Nicola Sturgeon MSP, Sioned Williams MS and Leanne Wood at Theatr Soar, Merthyr Tydfil

Martin Shipton

The rise of Reform UK under its leader Nigel Farage poses an existential threat to both the Scottish Parliament and the Senedd – and the only guarantee against it is for the two countries to become independent, according to Nicola Sturgeon.

The former Scottish First Minister was on stage in Merthyr Tydfil’s Theatr Soar with ex Plaid Cymru leader Leanne Wood at an event on the evening of Friday May 23 organised by the pro-independence group Yes Cymru.

Hostile

Ms Sturgeon said: “If you’re an independent nation, you can’t be abolished. And I think that is a really important point because if I think back 10 or 15 years, some of my fellow Scottish nationalists would say: ‘Well, you know, the Tories will one day abolish the Scottish Parliament’, and I would always say: ‘No they won’t, that’s never going to happen’.

“Do you know what – now, would I sit here and say 100% that the existence of the Scottish Parliament will not come under threat? The Tories, I think, are very hostile now to devolution. And that’s before you factor in the possibility – and I’m not going to put it any stronger than that, although I think it potentially is stronger than that – that Nigel Farage will be in Number 10 after the next general election. Does anybody really believe that Farage wouldn’t come after the Scottish Parliament or the Senedd here? Because these are creatures of Westminster statutes: they can be abolished.

“That’s maybe something that people in Scotland and Wales should think about. If you value your democracy and you want your democracy to be protected from Westminster at all, then turning it from devolution into independence is actually the only way to properly protect it. I think what’s happening in the world right now and what’s happening in the UK strengthens the case for independence.

“I think it undoubtedly makes independence more necessary because these institutions that we all hold dear, the NHS on top of that list, are now under existential threat. And it’s ironic that these are, in many ways, the symbols of Britishness that those who oppose Scottish and Welsh independence hold up as the reasons to stay united. The UK is now posing a threat – the NHS and the welfare state are being dismantled before our very eyes. And that’s happened with a Tory government and – shame on them – it’s now happening with a Labour government. So these are the things that if we want to protect them for generations to come, then independence is more necessary and essential now than even it was in 2014 [the year Scotland voted in a referendum against independence].”

‘Rollback’

Ms Wood said: “For me the presence and the growth of the far right strengthens the case for us to be able to build up as much resilience as we possibly can in Wales, because if those actors do get power in Wales, we’ll see the end of Welsh democracy. We’ll see the end of the NHS. We’ll see the end of our Senedd, and it’ll be a rollback on so many of the things that we’ve fought for and won over time. So how can we protect ourselves against that? Well, through independence.

“If we’re an independent country, we’re very difficult to abolish. So for me, if we want to make a case for defending minorities, for standing up for the underdog like we always have, then we’ve got a really good chance of being able to do that, and protecting Welsh people against that if we’ve got a strong constitutional position.

“And I think the other thing as well is for independence as a vision from my perspective, it means everybody being included in all of our communities raising their levels. So the work that we can all do now, in this interim period if you like, is to get into our communities, work with people in our communities, build up and strengthen the resilience of those communities. Wales is a community of communities and if we’ve got strong communities, we’ve got a strong country.

“And if we’ve got people who believe and have that independent mindset, then anything becomes possible. So I think we need to see the threat of the far right as an opportunity. It is a threat, but if we play it right it can be a big opportunity for us as well.”

European Union

Ms Wood said it made sense for an independent Wales and an independent Scotland to be members of the European Union: “I think for us who want to see Wales as an independent nation and Scotland as an independent nation, being in the European Union makes sense, doesn’t it? Because there are so many other small countries thriving as independent nations within the European Union. So being outside makes that vision more difficult to paint and it makes the sense of it more difficult for people to see, I think.

“Our constitution in Plaid Cymru commits Wales to be an independent country within Europe. So we still have that vision for Wales playing its part with other European nations.

“And it could be in the future that we’re part of a different form of European alliance. Now wouldn’t it be amazing to think … I had this idea a few years ago of like a banana throughout Europe from Iceland through to Scandinavia, Denmark and then coming into the Celtic countries with the Basque Country and Catalonia, all working together as small, stateless nations, small nations that want to do society differently.

“There’s a lot of commonalities between those countries and so that could be a different form of alliance in the future, if the European Union doesn’t end up being an alliance that we want to go into. So there are other options and I certainly think aligning and working closer with countries like Scotland, Ireland, the Basque Country and Catalonia and the Scandinavian countries … We could do a lot with that because we’re all quite small. We’ve all got similar kinds of ways of looking at the world and I think that could be interesting, quirky, something a bit different and maybe it would be an alliance that would bring the people who voted for Brexit along with us as well.”

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