What's interesting about polling on the Covid-19 pandemic and Welsh devolution is that despite highlighting the issue like never before in Wales all the polling suggests that people's opinions on indy / devolution / abolish etc haven't changed at all. 1/

YouGov's poll yesterday on support for devo-max was within the margin of error of a ICM / BBC poll in Feb on support for indy / more powers. There's 55-60% that want more powers and their view hasn't changed. There's also around 20% that favour fewer powers / abolish. 2/

It could be of course that there's been a lot of churn under the surface with devolution adding and losing fans based on the Covid-19 response and ending up in a similar place in terms of support. 3/

But looking at the polls my gut feeling is that the people who don't like Wales' handling of Covid-19 didn't like devolution before Covid-19, and those who are fans (the majority) liked the idea of Wales doing its own thing before then. 4/

So what? Well it may suggest that politicians arguing more indy / more powers / abolish should spend less time pointing to individual successes / failures of devolution and finding out what it is that makes people support or oppose Welsh autonomy at a deeper, identity level. 5/

Ultimately I think that if you feel 100% Welsh you're likely to support the existence of a Welsh gov and parliament no matter how crap a job it does, if you feel 100% British you're likely to think it's not needed no matter how good a job it does. 6/

Gellner: "Nationalism is a political principle, which holds that the political unit and the national unit should be congruent... [Nationalism] is the feeling of anger aroused by the violation of this principle, or the feeling of satisfaction aroused by its fulfilment." /7

The question then for indy / pro-devo / abolish types is that it changes the game from 'how can we show devolution is doing a good / bad job' to 'how do we make people feel more Welsh / British'. What makes national identity? That's harder to put your finger on. /8