Plaid overegg. Beeb and Kim Howells lay one.

I'm afraid some Nationalist commentators may have gone a little bit overboard with one pf the results of Welsh Barometer polls.

As Professor Roger Scully writes 

Finally, we asked a question which we haven’t run before, and which followed directly on from the EU Referendum:

“And please imagine a scenario where the rest of the UK left the European Union but Wales could remain a member of the European Union if it became an independent country. If a referendum was then held in Wales about becoming an independent country and this was the question, how would you vote? Should Wales be an independent country?”

The results to this question were:

Yes: 28%

No: 53%

Would Not Vote/Don’t Know: 20%

 What  got some in a frenzy was Professor Scully saying

But note that opposition to independence for Wales still leads by almost two to one: if we take out non-committed voters, then things balance out at 65% – 35% against independence. 

Which led Plaid to come up with the much copied Tweet

Which are figures that  would male a Lib Dem blush

My cynicism however does mot hide the fact that we could be seeing a game changer after the Brexit vote and Plaid may well be displaying similar figures  with a more honest pedigree in the near future.

It is interesting  that the poll option did not include  First Minister Carwyn  Jones  suggestion there could be a federal UK after the Brexit vote.

This did not prevent  the BBC digging up 

When it was put to Mr Howells that a federal Britain was being advocated by Mr Jones, he said: 

"I think he's out of touch actually, with the way that most people in Wales think.
"He and Leanne Wood the leader of Plaid Cymru, they held an incredibly smug press conference just prior to the referendum where they said, of course Wales will vote to Remain, if England votes to Leave, we'll have to go to Brussels to negotiate some kind of a pro-EU position for Wales.
"They couldn't be more wrong. They were totally wrong."
"there are no fundamental differences between the Wales ways works and the way England works in so many respects".
"The real shock in this is that realisation," he said, "because the whole justification of the Welsh assembly was we would be closer in touch, through our politicians, with the way people are thinking in Wales, and yet they have got it fundamentally wrong."
Mr Howells added: "The notion that somehow Wales is kind of isolated and cast off from the rest of Britain is complete nonsense.
"It's just nationalist claptrap.

"I'm very very sorry to hear people in the Labour party echoing that kind of claptrap. They ought to know better, actually."

Howells whose career in Westminster was hardly  one of startling success in the Blair Government

Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs
Minister of State for Higher Education
Minister of State for Transport
Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport

despite being a ultra Blair loyalist couldn't  find the political pulse of the welsh electorate even if he was explicitly shown it.

It says something of the BBC that when there are indications of a sea change in Welsh politics they dig up a dinosaur like Kim Howells to repeat the sort of rubbish coming from the Labour party before the establishment of the Welsh Assembly something i believe he would vote to abolish , even if it was to place us under the cruel wind of Thatcherism part 2.