If anything sums up Wales in June 2020 it is the “Welcome to Wales” sign at the end of my road in Monmouthshire. A few weeks ago, it was painted over, anonymously, with graffiti. “Sorry, we’re closed,” it reads, with a Banksy-like flourish.
It is certainly accurate. It has been a month since the English government changed its messaging from “stay home” to “stay alert”, but Scotland and Wales remain at home. Our non-essential shops are still shut. Our travel advice remains to stay within five miles of home (although the government has said this can be broadened in rural areas). Our schools are yet to reopen.
It is very surreal living on a border right now. My weekend journeys to a post office two miles away in England to get my newspapers feel strangely illicit. My husband does our supermarket shopping in England, where the traffic is instantly busier.
Overall, we feel much more calm and protected. But we also feel jealous. English friends’ Instagram photos of trips to distant, quiet landscapes make me miserable. It is months since I saw my parents, who live 60 miles away in Swansea. I await every three-week lockdown review with anticipation. After the last one, I felt looked-after, but I was also inconsolable.
The cautious approach taken by Welsh Labour has been criticised by the Welsh Conservatives as “dithering” but it has polled well with the public in recent months. Public confidence in the devolved government has risen from 29% in March to 62% currently according to the Welsh Barometer poll for ITV Wales Cymru.
The unshowy figure at the heart of this is the first minister Mark Drakeford. A former youth justice worker, lecturer and government health and social policy advisor, the 65-year-old from Carmarthen joined the Senedd in 2011. Over a Zoom call, he explains how he has taken advice from his chief medical and science officers, and the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage). A Welsh flag is rolled up against the wall behind him. Braggadocio is not his game.
In contrast to Westminster, where the prime minister and his government continue the rhetoric that they are “beating” the virus while Dominic Cummings appears to breach lockdown rules without consequence, Drakeford is warm and humane, willing to admit to his administration’s mistakes.
“At our worst, more than 40 people were dying in Wales every day,” says Drakeford. “Now it’s been in single figures every day this week.” He looks mournful as he speaks. “Every death is still a huge tragedy.”
Drakeford says he never set out to walk a different path from Westminster. Wales did announce first, however, that it would not review lockdown rules for three weeks in April, and restricted exercise to once a day, unlike other nations, until late May. It is a rift that continues to widen. Drakeford says he has not spoken to Boris Johnson since 28 May (no further invitations to speak to cabinet have been offered). And his criticisms have become noticeably sharper in recent weeks. He first heard about mandatory face coverings on public transport in England when the rest of us did: watching Grant Shapps at the UK daily briefing on 4 June. “That’s what’s most frustrating. We hadn’t any explanation why they had come to that conclusion, or a point to the evidence of why they’d done it,” he says.
Borders are a particular problem for Wales, he says, where train lines and roads weave in and out. “We can’t have a system where a guard has to walk up and down a carriage shouting for people to put their face masks on [when they cross the border] for example.” He does not want to be negative, he stresses: when he has spoken to members of the UK government, the conversations have “generally been good”. “But patchy is the word I would use. That’s not good enough.”
The upshot of this is a United Kingdom that is being slowly prised apart. Last week, a YouGov poll showed that a quarter of Welsh voters now support independence, the highest proportion ever recorded in a survey. There has also been an influx of 2,500 new members, from all political persuasions, to Yes Cymru, the non-party campaign for an independent Wales, since the beginning of May. My pro-EU brother has joined, “mainly because of Brexit”, he says. As has Bethan Evans, a script consultant from Cardiff. “Essentially it’s been a vote of confidence for the Welsh Covid response,” she says. “I’ve been very pleased, grateful and relieved that we have a more scientific and less populist strategy for safeguarding public health.”
Richard King, the author of the forthcoming Brittle With Relics: A People’s History of Wales, from Powys, says this is a crucial moment for the country. Wales has been annexed to England in legislature since 1535 but coronavirus has enabled the Welsh government to use its devolved powers – granted in 1997 and expanded in subsequent years – more than ever before.
“The lockdown has held,” he says. “It wouldn’t have done so unless people were happy with the devolved government’s decisions.”
Early on in the pandemic came the news that one of the most badly affected areas was the Aneurin Bevan University Health Board, named after the Labour politician who founded the NHS (he grew up in nearby Tredegar, where the town’s Medical Aid Society inspired him). Serving the former industrial heartlands of Newport and the Valleys, its death rate was significantly higher than the country overall on 1 May, at 44.6 deaths per 100,000 people, compared with 28.4 in Wales as a whole.
“Wales has never benefited from economic booms elsewhere,” King says. “It was partially destroyed by Thatcher. It literally has less to lose.” Wales has never been a big commercial or financial centre, he adds. “It has never had a money-making machine like the City of London to save it, so being cautious in the grip of a pandemic makes sense.”
But others worry that the long-term, cautious approach taken by the devolved government will hit the small market towns where tourism thrives the hardest. Cathy Arnold runs an art gallery and framing business in Brecon, a town reliant on tourism. Usually at this time of year, the town is buzzing with visitors; the Brecon jazz festival and Green Man in nearby Crickhowell usually keep this going into the summer. All of these events have been cancelled. “The Welsh government was very helpful early on, reducing business rates to zero for people, but it’s been very difficult since,” she says. “We’ve been told to prepare, but not given a direct set of information, not even on how to build a protective screen.”
Small business owners also need dates, and need them soon, she says. The lack of clarity is especially frustrating when she can see businesses like hers over the border already open. “The uncertainty is so hard. A few shops here were nearly closing before coronavirus. This could be the last step into the unknown for them.”
She also worries about the psychological impact of people not seeing their families for months. “It seems illogical, and unfair,” she says. Her brother is 40 miles away in Cardiff; her son lives in Somerset. (Yesterday, Wales’ chief medical officer’s adviser, Meirion Evans, agreed. Visiting family “is important for society”, he said.)
Mark Charlton, who campaigns about access to the countryside on his blog Views From The Bike Shed is concerned that blocking Welsh people’s access to open spaces will have a detrimental long-term effect. “It’s draconian. We’re told to meet outdoors, which is recuperative, where the virus doesn’t transmit as easily, but where do we go?” He particularly mourns the closure of the Pembrokeshire Coastal Path. “People will be able to go to St David’s Shopping Centre before we can go to St David’s Head. People are sensible enough now to social distance. The economy shouldn’t come first.”
But local economic development consultant Owen Davies believes that Welsh Labour’s approach is defined by the makeup of the country. “Wales is a more sickly, vulnerable nation than England. Our population is generally concentrated in deprived post-industrial communities and large numbers of older generations migrate to rural and coastal Wales. We have growing elderly populations and higher levels of poor health than elsewhere. There’s the worry that any future impact of Covid-19 could be more dramatic here.”
The Welsh government has also never had as much power as it has in this pandemic. “But now it has: it has our health. And for the first time, it’s been able to flex its muscles,” says Davies.
King agrees: “The government have been allowed to act nationally in a way that hasn’t happened before. They’ve gained confidence from their actions, and in the fact that Welsh people are willing them to succeed.”
But what does this mean in the long term? Will public confidence in the devolved government lead to a push to broaden Wales’ devolved powers, in line with Scotland? Could we even break away from our neighbours entirely one day?
I put this to Drakeford, whose answer is diplomatic. “I hope it will strengthen people’s confidence in devolution, of course. But it’s important to remember that Wales would have had a much harder time if it hadn’t been part of the UK. We couldn’t have run a furlough scheme or self-employment scheme from our resources.” He says he wants to see more sharing of knowledge, more cooperation, not less. “We’re not in favour of cutting ourselves adrift,” Drakeford says. A welcome, in these hillsides, then, after all.
• This article was amended on 17 & 18 June 2020 because an earlier version confused the Senedd with the devolved Welsh government. In addition, a detail about Cathy Arnold’s family was also corrected. It was further amended because an editing error led it to say that Welsh Labour had been criticised as “dithering” by the Welsh Conservatives and Plaid Cymru. Plaid Cymru has not criticised the government in this way; the party says it has “consistently ... been supportive of the Welsh Government’s cautious approach to easing restrictions”, while calling for it to provide a “much clearer roadmap” out of lockdown.
