For Richard Wyn Jones, the next 10 years will be defined by what he sees as the existential crisis in which the UK is plunged.
He began by saying: “Anybody who’s taken an interest in Welsh politics over the last few decades has learnt to be very cautious.
“Who would have said in 1979 that we would eventually get devolution in 1997? Who would have said, given the narrowness of the margin in the ‘97 referendum, that we’d end up in a situation where the overwhelming majority of the people in Wales consistently support devolution, want more of it etc?
“One of the things we’ve learnt is that things can change very quickly.”
Having got that out of the way, he said: “The UK is in a state crisis, and there are all kinds of obvious manifestations of this. But the territorial constitution is always a great part of the crisis.
“Since 2014 we are in a position where we know that around half of the people in Scotland want to leave the Union.
“Since 2016 we’ve had Brexit, which has brought about one of the most significant changes in the geopolitical and economic orientation of the state since the 1940s.
“It was a very narrow referendum margin – decisive but still narrow. Since then nothing has been done to build losers’ consent.
“It’s been operationalised in a way that has alienated all our closest neighbours. It’s alienated the United States. It’s created an economic border within the UK between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
“You’ve got the Conservative Party, which is the party of government in England, that has basically purged non-believers from the ranks.
“You’ve got a Labour Party which has gone through a huge period of turmoil and is an extremely unhappy place internally.
“You’ve got the monarchy, which is another pillar of the state, with a monarch who is clearly old and infirm. You’ve got one of her sons involved in a global sex scandal.
“The armed forces have lost the two major conflicts they’ve been involved in most recently.
“The state is in deep crisis. This has huge implications for the territorial constitution.
“Scotland and Scottish independence is clearly unsettled. Northern Ireland is an open wound.
“England is governed by a party that is deeply unrepresentative of opinion in England actually in important ways – but absolutely in Wales.
“I haven’t started to talk about the economy, I haven’t even mentioned the fact that above and beyond the Covid hits, dragging the UK out of the single market has massive implications for Wales in particular, more in Wales than in almost any other parts of the state.
“From a Welsh perspective, we’ve got this weird paradox.
“We’ll be marking 100 years of Labour domination of Wales in November of this year.
“Devolution is probably more popular than it’s ever been. We have a Welsh Government which is trusted more than anything that has preceded it, whatever the noises off – that’s what the data suggests.
“There’s clearly consensus amongst the Welsh electorate for more powers.
“You’ve got all of that, but at the same time you’ve got a UK Government and a Conservative Party that is increasingly treating devolution as an existential threat to the state.”
Prof Jones said the key concept for Brexiteers was parliamentary – meaning Westminster – sovereignty.
“Most people in England in particular who are most pro-Brexit are also very suspicious of devolution,” he said.
“Those things have always gone hand in hand in England. So for many of the people who support Brexit, devolution is the next tick on the agenda.
“There are no economic benefits to Brexit. The only thing they can claim is that they have reclaimed parliamentary sovereignty.
“Obviously the European Union offended against that, but so does devolution. Devolution creates alternative centres of power and legitimacy within the state – and that’s an anathema to this ultra-centralising, parliamentary-sovereignty-based decision that Brexit has become.
“So devolution is an existential threat to that, coupled to the fact that the Conservatives can’t win in Wales or Scotland.
“This is not an administration in London that respects other people’s mandates. It doesn’t accept the basis of the polity, basically.
“And they’re getting increasingly extreme in this.
“The problem they have is that there’s no democratic road to unwinding devolution.
“This is the key fact which they are choosing to ignore at the moment.
“They seem to believe that if they force people to choose between the central state and devolved Wales, because Wales voted for Brexit ultimately it chooses the central state.
“That ignores two things, one of which is that the Brexit vote in Wales was more contradictory than both Europhiles and Europhobes understand.
“There is a group of people in Wales who are pro-devolution and pro-Brexit.
“That makes no sense to my nationalist friends, be they large ‘n’ or small ‘n’ nationalists, because for them home rule and Europe are entirely compatible.
“And it makes no sense at all to Europhobes because they think that if you love Brexit you must hate devolution.
“There is a group of people in Wales who feel strongly Welsh and strongly British. The strongly Welsh bit of them tends to like devolution; the strongly British bit of them tends to be Eurosceptic.
“So they’re pro-devolution Eurosceptics. People find this mind-boggling, but it’s the case nonetheless.
“Also, what’s happening is if you force people to choose between the UK – Global Britain – or devolved Wales, actually what’s happening is a good chunk of people are moving in the direction of independence.
“They were comfortable with the notion of the UK evolving in a kind of quasi-federalist direction, they were comfortable with multiple identities, including European. But if that’s no longer an option, the assumption that they’d choose Britain is completely mistaken.”
Asked what he saw as the most likely constitutional scenario we will be looking at in 10 years’ time, Prof Jones said: “For me, the answer to that question has to revolve around the Labour Party.
“Labour is in a position where it completely dominates Welsh politics in a way that no other political party in the democratic world dominates the politics of a particular nation.
“They are now in a position where they’ve hit the sweet spot of the Welsh electorate, but it looks to me as if the UK Government – because of its centralising mania with parliamentary sovereignty – is intent on undermining their position.
“What are Welsh Labour going to do if the UK Government is determined to undermine devolution, which I think increasingly obviously it is? They will hope they can just kick the can down the road and the white knight, Sir Keir Starmer, will ride in, form a UK government and somehow they won’t need to worry about these things.
“I’m not so sure. The Conservatives are clearly in deep trouble at the moment, but it is mid-term and Labour’s route to a majority is extremely difficult still.
“The Conservatives have always got the 2015 general election anti-SNP play – Labour government dependent on the SNP, rally round the flag – which won them the 2015 general election. The danger for Welsh Labour is that actually they’re going to have to make a choice – and I think ultimately that they’re going to have to choose Wales. What that looks like and how painful it is for them internally, I don’t know.
“Since the disaster in 1999 [when Plaid won safe Labour seats in the first National Assembly election], Labour have learnt not to leave the flank open to Plaid Cymru, and they’ve been incredibly successful because they learnt that lesson. And I think they remember that lesson.”
Asked whether British Labour’s Union flag-waving image aimed at winning back former “red wall” voters would alienate supporters in Wales, Prof Jones said: “Starmer gets hammered by certain bits of social media for doing what he’s doing, but if you look at the electoral battleground he’s got to try and win back those voters.
“What is the characteristic of those voters? Red wall is a euphemism for English-identifying. This is the key thing that is obvious if you’re Welsh, but metropolitan commentators in London really struggle to understand.
“One completely understands that focus. Scotland is hopeless from Labour’s perspective, Wales is in the bag – so England is obviously where he’s going to focus his attention.
“It’s only harmful for Labour in Wales if they don’t continue to differentiate the Welsh Labour brand.
“If they continue to differentiate the Welsh Labour brand, in word and in deed, which is what they’re doing, it’s not a huge problem.
“It will annoy Welsh Labour activists, but they’ll go, ‘We’ve still got Welsh Labour’. But one of the things that’s going to happen not in 10 years’ time, but maybe two or three years’ time is, who is going to succeed Mark Drakeford?
“Crucially for me, what is the basis of the choice? On what grounds are Welsh Labour members going to make that decision? The reason I ask in that sense is that Labour is utterly dominated by the left-right split within the party, as far as I can see.
“If that’s the basis of who people vote for in choosing a successor to Drakeford, who can play the soft nationalist card most successfully – who’s more plausible in doing the standing up for Wales?
“They could mistakenly cede that ground, which is the one they need to occupy. If they’re choosing on left-right grounds, they might end up with a really weird choice, given what’s going on and who’s leaving the party.
“Mark Drakeford is associated with both the Welsh agenda and the left.”
Asked whether Plaid Cymru’s poor performance in the 2021 Senedd election had derailed its hope to win an independence referendum by 2030, Prof Jones said: “Plaid Cymru had a very disappointing election and they’ve got issues, so to speak.
“But it’s always been my contention that the fundamental problem Plaid Cymru have is that Welsh Labour has been very clever at the devolved politics game, and in a sense they’re always waiting for Labour to make a mistake.
“They need Labour to make a mistake to open up some ground for them – and until that day, they’re always treading water.
“But if we do end up with a Scottish independence referendum, if we do end up moving towards a border poll in Northern Ireland... If we assume that Scotland becomes independent, that Ireland is reunified and Wales is left with basically an ‘England and Wales’ option – KEW, Kingdom of England and Wales – what I find fascinating about that in multiple conversations, I don’t have solid survey evidence for this, so it’s anecdotal, but I’m very struck by the fact that so many people who consider themselves to be unionists find the notion of Kingdom of England and Wales anathema.
“A union without Scotland in particular – nobody seems to care very much about Northern Ireland – is not a union that a lot of unionists in Wales want to be a part of.
“There’s something about that which psychologically I don’t understand fully. England is 85% of the current state, Scotland is 7%, we’re 5%, Northern Ireland is 3%. You don’t care about the 3%. Why is it that the presence of the 7% seems to be psychologically so important?
“Anyway, it is, and I’ve been involved in all kinds of conversations with unionists who say that’s the point where the Union is over for them.
“I find that interesting because it obviously means that their commitment to the Union is conditional rather than absolute. And that is a very widespread feeling.
“On the other hand, if you look at the demographics of Wales, one in five of the electorate identify as English.
“So this is potentially hugely difficult and hugely complicated.
“But if we do end up in a situation where Scotland has gone or is going, then everything changes in Wales at that point.”
