Drakeford blasts ‘collapse of effective government in London’ as he meets Irish Taoiseach
Mark Drakeford has blasted the “collapse of effective government in London” as he travels to meet the Irish Taoiseach today.
The First Minister will join other First Ministers and the leader of the Republic of Ireland at the 37th British-Irish Council summit on Guernsey as the crisis around the future of the UK Government continues to unfold.
The leaders will meet to discuss the ongoing cost-of-living crisis, climate change, support for people from Ukraine and the Northern Ireland Protocol at the 37th British-Irish Council summit.
Speaking ahead of the summit, the first after the Prime Minister announced he would resign, First Minister Mark Drakeford said that the countries involved “deserved better” than what had happened in London.
“The British-Irish Council is designed to foster strong working relationships between all the governments involved – and that’s what we’ll be doing today.
“We are here to do the serious business of working together to make things better for the people in our respective nations and islands.
“We will focus on the cost-of-living crisis, the relationship between the UK and the EU, particularly in relation to the Northern Ireland Protocol and we’ll talk about the actions taken to welcome people from Ukraine.
“This is what the UK Government should be focusing on. What we have seen over recent months has not just been about the fate of one person, it has been about the collapse of decent and effective government in London. We all deserve better.”
‘Right thing’
Yesterday the First Minister has called for a General Election as Boris Johnson announced his decision to resign, saying that a “stable UK Government” was in the best interest of all the nations of the UK.
Mark Drakeford was never a fan of the Prime Minister, famously describing him as “really awful” on S4C in a documentary at the peak of the Covid pandemic.
The Welsh and UK Governments have clashed repeatedly over the last few years about the decentralization of what the Welsh Government felt were devolved powers to the UK Government in the aftermath of Brexit.
In the aftermath of the announcement that Boris Johnson would resign, Mark Drakeford released a short statement.
“All four nations need a stable UK Government and I am therefore pleased to see the Prime Minister has now done the right thing and agreed to resign,” he said.
“The way to achieve that is by a general election so the decision about the next Prime Minister is made by the people and not by the narrow membership of the Conservative party.”
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On the one hand we have this kind of pragmatic, grownup collaboration between modern, relatively progressive independent and devolved governments. On the other, we have westminster, where the closest thing to light at the end of the tunnel is a labour party who have adopted a policy of flag waving union jackassery and “get brexit done”…….sorry, ” make brexit work”, who won’t work with the SNP, who won’t defend the unions, and who won’t rejoin the single market, all because they base their policies on how the far right british press might react to them, rather than on any kind… Read more »
Talking of the FM and crossroads, when he returned from Labour head office in London some time ago with the Baroness in tow I detected a subtle change in him and a less subtle change in the Health Minister. I feared that he had been dancing with the devil on the crossroads of Victoria Street and the B323…I hope he told the devil where to go…
I like Drakeford’s approach but don’t understand what his longer-term plans are. Is it only that if we get a Labour government in Westminster, then Wales gets a fairer shake of things from that point onwards? What we ideally need is the HS2 money (and crown estates?) to be devolved so we can have massive investment into travel connections between different areas in Wales, fund our NHS and bring exciting start-up businesses to areas far away from Cardiff so people want to stay here, to come here, and to live here permanently. But it seems extremely unlikely that Westminster will… Read more »
Please Mr Drakeford, can you ask the Taoiseach for a copy of the blueprint the Republic used to set up institutions when they secured independence, so we have a head start.
Hey, Doormat! The more “effective” they are, the worse for us.