Support for Welsh independence ‘risen massively’ as UK ‘utterly disunited’ says Telegraph columnist

Support for Welsh independence has “risen massively” while England is “scared of its own shadow” and the UK “utterly disunited”, a Telegraph columnist has said.

English journalist Suzanne Moore wrote the column in support of Booker-prize winning author Hilary Mantel, who was criticised over the weekend for saying that she hoped to leave England and move to the Republic of Ireland, and become “European again”.

In her column, Suzanne Moore said that Hilary Mantel “speaks truth to power” and was right that the UK was breaking up as a result of Westminster’s actions.

“She [Mantel] does not see the Union lasting, and surely, the utter carelessness with which Westminster treats the other parts of the UK will precipitate this,” she writes.

Suzanne Moore adds that England’s soft power was diminishing, “a formerly colonising nation has to convince itself it is successful while its shelves are bare”.

“It is a work that the Tories seek to own as it slips through their hands and the Left is mostly afraid to take on. England is scared of its own shadow,” she writes.

“Meanwhile, Covid has shown us that Scotland does things differently, and support for Welsh independence has risen massively over its stricter handling of pandemic rules. We saw, too, the power of the northern mayors.

“A leader who boasts of global Britain presides over an utterly disunited kingdom.”

‘Ashamed’

Suzanne Moore’s column comes after Hilary Mantel described the United Kingdom as “an artificial and precarious construct. It’s not holy, and it’s not even old”.

“As a child I learned nothing about the history of other parts of these islands,” she told Italy’s La Repubblica newspaper.

“Wales and Scotland were only mentioned when the English were fighting battles there; they were destined to be conquered, and added on to the more important territory, their complex histories dwindling into childish narratives consumed by tourists.

“I have always been alive to the way that the word ‘England’ is used to include the other nations, a habit that says everything about underlying attitudes.”

Turning to present-day events, she said that she was “ashamed” of Brexit Britain.

“We see the ugly face of contemporary Britain in the people on the beaches abusing exhausted refugees even as they scramble to the shore. It makes one ashamed,” she added.

“And ashamed, of course, to be living in the nation that elected this government, and allows itself to be led by it.

“Our present government sends mixed signals – boasting of ‘global Britain’, while at the same time diminishing the country’s standing by cutting foreign aid, as if this was a broken little country that couldn’t afford to keep its promises.”