a scathing assessment of Labour’s management of the Welsh Government, Mr Price said: “1918 marks not just the centenary of the end of the First World War, but also the beginning of 100 years of Labour’s rule in Wales.
“That great party, once a movement, a force for change, has shrivelled into the management class of the status quo, shackling us to the corpse of a British body politic which in all its machinations these days is doing a pretty convincing impersonation of the last days of the Austro-Hungarian empire.
“For 20 years, what passes for political leadership in Wales has failed the test of our times.
“Welsh politics has been an oasis of stasis in a sea full of change.”
Many people in Wales had begun to lose faith in democracy, hope in the future and belief in themselves, said Mr Price. Many had cheered on Brexit as the crowds 100 years ago had cheered on those marching to the Somme.
But he said: “We have to be honest with the people of our country.
“There is no sustainable solution to the problems and challenges we face without independence.
“It’s only by owning our own problems that we will solve them, by owning our own opportunities that we will seize them, by owning our own dream – not Boris Johnson’s, not Jacob Rees-Mogg’s or Jeremy Corbyn’s – that we will ever turn our Welsh dreams into our Welsh reality.
“And we have to be honest with our people too about the destructive potential of a brittle, bitter Brexit.”
He said Wales had waited 20 years after losing a referendum in 1979 before winning another referendum and getting a National Assembly: “We cannot wait 20 years to undo the damage that is about to befall us. To see our farming industry decimated, our fishing sector eliminated, our manufacturing base eviscerated,” he said.
“Brexit poses the greatest existential threat of our generation to the agricultural sector as a whole and to upland farms in particular.
“Mirroring Michael Gove, the Labour Welsh Government’s response to this is proposing to take away farmers’ safety net through phasing out the Basic Payment Scheme from 2020.”
Mr Price said that in Wales, 80% of an average farmer’s income comes from the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) with the likelihood that for upland farmers it was even higher.
Although Wales has 4.7% of the UK’s population, it receives more than 9% of EU funds that come to the UK.
Mr Price said: “Meanwhile, our principal competitors in the EU will continue to take more than 70% of CAP support as direct payments.
“The Scottish Government is maintaining basic payments. Northern Ireland will do so as well. Even Labour’s Shadow Defra Secretary, Sue Hayman, has announced that Labour in England would maintain basic farm payments. This is creating an uneven playing-field for Wales.”
According to Mr Price, doing away with basic farm payments to farmers could do to rural communities what Margaret Thatcher did to industrial communities in Wales in the 1980s: “We’ve heard about the Highland Clearances of Scotland,” he said.
“If we are looking at family farms going out of business, then it will be the Upland Clearances of Wales.”
Speaking generally of Brexit, the Plaid leader said: “We’re on the Titanic’s deck. The iceberg’s looming.
“The UK government’s strategy, it seems, is to tell the iceberg to move.
“Those in first class have already taken to the lifeboats – David Cameron’s on a beach sunning himself somewhere, Jacob Rees-Mogg’s firm has moved to Dublin.
“But it’s the people that are left locked in the first-class cabins.
“We have got to break that deadlock. We have got to give people a chance to avert a disaster for which it is they that will pay the heaviest price.
“Which is why we say it is time for a People’s Vote.”
Meanwhile, Labour, said Mr Price, was “holding hands with Theresa May as the band plays Nearer God to Thee”.
He said the choice was between change and more of the same.
“To build the New Wales, we must invest in the new generation,” he said. “Due to [Welsh Labour’s] decision to cap the eligibility of families on Universal Credit for free school meals at a net earned income of £7,400, more than 40% of children who live in poverty in Wales will not be eligible for free school meals.
“This will be the least generous offer in the UK as all children in early-years education in Scotland and England are provided with free school meals and the cap for earned income in Northern Ireland has been set at £14,000 – almost double the level proposed in Wales.”
Mr Price also criticised Welsh Labour for only offering 30 hours of free childcare for three-year-olds to parents who were working, excluding those who were looking for work or in education and training.
Setting out his vision for Wales, he said: “We want Wales to be the creative country, a knowledge nation, a land of innovation, of inspiration and of hope.
“We must fire up the national imagination with a sense of the Wales that might yet be.
“We must create in our people a realisation of the radical urgency of now. That we cannot afford to keep doing what we have done for another five years.
“That it’s time to end the wellworn path of decline – the disgrace of falling life expectancy, the scandal of the collapse in educational rankings, the ignominy of the sick man of Europe status of our economy – and instead begin to start a new course.
“When I’m First Minister we’ll relocalise the economy, watering the roots and building up the foundations.
“We’ll do what the French government has just done and guarantee by law that at least 50% of all food bought by the public sector is local.
“When I’m First Minister we’ll make up for generations of under-
investment by leapfrogging and building the future here – building a reliable, fast, modern, renewably powered National Western Rail Line for Wales linking Swansea with Bangor.”
Taking a swipe at Welsh Secretary Alun Cairns’ plan to create a crossborder partnership with the west of England, Mr Price said: “We don’t need your Western Powerhouse, Mr Cairns – we’ll build our own here in Wales.”
He continued: “When I’m First Minister, we’ll create a real Development Bank, not one in name only, to offer patient loans to help local companies grow and, when necessary, to be bought by the staff to help companies made in Wales stay in Wales and prosper.
“When I’m First Minister, we’ll create a Welsh national energy company with the profit used to build up a basic income for all Welsh citizens.
“Governing as if we are already independent, we’ll build the confidence to get there.”
He said a new Wales could only be built with the help of everyone who cares about the country – and he announced that in a bid to boost membership of Plaid Cymru, people joining in coming weeks will have their subscriptions waived.
Acknowledging that the party needs to improve its own internal organisation, he announced that the party had commissioned former SNP parliamentary leader Angus Robertson to carry out a root-andbranch review of its own organisation.
Mr Price also revealed that he was setting up a series of party panels to develop detailed policy proposals in advance of the next Assembly election in 2021.
He concluded: “Our message to the Welsh people must be simple. Yes Wales Can. We can be prosperous. We can be confident. We can be fair and flourishing.
“We can be self-governing and successful. We can be Welsh and European.
“We can be independent, and we can get there sooner than you think.
“This is our chance to turn the page on the politics of the past. Our opportunity to bring new energy and new ideas to the problems we face – and a new dynamic to the country that we love.”