Boris Johnson has brought Welsh independence closer, Plaid Cymru leader says

Boris Johnson is the “most effective recruitment sergeant” that Welsh independence has ever had, the leader of Plaid Cymru has said.

Adam Price is in Dublin to address the Irish Association for Contemporary European Studies on Friday.

He will speak on the issue of how the nationalist movements in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland can make up for the democratic deficit in larger nations.

Mr Price said events in Westminster showed that a Tory government could no longer serve the people of Wales and that Britain was a “failing state”.

What will €325,000 buy in Dublin and Meath?

---

With immigration, there is a sort of hierarchy of belonging

---

‘I don’t think the West really understands’: A Ukrainian writer on his journey from torture camp to the front line

---

Our national supercomputer is gone, and the global scientific community is laughing at us

---

Support for independence in Wales is about 30 per cent at present, but Mr Price maintains that the momentum is with the independence movement and the Welsh public has had enough of the “arrogance, command and control of Westminster”.

He described Mr Johnson as the “ringmaster of a cavalcade of clowns” and the idea that 100,000 Conservative members should elect the next UK prime minister was “laughable and derisory”.

‘Completely unsustainable’

“It is completely unsustainable for him to say that he will hold on to the autumn. The government has no credibility, it is completely unsustainable. He is the lamest of lame-duck prime ministers in the history of British politics. He has to go now,” Mr Price said.

“Even in his resignation, he is still hanging on by the fingertips. The Conservative party and the 1922 Committee has to accelerate this timetable for choosing his leader. There has to be an election.”

Mr Price was confident that the Conservative party, which won 14 out of the 40 Westminster seats in the 2019 UK general election, would be “routed in Wales” during the next election.

“We have had a Tory-free Wales in the past. We are very close to that position which is why the Tories don’t want to face the electorate,” he said.

Mr Price said support for Welsh independence will continue to “solidify and grow” especially among younger people. “The majority of Labour Party voters are pro-independence which creates an interesting dilemma for the Labour Party in Wales (which is pro-unionist),” he said.

“We are getting to the stage where Scotland got to around 10-15 years ago, where people have a real thirst for the practical answers to the detailed questions about independence. That’s a great transformation for where we were. Welsh independence was a fringe question. Now it has come into the mainstream.”

The prospect of a Scottish referendum in the autumn of next year could bring the break-up of the United Kingdom closer, he suggested, and Wales would have to prepare for that eventuality.

Mr Price said the example of the Republic of Ireland was “hugely inspirational” to Welsh nationalists given the economic success of the country.