A New Dawn of Devolution

Pen Rhyddid

And lo, the Burning Man cometh and sweeps all before him. Erudite, accomplished and with a lovely Northern accent.

The Starmerbot finally blew a fuse to everyone’s relief and the bouncing Tigger of the North swept in and has been crowned the charismatic king of communicators.

Hope lives! The faint red tinge on the horizon may be the wildfires burning, and the smell of smoke hanging heavy in the air may be the result, but truly, the sun is rising and the smell of hope is all pervasive.

Kinnock Redux

Child of the carrot topped loser of yesteryear the nepo politician Stephen has been appointed to be the voice of Cymru in the Westminster Cabinet. In his first interview as Secretary of State for Wales, he said he would do so with great voice and vigour. And then said that Cymru should not have any more powers devolved as it would cause ‘confusion’

Methinks that little Stephen is a tad confused. He clearly hasn’t read the Burning Man’s memo about devolution of power. Pen wonders whether truly, he’s the one who will finally demonstrate the redundancy of the Welsh Office?

A serious devolution Prime Minister may have regular meetings with their First Ministers – who needs a voice in the Cabinet when you can speak for yourself?

Perhaps I do nepo Steve a disservice – it may be that such is political astuteness that he sees this written on the wall and is digging in now to try and save his new job and champion a Welsh Office that truly outdid itself as a champion of Cymru under the guidance of his predecessor. The very forgettable whoever she was.

Really?

Amongst the more curious of appointments by the Burning Man was that of Chris ‘I still really want to be Speaker of the House, can’t that ar*e Hole step aside quickly before I completely lose my chance’ Bryant, as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. Pen assumes he must have done something to deserve a role (but not a purposeful one), so he got the mostly redundant NI Office.

Irony of ironies, if these two Labour unionist stalwarts, have to shepherd Northern Ireland and the Republic to their first border poll and swallow their confusion whilst Burning Man stays true to his word and ramps up real devolution of power to Cymru.

The rhetoric has been golden – tricky for him to deny Cymru the same as Scotland, at the very least, else the Burning Man will end up putting out his own fire.

Will he be no more than a wet whimper in the end, or will he sweep across the land like a wildfire, clearing the scrub and dead wood so that new growth can blossom?

Meanwhile, in Cymru

With the political life of the Senedd in abeyance for the Summer, what of the last few acts of the first few months of the Cymru Tartan government?

Plenty of pointless posturing and performance from the RUKers. And as their revered leader slowly dies a political death, skewered on the twin blades of a bin and an ill judged £5M ‘gift’, we must wonder how long they can maintain any pretence at cohesion.

Pity the handful or so of relatively sensible, determined politicians in their midst, those aspiring to be constructive and purposeful public servants, deceived by the false vision of their prophet and slowly waking up to the chaotic disruption and division which is the faultline of their adopted party. These earnest few are lost amongst the dross and noise of their associates.

When will Reform in Cymru begin to crack and fall apart, and as its shattered parts re-form what shape will they take? Pen hopes they do something interesting because, in truth, they are a satirist’s nightmare. It is tedious to parody a parody.

Dearie me

Cymru Tartan and the Welsh Loser Party generously rescued the opposition from the ignominy of relentlessly exposing their own uselessness as a serious political voice. Reform may be good at social snippets to clickbait a certain visceral and rabid audience but they are pretty shit at politics.

For all their online noise, RUK’s Senedd presence remains as thin and insubstantial as a fart in the wind, little more than an outrage roadshow, treating serious debate like an unwanted interruption to performative posing, utterly bankrupt on policy.

Whilst the RUKers are deserving of vilification it seems that Tartan and Loser remain determined not to be outdone in political naivety. They successfully managed to shift the spotlight of exposure from the foibles and failings of Reform by making tits of themselves, negotiating a deal on the supplementary budget, falling out about it at the eleventh hour, failing to get it through the Siambr, and blaming each other like the A team kids on the playground who just lost a game of rounders when they should have absolutely smashed it.

Loser members of the Senedd lined up to whine about this, Tartans got all sniffy with them, heated words in public. Private words at boiling point, ‘you f**king lost, you don’t get to dictate’.

All jolly good fun for bystanders with plenty of popcorn.

But seriously

Pen rarely dispenses free advice, but the sight of the adults in the room acting like squabbling toddlers is unbecoming. Even a satirist reaches a point where acerbic wit alone is not enough. Get a grip on yourselves, Losers and Tartans. You are the bulwark against the populist carnival outside the gates, the antithesis to the f**kery of Reform, yet you’re tripping over your own shoelaces in full view of the punters.

Roles reverse. Learn your lines, don’t fluff your cues. Adjust to the new hierarchy with dignity and act with shared purpose – if only to ensure that when the Burning Man’s new dawn finally breaks over Cymru, with the smell of hope hanging heavy in the air, we aren’t all standing around in the dark arguing over who gets to hold the matches.

---

Get more trusted Welsh news

Choose Nation.Cymru as a preferred source in Google News to see more of our journalism.