If I were living in Wales, next week I would vote Welsh nationalist, for Plaid Cymru. But I would do so for what its leader claims to support but doesn’t talk about enough: independence. Wales is where I have spent a fifth of each year for almost all of my life. Its natural beauty, the charm of (most of) its towns and the talents of its people should render it the richest place in the UK outside London.

So why is it one of the poorest? The figures hardly bear reciting. Wales’s growth rate has limped at barely half of England’s for a quarter-century. Its GDP per head is lower than any region in the UK other than the north-east of England. Wales comes bottom of almost every UK league table on healthcare. The median waiting time for elective treatment has almost doubled since before Covid – much higher than the current level in England. And waiting times in major A&E departments in Wales have worsened over the past two years, with almost half of patients waiting more than four hours for treatment.

More than a third of Welsh schoolchildren are persistently absent, according to an Institute for Fiscal Studies report, a figure that has more than doubled since 2019. In its programme for international student assessment (PISA) rankings – the global benchmark for education quality – Wales was below the........

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