Adam Price: “Nation building” Co-operation Agreement is a “down-payment on independence”
Plaid Cymru Leader Adam Price MS will today address his party’s Annual Virtual Conference, hailing this week’s Co-operation Agreement between Plaid Cymru and the Welsh Government as “a down-payment on independence” which represents a new kind of politics.
Referring to the wide-ranging Co-operation Agreement which covers 46 radical, nation building policy areas, Adam Price MS will pay tribute to party members and campaigners who have made free school meals for all primary pupils “a reality”.
Speaking of the policy areas covered by the Agreement, Adam Price MS will say:
“Every child in primary school will now get a free school meal. It is Plaid Cymru who have made that a reality. It is you who have made this a reality – you, the Plaid Cymru members, the grassroots, who have corresponded and campaigned for change.
“For those who ask what is the point of politics? Why bother to vote? you can give a far firmer answer from this week onwards. Plaid Cymru makes a difference.”
On what the Agreement signifies for Wales’s future, the Plaid Cymru Leader is expected to say:
“This is a nation-building Programme for Government which will change the lives of thousands of people the length and breadth of our country for the better.
“All this entails Plaid Cymru transforming itself from a traditional Opposition party in the Westminster sense to something new and refreshingly different, a Co-opposition party, co-operating where possible, while continuing to oppose, and to scrutinise and criticise where necessary.
“There is no precedent for what we are about to embark upon in the politics of these islands. It is a unique Welsh Departure from the British Constitution – a down-payment if you like on independence - though similar arrangements have happened elsewhere – notably in Scandinavian countries such as Sweden, Denmark, and Norway; and in Commonwealth countries such as New Zealand. Small nations all breaking the mould of politics-as-usual.”
On the constitution and Wales’s future as an independent nation, Adam Price MS is expected to say:
“I also believe that May’s election confirmed Wales’s status as an indy-curious nation.
“A curiosity that will give birth - sooner than many think - to an independent Wales.
“For Wales to be free, we must first be united.
“And, that is what this Co-operation Agreement sets out to achieve. It launches us on a pathway to a united Wales, one that, sooner than we perhaps think, will find it both comfortable and natural, indeed essential, to join the world community of normal, independent nations.
“As I said this week on the Senedd steps, if passed tomorrow, the Co-Operation Agreement is set to start on the first day of winter.
“Through it we will plant together “the seed beneath the snow” of a new society, a new Wales, a new beginning.”