Wales and the tyranny of the pixel

Simon Hobson

Nations, like people, rarely fail because of a lack of talent or potential. They fail because they never quite decide what they are trying to become.

Wales is a country rich in history, language, land, creativity and resilience. It has endured annexation, extraction, neglect and patronisation. Yet survival is not the same as direction. For much of the modern era, Wales has lived one pixel at a time, reacting to events rather than shaping them, busy with process while the larger picture remains frustratingly undefined.

To borrow a visual metaphor: Wales has spent decades zoomed in so tightly on individual moments, sort-term political and economic stories, that it has lost sight of the image those pixels help form.

Living in the moment

Day-to-day politics encourages short-termism. Ministers manage crises. Civil servants manage risk. Political parties manage optics. None of this is unique to Wales, but its consequences are amplified in our small nation with its limited gifted powers. The size of Wales’ canvass is carefully dictated by Westminster. 

Devolution offered Wales a once-in-a-generation opportunity to ask a simple but profound question: What is Wales for? Not administratively, but civilisational. What kind of country did Cymru want to be in 25 years’ time? What would success look like beyond comparative statistics with other parts of the UK? 

Those 25 years have now passed. A new generation of Welsh are now asking where is their nation headed over the next 25 years? Who is displaying the ambition which they need to see to help them thrive in their lives? 

Instead of ambition and innovation, much of Welsh public life continues to be dominated by incrementalism: often well-intentioned, but rarely transformative. Policies are introduced, revised, evaluated and rebranded. While the underlying direction remains hazy. The nation stays busy, but not purposeful.

The tragedy is not failure. The tragedy is drift. 

The illusion of plenty of time

There is a comforting assumption in Welsh politics that there will always another chance to ‘get it right’. This creates the illusion of infinite time.

But nations do not have unlimited windows in which to define themselves. Demographics and economies change, and all the while political power consolidates elsewhere: outside of Wales’ communities. Confidence erodes quietly, not with a bang but with a shrug.

Every year spent without a clear national project is a year in which decisions are made about Wales rather than by Wales. By global markets, by governmental departments in London, by demographic momentum, by technological change.

The danger of Wales living in this fashion: pixel by pixel, is that one day you look up and realise the picture has been completed without your consent.

Wales as the protagonist

Imagine Wales not as an administrative entity, but as the protagonist constructing its own picture. There are options for what picture those individual pixels could form: ‘green industrial nation’, ‘digital small state’, ‘European cultural bridge’, ‘energy exporter’, ‘education pioneer’, ‘Celtic tax haven’. Wales has the raw materials for all of them: wind, water, land, industrial minerals, talented people, language, a well-connected global diaspora.

But instead of choosing what it wants to paint, Wales endlessly studies the individual tubes of paint. It commissions reports on the feasibility of paint brushes. It debates whether to use oils or acrylics. It worries about criticism if it chooses the ‘wrong’ image to construct from the pixels. Meanwhile, other nations, some smaller, poorer, or less resourced, simply start painting.

This hesitation is not born of laziness, but of caution layered upon caution. A country historically told it is too small, too weak, too poor, too dependent, learns to fear boldness. Over time, that fear disguises itself as pragmatism.

Carpe diem, for nations

‘Carpe diem’ is usually framed as advice for individuals: seize the day, take the risk, live deliberately. But it applies equally to nations.

For Wales, seizing the day does not mean reckless independence or ideological purity. It means intentionality. It means deciding, collectively and explicitly, what Wales wants to be good at, what it wants to lead on, and what it is willing to prioritise over its current false comfort of the status quo.

It means accepting trade-offs. You cannot be everything at once. A nation that refuses to choose also refuses to win.

Carpe diem, for Wales, might look like aligning education, industrial policy and infrastructure around a small number of strategic missions. It might mean treating the Welsh language not as an heritage issue but as a future-facing economic and cultural asset. It might mean behaving like a country that expects to exist long into the future and planning accordingly.

From administration to ambition

Wales has become comfortable at administering its circumstances. What it lacks is a shared ambition commensurate with its potential.

The question is not whether Wales has failed. It hasn’t. The question is whether it has truly tried.

History is unforgiving to nations that confuse activity with agency. The pixels will keep coming; budgets, elections, headlines. We must decide what image they are forming.

At some point, Wales must zoom out.

Carpe diem, Cymru.

In Blueprint Cymru, a podcast from New Wales, Simon Hobson speaks with people about how they would shape Wales’ future. Their vision for a blueprint for Cymru.