We don’t need Westminster: An interview with Wales’s ‘radical’ Archbishop

Andrew John is a ‘radical’, not a politician – or so he claims. The Archbishop of Wales stated his mission when he was elected to the post barely two years ago after a swift and overwhelming majority among the Church in Wales’s electoral college. John is low-key, humble and mild mannered in person, but is also unafraid to speak his mind: he has aired uncompromising views on migration, integrity in public life and nationalism. His most outspoken opinions are on the issue of Welsh independence.

Earlier this year, John went further than any of his predecessors in expressing his personal thoughts on the subject: he said the ‘situation we have received from Westminster is not sufficient’ – and that he is ‘in favour of independence’ to help ‘solve’ the country’s problems. So, does he think he went too far?

‘The reason why I wanted to say it,’ the Archbishop tells me, ‘is that there needs to be a sense in which Wales is able to control and craft its own future.’