The first ministers of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales have a clear message for Westminster: Your ‘time is coming to an end’. For the first time since devolution began, all three pro-independence parties – Sinn Fein, the Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru – are in power in their home nations at once. Irish nationalism has already produced an independent state and, in Northern Ireland, helped fuel decades of bloody sectarian conflict. The prospect of Scottish secession remains a serious and enduring political problem for Prime Minister Andy Burnham. But do we take the prospect of Welsh independence as seriously?

For all the derision levelled at Welsh militants by the British establishment, the movement’s history is no joke

For all the derision levelled at Welsh militants by the British establishment, the movement’s history is no joke

Perhaps it does not attract so much attention as the issue is simply not as pressing. A 2023 YouGov poll found that just a fifth of the Welsh public would vote to leave the UK, with 54 per cent wishing to remain. Besides, the idea of Wales (population of 3.1million, 3.4 per cent of UK GDP) seceding feels less like the dissolution of a centuries-old union and more like a small child announcing that they are leaving home, taking only a change of socks and two oranges. We smile indulgently, wish them well and try not to look too concerned. After all, they’ll be back when they’ve run out of sweets.

The notion, therefore, of actual terrorism associated with Welsh nationalism has generally been regarded as a punchline. Ben Macintyre’s 2012 wartime espionage history Double Cross delights in the fact that German intelligence swallowed reports of a completely fictitious Welsh Aryan Fascist brotherhood, supposedly poised to rise up against the British state. A Guardian review of the book even labelled the notion “absurd”. (There have, in fact, been Welsh Nazi sympathisers, both during the war and more recently).

Spare us Macklemore’s smug braying about ‘Free Palestine’

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Meanwhile, a recent ‘The Rest is History’ podcast series on The Troubles featured Dominic Sandbrook and Tom Holland chuckling at how the IRA reportedly sent weapons to the........

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