She also struck a defiant zone, pointing out the SNP was once written-off as well:
“Everybody told them it wasn’t possible for them to form a Government, too.”
Unfortunately she also claimed
“We’re not campaigning for independence.”
She argued
“Our economy is too weak. We’re already facing a situation where workers in Wales earn 85% of the UK average.”
I am not some one who believes Wales should be Independent even if the economy was to resemble Albania before or after Enver Hoxa.
But I believe that it is a vital road to take if we are to improve our economy.
I accept that a manifesto for the next Assembly Election and beyond may look radically different to one for an Independent Wales but there is no reason not to explain the latter at the same time
We are faced with years of Conservative rule who intend to carry on with the Austerity program even if the UK was to enter a Boom period.
I sincerely wish Jeremy Corbyn well, but I suspect that the Blarites who are now masking themselves as centralist moderates will use any failure for Labour to rise in the polls to epose him within three years.
This will pave the way for a Blair 2 candidate who might well win in the converted Middle England and becuse the Welsh Assembly will not receive the necessary powers who will do little to change the Welsh economy.
Even a Plaid Assembly Government will find it difficult to change the current state of us being poor West Britains.
Plaid need to give the electorate a vision of a Vibrant, Confident and Independent Wales. Campaigning to be in charge of how we spend Westminster's Pocket Money is not going to take us anywhere.
3 comments:
it was certainly a strange audience for a show taking place in the welsh capital - someone had laid on all expenses travel from thanet by the look of things. the cheers and round of applause which greeted one obvious ukip stooges call for the abolition of the assembly was surprising to say the least - and it was telling that the only cardiff accent in the room was belonged to charlotte church.
yes bizarre audience, troubling as audience reaction influences people. Personally I dont know what independence means, or rather what people mean when they say it. For most people on the doorstep it is a scary hostility and loneness from rUK. Fanatical, impractical, slowing things up with borders and currency complications.. lots of negative ideas. I have no problem disowning that bundle. Instead we should simply put it in the positive and spell out we want self-reliance,to manage our own affairs, to make sure our resources benefit the residents of the country. As for borders and currency, well interestingly I am pushing for our own immigration policy, my proposal is based on 'private sponsorship' - but in our case it can be community sponsorship, which simply means if a community wants a particular immigrant or refugee because they would fit in and there would be mutual benefit, they can have them. This is a live issue for us as we are in touch with syrians we think would fit in well, but cant do anything to help them in their hopeless situations. As for currency, well actually it would be great to have an ADDITIONAL currency for local circulation among consenting businesses and people. I found every public employee I asked would be happy to receive a proportion of their wages in a local use only currency. But in general independence simply means living within our local means and much more self reliantly. And to do that having a sensible level of autonomy, not independent of course!! And this would be the most helpful thing we could do for rUK, we seeEngland as our nearest and dearest, we can pilot a different way to run things for them. That's me individually speaking, tho i seem to be called greensforplaid
We have to be about improving the country. We don't have a legal system, we don't run the police, we don't have any Welsh taxes.
We can get all of these things without independence, inside the UK. Then call for independence later when we are ready.
Calling for independence before Wales ready is dishonest. It is cheating the voters because we couldn't actually deliver it yet if we got elected.
Plaid has never dealt with this properly, it has gone from one extreme to another without a sensible line.
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