The Adam Smith Institute has used ONS data to show that those like my son who dream of an Independent Wales are just deluded. If the cottage burners of Plaid Cymru get their way, the nation among whose people I live is bankrupt.
It shows that in every single Welsh Parliamentary constituency the amount raised from income tax and National Insurance is less than the amount spent on welfare. Wales is a nation of shirkers and takers.
Of course, a Welsh Government would collect some tax from the dwindling number of companies that operate here in this capitalist unfriendly post industrial backwater but that would not cover even a fraction of its needs.
The reality is that Wales is subsidized by England in a massive way.
I’m sure that the economic illiterates at Plaid reckon that when Independence is secured from the accursed English rather than taking on a pro rate share of the UK National Debt, Wales will instead claim vast reparations from England for centuries of exploiting the sheep shaggers by providing jobs in the coal mines.
That will not happen. If anything England should submit a claim for years of subsidies.
Right now, some polls show support for Independence among decided voters running at between 32% and 41% and Plaid is the largest party in the Senedd. But if folks were presented with the hard economic facts about the fiscal crisis a “free” Wales would face, I sense that rather fewer would opt to stop sucking at the English teat.
