omething unexpected is emerging from Wales: support for independence is strengthening. The pro-independence campaign YesCymru had 2,000 members a year ago, now it says this has risen to more than 15,000. “That’s more members than nearly every political party in Wales,” the group’s chair, Siôn Jobbins, said. YesCymru’s latest polling with YouGov suggested 33% of Welsh people with a view would support independence. Separate polling for ITV Wales in January put the number in favour at 22%, with 25% undecided. And though Wales voted to leave the EU in 2016, 44% would now opt to rejoin, against 38% for staying out. As the cost of Brexit rises, hurting the high-profile farming and fishing sectors, such support will surely increase too. While independence is nowhere near a majority view, the impressive Plaid Cymru leader, Adam Price, said at the weekend that this was precisely where support for Scottish independence was just 10 years ago, which is now in a majority. The devolution of lockdown policy to the governments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland has clearly emboldened their populations. Senior ministers from each administration are on television raising their profiles and defending their own decisions. Although perceptions that the Welsh first minister, Mark Drakeford, has performed poorly during the pandemic has led to a fall in support for the government and the Labour party in recent months, this very fact has made Welsh people realise that at least Wales is in charge. Late last year the BBC’s Jeremy Bowen reported on the mood in Merthyr Tydfil, south Wales, amid the Covid-19 crisis. A teenage footballer he interviewed put things succinctly when she said: “When Boris Johnson comes on television we don’t have to listen to him because he’s not in charge of us … We are our own country and I think it’s right that we follow our own rules.” There must be every chance at the Senedd elections in May that Plaid Cymru could give Drakeford’s Welsh Labour the shock of its life, perhaps mirroring how the SNP has surpassed Labour in Scotland in both Scottish and Westminster elections over the past decade. Since most observers view an international hard border down Offa’s Dyke as nonsensical, the time may yet come for some difficult questions. But the reality is that public opinion, not economics or politics, is sovereign in this matter and no one should forget it – as we have seen over Brexit. Independence is the reduction, often to geographical absurdity, of group identity politics. Isolation is where the group goes when it sees no alternative, and when democracy permits it. The best approach is therefore not to use bad arguments against independence – that big governments are better than small ones, or that borders are bad for you. Indeed, the Tories already denied both such arguments in championing Brexit. The history of the creation of new states suggests that once the idea of independence takes hold, it never goes away until achieved. Debate must start by asking why independence is desired, what it would offer Wales and how those things could be achieved by other constitutional means. How can the argument be “built down” from full independence to a feasible new relationship between neighbouring polities? Among many other things, it was harsh and insensitive government that helped to drive Ireland out of the United Kingdom in 1922. Similar governmental dynamics subsequently applied to Scotland, as with Margaret Thatcher’s poll tax and John Major’s denial of devolution. Wales has no great claim of maltreatment as, since Henry VIII, it has been administered as one “England and Wales” and showered with subsidies. Since devolution, the Welsh government’s handling of its health and education services has not shone. But nationalism does not care about such things. Its appeal is deep and psychological and lies in sovereignty alone. The Irish tried it and succeeded. The Scots seem likely to do likewise. That Wales should follow suit might seem fantastical to some. But who knows? Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist