Simon Jenkins (England should take Welsh support for independence seriously before it’s too late, 15 February) seems to miss the point about increasing support for Welsh independence.
However absurd he finds the prospect of an international border along Offa’s Dyke, Scotland and Northern Ireland may leave the UK. In such a context, the key political question for Wales will be how to secure the economic, social and cultural future of the 3 million people living in this left-leaning, bilingual country, alongside an increasingly nationalist England of over 55 million.
As most Welsh schoolchildren know, the Encyclopaedia Britannica entry for Wales used to read “See England”. Without Northern Ireland and particularly Scotland as counterweights to English dominance, independence may prove the only safeguard against Wales being reabsorbed into England.
Dr Mike Thomas
London
• Simon Jenkins’ breathtaking (and flippant) misreading of Welsh history – “Wales has no great claim of maltreatment as, since Henry VIII, it has been administered as one ‘England and Wales’ and showered with subsidies” – only serves to show why there is a rise in support for self-government in Wales.
Eifion Jenkins
Stepaside, Pembrokeshire
