Mark Drakeford and Paul Davies still back the Union over Wales.

 Wales’ First Minister has said that Wales already has a “huge degree of independence” but that membership of the UK is an “insurance policy” in times of financial hardship.

Some "insurance policy" that pays up when the affluent South of England join the rest of tat country in another lockdown but refuses to do so when Wales and Scotland and indeed the North of England put a similar claim in earlier.

Nation Cymru tell us that 

Mark Drakeford was asked by Sky News why he was not advocating independence after the UK Treasury refused to extend furlough for Wales but did so for England.

“What I say to people who make that argument is that we have a huge degree of independence already,” he answered.

“We make our own laws here in the Senedd. We exercise the powers that we do have independently as we have throughout the crisis as I have done so when I thought it was right to do so for Wales, as we did with our early firebreak period we went ahead and made that independent decision.

 “But at the same time we are able to draw on the strength of the United Kingdom. We wouldn’t be talking about millions of extra pounds for Welsh businesses if it wasn’t for the fact we are part of a big insurance policy that is the United Kingdom. Paying in when we can, drawing out when we need it.

“I think Wales has the best of both worlds. A strong and assertive devolution settlement and membership of what I see as a successful United Kingdom.”

 In this case Wales is like a house that has been constantly flooded and the Insurance company sets too high a premium, but also is responsible for the flooding (literary when it come to Tryweryn) in the first place.

Mr Drakeford finds himself in a curious  position .

He knows that there is extreme disquiet within Wales over  the failure of the response of the uK government  in its response to handling the Covid 19 virus and would likely have sought to have established a more robust  reaction in Wales but still cannot bring himself to react in some quarters for being seen as too much of a "Welsh Nationalist".

He well know that   the cross-party independence movement, YesCymru hit 10,000 members yesterday, with 1,000 joining within the previous 48 hours.

TheYYes movement had previously set a target of 10,000 members before the end of the year. They hit the target at yesterday , they said, “a little earlier” than they had expected.

The cross-party movement said that they had seen their membership increase from 2,300 members at the beginning of the year.

Meanwhile there seems to be an orchestrated campaign from Devo sceptics  to use the  Welsh Government response to call for an abolishment of the Senedd.

Meanwhile Paul Davies, the leader of the Conservative group in the Senedd has reiterated his criticism of the Welsh Government’s firebreak lockdown despite the announcement at the weekend of a four-week lockdown in England by the Tory government at Westminster.

On Saturday Prime Minister Boris Johnson confirmed a new lockdown in England which will run from next Thursday until at least 2 December.

Under the new restrictions pubs, restaurants, gyms, non-essential shops and places of worship will close and travel will be restricted but schools, colleges and universities remain open.

Mr Davies told BBC Wales: 

“What happens in England of course is a matter for the UK government and Boris Johnson, and his government has made that decision. What happens here in Wales is a different matter, and that’s what devolution is about.

“The first minster and the prime minister have said that devolved governments sometimes take different decisions, and we’ve made it absolutely clear that we think this temporary national lockdown [in Wales] was not the right thing to do.

“But we are where we are, and we do hope we will see the suppression of this virus.”

So in some ways Mr Davies is aping Mark Drakeford in arguing for a Welsh solution to the Covid 19 virus albite  a very diffrent one.

I suspect the Tories in Wales have worked ou that there may be a minority opposed to the  firebreak , but they are potential voted worth harvesting.

But in the end both Labour and the Tories are going to have to respond to to  the growing YesCymru movement .

I doubt very much they have learned the lesson from Scotland and that stopping the tide is going to take more than relying on an issuance policy from an increasingly dodgy provide.