Why Wales and Westminster don’t agree on the lockdown

Nicola Sturgeon is a familiar figure to many even south of the border. But while Scotland’s nationalists are frequently seen and heard on the airwaves in England, the same isn’t true of Wales’s politicians. If you ask a Brit to name the first minister of Wales, you wouldn’t be surprised if they struggled to answer. But coronavirus has given Wales a new prominence – not least in the country choosing to go it alone in its response to tweaking lockdown rules. It seems all it took was a pandemic to prove that the Welsh, not just the Scots, have a competent parliament and leader to make decisions.

Over the last couple of weeks, the Welsh government has ramped up efforts to communicate how its policies differ to those made in Westminster. It started with tweets to newspapers telling them that their reports on UK policy were misleading, escalating to Mark Drakeford openly criticising Boris Johnson for a confusing address that provided no clarity over which lockdown rules applied to who.