Reckless asked if Wales is ‘inherently ill-equipped to self-govern’ and refuses to answer
Mark Reckless has refused to answer when asked if people in Wales are “inherently ill-equipped to self-govern”.
The candidate for the Abolish the Welsh Assembly Party was asked the question three times by Andy Davies on Channel 4 News, and ducked the question on each occasion.
He also complained about the Welsh First Minister Mark Drakeford being in control of Covid-19 regulations in Wales, rather than Boris Johnson, who recently denied that he’d said that he would rather let “the bodies pile high” than impose a third lockdown on England.
When asked if people in Wales were inherently ill-equipped to self-govern the first time, Mark Reckless said: “I’m British. We’re British, we want a British parliament, not a separatist parliament that’s breaking up the United Kingdom.”
When pressed again to answer the question he replied: “My answer to your question is that we’re British and we have a United Kingdom independent parliament, and we don’t want to break up our country by having more and more powers always being devolved.
“We want to go back to one UK government.”
‘Again’
When asked the question again, he said: “I think people in Wales are well-represented by having members of parliament in Westminster.”
He was then asked for a simple yes or not, to which he replied: “I think in Wales we’ll be better off if we are one country, a United Kingdom.
“We have huge amounts of money, comes to support us in Wales £14bn a year and without that we would be a much poorer country. I believe in Britain and the United Kingdom.
Andy Davies said: “It’s interesting you can’t give a yes or no to that”.
Reckless said: “I think we can govern ourselves better as a United Kingdom rather than alone.”
He added: “When we voted for a degree of self-government including over health, we didn’t understand that that meant Mark Drakeford rather than the Prime Minister at Westminster would decide when you could leave your house, when you could work.
“The degree of powers that have been used by the Welsh Government purportedly because health is devolved, have been far greater than people previously understood”.
Support our Nation today
For the price of a cup of coffee a month you can help us create an independent, not-for-profit, national news service for the people of Wales, by the people of Wales.
Reckless is inherently ill equipped to hold a democratically elected position. Total waste of space in Wales. Might have been of some use back in the Thames estuary area, or, better still, in the estuary !
Abolish misplaced apostrophes, maybe. Eejit.
…And a universal education for all, so that *no one*, regardless of social background, is unable to distinguish between “them” and “those”.
If Mr Reckless does not believe in our right to self government will he pay back all the money he has earned by being an Aelod Senedd?
To those who say there will be ‘more money’ if the Senedd is abolished, I ask you to please cast your mind back to the 1990s and Conservative PM appointed Secretaries of State for Wales like John Redwood. There certainly wasn’t more money then.
Try as I might, I fail to see how Welsh politics is any of Reckless’ business. What possessed him to come to Wales to impose his views on the country is beyond me, other than that he saw an opportunty to stay in gainful employment by taking advantage of the anti-EU sentiment then current here. Having achieved his Brexit, surely his continued presence here has no valid purpose.