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Opinion

Let Them Eat Sovereignty

15 Sep 2024 5 minute read
Photo Janusz Pienkowski

Ben Wildsmith

Do you remember when sovereignty was all the rage? Politicians couldn’t get through a sentence without mentioning it and objectionable relatives all over the UK would insist on it over Christmas dinner.

Dire forecasts of post-Brexit poverty were disdained as the soulless equivocation of people who didn’t feel nationhood sufficiently.

‘Ordinary people’, we were told by Jacob Rees-Mogg and his chums, were happy to wait many decades for a financial dividend if leaving the EU meant they could captain their nation’s destiny.

Nobody seemed quite sure about the specifics of sovereignty, but if you wanted to emulate the chain-mailed Crusader in your Facebook profile then you were required to value it above all else.

Nowadays, sovereignty seems to have been filed with the Ice Bucket Challenge and vegan fast-food outlets, under passing fads of the 2010s. Before long, you’ll hear Stuart Maconie reminiscing about it in a gently sardonic contribution to a BBC2 nostalgia programme presented by Arron Banks and Little Mix.

Remainers

There are three schools of thought about why the UK is not quite as sovereignty-rich as we were promised by the pro-Brexit crowd. The first, beloved of hardcore Remainers, is that we already had it when we were in the EU but failed to exercise it.

The alternative reading is that we are so hopelessly reliant on other nations for security and financial wellbeing that our right to self-determination was sold off decades ago. The final theory, that Brexit wasn’t Brexity enough, is further evidence of a narcotic aspect to Nationalism: once people have the taste, they can never get enough.

Now, in 2024, we are finding out a great deal about the extent to which the UK can act as an independent nation. The prime benefit of being a sovereign nation is facility to issue currency. If you can’t slap a pic of your leader on a piece of paper and use it to buy stuff from foreigners, then you ain’t no sovereign state.

Conversely, if you do have a magic printing press, then you can create money at will.

‘Black hole’

So, Rachel Reeves’ ‘black hole’ of £22bn in unfunded spending pledges is either a ham-fisted and misleading metaphor or else a deliberate falsehood about how macroeconomics works in a nation state. Can she fund the pensioners’ fuel allowance? Yes, she can do so at the stroke of a pen. That she refuses, despite the political toxicity of her decision, is testament to the control exercised by international finance over the UK’s affairs.

It would seem a simple decision for a Labour Chancellor to fund the commitment by issuing currency and then taxing back the money to prevent inflation. This is, after all, not a wild indulgence, but the continuance of a social policy deemed necessary by previous governments. Reeves’ determination to go in hard and fast with this policy has caused uproar in the country and seems counterintuitive politically. It will, however, ‘reassure the markets’, and whatever we think the nation voted for is subsidiary to that.

Sovereign nations are also free to make military decisions and mandated to do so in the interests of the population at home. This is an aspect of sovereign power that many would argue has been abused by UK leaders for as long as we can remember. From Korea to Egypt to Yemen to Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, the UK has imposed itself on other sovereign nations without so much as an enquiry of the electorate. It has, meanwhile, been swift to defend areas like Northern Ireland and the Falklands against any suggestion that UK sovereignty is questionable there.

This week we were prepared for an announcement that UK missiles were to be made available for use by Ukraine within Russia. An escalating narrative about this was reported by the media, leading up to the Foreign Secretary’s joint visit to Kyev with his American counterpart and the following day’s meeting in Washington between Keir Starmer and Joe Biden. This, we were assured, was all theatre. The decision had been made.

When Starmer arrived in Washington, however, the UK press was surprised to find Joe Biden less enthusiastic about the idea than we had been led to believe. It was ‘one of the things we’ll be talking about’, he told them. The visit ended without a joint declaration on the issue.

The sticking point, it’s said, is that the missiles in question contain US components. Consequently, if Russia decided to treat their arrival on its territory as worthy of a direct response, then America would be on the hook along with the UK and France.

Weapons

The press was also surprised to find that David Lammy, a constant presence at pro-Palestinian events over the last decade, was refusing to release details of the licenses the UK has issued pertaining to weapons sold to Israel. As Shadow Foreign Secretary, Lammy had insisted that the Conservative government release these details, to be met with silence.

So, here we are. Our electoral system has produced a government from 33.7% of the vote. It commands a mighty parliamentary majority but is constrained from making decisions either at home or abroad.

We contrast Wales’ constitutional weakness with the apparent power of the UK, feeling its lean on our lives and remoteness from our wishes.

It seems to me that in the happy event of our gaining independence, the UK would have little sovereignty to hand over.

The pictures on the notes might change, but how many we are permitted to print would be decided elsewhere.


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Y Cymro
Y Cymro
19 days ago

For years the Tories were like a stuck record when it came to moaning about the loss of power & sovereignty to the EU. And seeing both Labour and Conservatives now sing from the same hymn book sovereignty only applies to England it’s seems seeing both continually deny only Wales the simplest of devolution. We cannot even create a bank holiday to celebrate Saint David without Whitehall’s blessing. So when I hear those bleating about the loss of sovereignty to me is like hearing white noise because I know it isn’t applicable to England’s first trophy country Wales. First in… Read more »

John Ellis
John Ellis
19 days ago
Reply to  Y Cymro

My hunch is that devolution to Wales and to Scotland was in reality a passing ideological whim which evolved after the evolution of ‘New’ Labour under the Blair leadership in the end days of thew Major government. The campaign for devolution was driven by quite charismatic Welsh and Scottish Labour politicians – Rhodri Morgan, Donald Dewar, &c.- who genuinely believed in it, and Blair’s post-1997 first government was initially content to run with it, partly in a spirit of post-election-victory indulgence but chiefly because they thought – wrongly! – that enacting it would subdue electoral support for the SNP. But… Read more »

Annibendod
Annibendod
19 days ago

In the end Ben, from a governance perspective what does really count? To me it’s that what we call a people have access to sufficient political agency via a functional democracy to choose the path wrt what the UN outlines as the economic, political, cultural and educational development of their state. In this respect, the UK is godawful for Wales. The trouble with our definitions is that they are usually subjective (those who hold them to be objective tend towards problematic dogma and absolutism), times change and the definitions change with them. What is sovereignty? Depends who you ask I… Read more »

Algie
Algie
19 days ago
Reply to  Annibendod

Me too!

Neil Anderson
Neil Anderson
19 days ago

I fail to understand your last sentence, Ben.

Monetary sovereignty would indeed permit us to control our own currency – an essential prerequisite for independence. Why exactly would we not control the quantum?

There are many potential threats that may undermine real independence in Cymru. As I see it, the main one currently is lack of leadership. Not the populist demagogue type, of course.

It is clear that our struggles are only just beginning.

Annibendod
Annibendod
19 days ago
Reply to  Neil Anderson

He’s referring to “the markets” by which he means the financial institutions that trade currencies and commodities hence their role in determining value. If we had our own fiat currency we would be bound by those markets much as any other nation. We have choices ahead of us should we build a Welsh State. Participate in a Sterling zone? Join the Euro Zone? Or create a Welsh currency? Pro’s and cons to each of those options. There are others but they appear the most likely. At any rate, Ben recognises here that all “sovereign” states are bound by constraints. We… Read more »

Ben Wildsmith
Ben Wildsmith
19 days ago
Reply to  Neil Anderson

My point is that the control smaller nation states such as the UK, and putatively Cymru, have over currency supply is notional. The US prints money as it pleases, smaller nations don’t have that autonomy.

Neil Anderson
Neil Anderson
19 days ago
Reply to  Ben Wildsmith

Thanks for your responses, Ben and Annibendod. Ah, yes, the markets. Not aka ‘the democracy of money’. Yes, of course, all countries are constrained by the actions of others. To various degrees, though. There are undoubtedly people in Cymru who would be quite satisfied with just a little more or even a little less devolution, quasi-independence or a variant thereof. But few are going to march for that. And will we ever get either? Will we compromise with either? Will we notice any difference? But it need not be like that. There are smaller countries with higher standards of living… Read more »

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