From Bridgend to Wrexham, it seemed that no pub, club, café or shopping centre was without a journalist looking for a Labour voter intending to turn Tory. Anyone muttering about ‘voting for Theresa May’ could be sure of an attentive ear. It was, after all, the official line put out by Tory Central Office that […]
Posts Tagged ‘Wales’
On electing and removing leaders in the Labour Party
Nov 4th, 2015 by Mike Hedges AM.Immediately after the defeat at the General election in 2015, Ed Milliband resigned. What if he had decided to stay on? We do not know.What we do know is what happened in Scotland. Jim Murphy was elected Leader in October 2014. Following his defeat and Labour’s rout in Scotland, Murphy said he would remain Leader […]
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After the debacle: why Welsh Labour should work with Plaid Cymru
May 17th, 2015 by Nick Davies.The election result was terrible for Wales. If five years of self-defeating, poverty creating state-shrinking austerity from the coalition was bad enough, five more years of the Tories governing alone will be worse. The assault on the public sector threatens thousands of Welsh jobs, the £12 billion in ‘welfare’ cuts will make life even more […]
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Why Welsh Labour and Plaid Cymru should work together to defeat UKIP
Nov 15th, 2014 by Jon Lansman.To the extent that the British media’s political coverage ever veers far from Westminster, all eyes are currently on Scotland. In the wake of the Neverendum on Scottish independence and its leadership election, the potential meltdown of Scottish Labour in the general election is massive not only in Scotland: it is the biggest factor in the outcome […]
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A Welsh view of Scotland’s ‘No’ vote: the end, or the end of the beginning?
Oct 7th, 2014 by Nick Davies.‘Settled for a generation’ was the confident assertion of the metropolitan commentariat after Scotland’s referendum resulted in a bigger than expected margin of defeat for independence. An independent Scotland may be off the agenda in the immediate term but we should remember Zhou En-lai’s famous remark about the effects of the French revolution: “too early […]
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The ‘Black’ Route: a black day for Wales
Sep 3rd, 2014 by Nick Davies.In July 2014, the Welsh Government, which claims that sustainability is the central organising principle of everything it does, decided to build a motorway relief-road across a wetland containing four Sites of Special Scientific Interest. Anyone who cares about sustainability, who regards it as more than a pious aspiration or just something one says – […]
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The BBC, Question Time and Wales
Jun 13th, 2014 by Nick Davies.If fresh insight or stimulating discussion is what you’re after, BBC’s Question Time is likely to disappoint. The only relief from the stifling conformity of the Westminster consensus is the occasional non-politician (Owen Jones, Billy Bragg or Benjamin Zephaniah, for example). More recently, it has effectively become an almost-weekly audience with Nigel Farage. Many people […]
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Education in Wales: where is it going?
May 9th, 2014 by Mike Newman.There was no golden age in Welsh education. While Grammar Schools were more generously provided than in many parts of England, they created failure in the second and third deciles. Children passed the 11+ but left with little or nothing to show for it. Secondary Modern pupils were denied even the chance to fail. After the […]
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NHS Wales – a Cameron apology is called for
Apr 16th, 2014 by Tony Beddow.The Welsh NHS has for weeks been attacked in the Commons by Cameron and Hunt being described as failing and a shambles. Now, on a weekend when the independent Nuffield Trust reported that NHS Wales compares well with the other UK health systems, Cameron compounded the crime by telling the Tory Conference that the Welsh […]
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Don’t believe Cameron’s hype – the Welsh NHS has much to teach the English
Apr 8th, 2014 by Julian Tudor-Hart.Cameron this week labelled the Welsh NHS ‘a scandal’, and some Blairites have echoed him. But Wales is ‘doing more with less’ more effectively than the English NHS – and without privatisation. The Welsh created the NHS, modelled on miners’ mutual aid schemes. They have so far strongly resisted attempts to return healthcare to market […]
