Liberalism is rooted in self-determination

Neil Schofield-Hughes

Liberalism and I go back a long way.  I joined the old Liberal Party as a student in 1980; I was in the hall when David Steel told us to go back to our constituencies and prepare for Government.  I cheered Charles Kennedy’s moral and intellectual clarity as he led the opposition to Blair’s Iraq War.

Disgusted by the moral failure of coalition with the Tories, I was for a while a member of the Labour Party. But Brexit and the need to reassert liberal values in the face of right-wing populism brought me back.

In the meantime, I had moved to Cymru in middle age. Over time, I became increasingly convinced of the case for independence – and in the belief that independence is at heart a liberal cause.

I read, argued, debated and thought and realised that the case for independence was economic and democratic as much as identity-based.

That the Union demanded far more of Cymru than it returned, and represented a dead hand on Cymru’s prosperity, democracy and wellbeing.

I resigned my party membership when it became clear that we supporters of independence – and there were always quite a few of us, who had been benignly tolerated, if largely ignored – were facing an increasingly hostile environment in the party.

But still, when I see that the political descendants of Lloyd George and Cymru Fydd have adopted the slogan “Stop independence – save the NHS”, I feel a sense of real anger, and dismay, and intellectual betrayal.

But not surprise.  I was one of those who within the Welsh Liberal Democrats was trying to open up the debate around our constitutional future; but attempts to get constitutional issues debated at Welsh Liberal Democrat conference under the “mini-motions” scheme, designed to encourage policy debate rather than make formal policy, were peremptorily dismissed.

One of the reasons we were given why the motions were rejected were because “nobody wants to talk about independence”.

Since then the Welsh Liberal Democrats, doubling down on their Unionism, have talked of little else.  It’s all a bit like Basil Fawlty not mentioning the war.

My point was always simple. Politics is about ends – about the kind of society you want to create.

Outward looking

To me, liberalism means a rights-based society, based on rules set out in a legally-enforceable constitution; one that is open, democratic, socially generous, but outward looking  and engaged internationally.

A society in which all members have a stake in political decision-making, and in which democratic institutions allow political decisions to be taken as close as possible to, and with the full involvement of, the people they affect.

Political structures are a means to those ends. And self-determination is the root of modern liberalism, especially the liberalism that once dominated the politics of Cymru.

I find it frankly impossible to understand how anyone could argue that the centralised, undemocratic, increasingly authoritarian and obviously failing Westminster state could be a vehicle for a liberal society, but Welsh Liberal Democrats – whose line has hardened significantly since the 2024 General Election in a way that suggests external pressure – aren’t even up for a debate.

Since when has that been the liberal way?

The Constitutional Commission chaired by Rowan Williams and Laura McAllister confirmed that independence was possible. I recall former Welsh Liberal leader Kirsty Williams, who served on the Commission, being cheered at Welsh Liberal Democrat conference when she said that the party had to get to work on nation-building.

Now, the leadership is telling us that it will not participate in the National Commission that Rhun ap Iorweth proposes to establish if Plaid Cymru lead the next government.

Liberal values

Any intellectually confident Liberal surely would leap at the opportunity – a chance to bring liberal values to the table at which the new Cymru may well be forged. But no. How childish. And what an intellectual and moral cop-out.

The slogan ‘Stop independence, save the NHS’  angered me for one very particular reason. Liberalism is supposed to stand against populism – as a rational politics of grounded debate and discourse that rejects emotional, infantilising slogans.

It’s supposed to value evidence – “show your working” is a liberal doctrine. But here we have the worst kind of sloganizing – wholly unevidenced, and dragging the debate down to the level of right-wing populism.

And as for saving the NHS – do the Welsh Liberal Democrats really still think, after a quarter of a century of devolution – that being good Brits and asking Whitehall nicely will get us the resources to do that?

When we see almost daily the savage contempt in which Labour’s Westminster leadership holds its own First Minister? And do they really believe that an independent nation of more than three million people can’t create a generous and functioning society?

Or do they believe it’s just Cymru that somehow can’t deliver the success of other small democracies around the world, and especially in Europe?

And it’s an electoral dead-end too. Polls consistently show that support for independence is growing, and is overwhelming among younger people.

This is the future;  but the Welsh Liberal Democrats – a notably stale, male, pale party as anyone who has slept through their party conferences will testify – are turning their back on it.

Young people

Young people are instinctively liberal but while Plaid Cymru and Greens listen and articulate their concerns, Welsh Liberal Democrats, hidebound by their pearl-clutching Unionism, are turning away from them.

As a liberal, I look at a world where liberal values and institutions are under attack from authoritarian populism – from state-sponsored thugs terrorising American cities to Westminster Labour quietly creating an apparatus of mass state surveillance.

We so badly need a revival of rational, liberal political discourse. The Welsh Liberal Democrats have filing-cabinets full of good policy, but where is the passion, the intellectual energy, the ambition?

I believe that liberalism and independence are one and indistinguishable, and Welsh Liberals will regain relevance and energy when they acknowledge that.

Others disagree – and that’s fine. Let’s cut the cheap slogans, do the liberal thing and have the debate.

Neil Schofield-Hughes is a former member of the Welsh Liberal Democrats and adviser to Jane Dodds.