Now we have post-Brexit opportunities although determination of LibDems and Greens (and many on Welsh Labour) to defend EU policies and reverse Brexit means these are not being fought for.
As a direct result of Brexit, at least 70 new decision-making powers are due to come to the Senedd directly from Brussels. They cover such important areas as transport, energy, water resources, agriculture, the environment, climate change, public procurement contracts, equal rights at work, biodiversity, animal welfare, waste management, food regulation, medical standards and elections.
These powers are spelt out in the Revised Framework Analysis (2019) published by the Cabinet Office.
But instead of informing the people of Wales about them, or fighting for them to come to Wales in full, and working out how they can be used to benefit the people of Wales, most parties in the Senedd have spent the past five years campaigning for them to remain in Brussels!
Welsh Labour, Plaid Cymru, the LibDems and the Greens have all tried to block and overturn the democratic result of the 2016 EU referendum, when the people of Wales and Britain voted to leave the capitalist big business EU.
Taking advantage of this obstruction and chaos, the Tories won the 2019 General Election, took us out of the EU … and then misused Brexit to steal economic and industrial powers stolen from the Senedd under the 2002 Single Market Act.
Only the Welsh Communist Party insists that all these powers belong in Wales, with our own elected representatives.
Progressive Federalism
Now that we have left the EU, the opportunity exists to create a progressive federal Britain based on self-government, equality and solidarity between its three nations.
That is the only realistic alternative to unionism — which maintains the domination of Welsh politics and economics by a largely English ruling class — and to ‘separatism’, which denies the close economic and social relations between Wales and England and between our labour and progressive movements.
Plaid Cymru’s version of ‘independence’ would give away the powers we desperately need in Wales to the unelected EU Commission, the unaccountable European Central Bank and the anti-trade union EU Court of Justice. The Treasury in London would run our currency.
At the same time, political separation from Britain would allow the super-rich concentrated around the City of London and south-east England to keep the enormous wealth created by the workers of Wales, England and Scotland.
Instead, Welsh Communists call for a Wealth Tax that would redistribute it to the peoples of every nation and region in Britain.
The Communist Party has called for Welsh self-government in a federal Britain for more than 70 years. The policy is now gaining support in some Welsh Labour circles.
We want to see working people and their allies exercising increasing control over the capitalist monopolies and the allocation of economic and financial resources at federal, national and regional level.
More than anything else, the Covid emergency has shown how much we depend on working people for everything — for our health, our safety, our food, our energy supplies and our transport system.
In a society driven by company profits, the greed of big shareholders trumps the needs of working people and their families.
That’s why the Communist Party says:
The crisis is Capitalism — the solution is Socialism
Vote Communist. Vote for your community. Vote for the common good.