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Labour blasted for ‘lack of commitment’ to Wales in election manifesto

26 May 2024 2 minute read
Liz Saville Roberts (L) and Jo Stevens

Plaid Cymru’s Westminster Leader Liz Saville Roberts MP has hit out the Labour Party for a “lack of commitment to Wales,” following comments made by Shadow Welsh Secretary Jo Stevens.

Speaking on BBC Radio Wales’s Sunday Supplement programme, the shadow minister was challenged about whether Welsh Government calls for the devolution of policing and justice, and receiving the close to £4 billion it has missed out on for HS2 consequentials, would feature in the UK Labour general election manifesto.

Priorities

Ms Stevens failed to give any such commitment, saying: “What will be in the manifesto will be our five missions. The manifesto will be based on that and the reason why it would be based on that is because those are the priorities of people in Wales.

“Not a single person has said to me on the doorstep across Wales, can we have the devolution of policing and Justice and can we have more devolution.”

“But this election is about the economy. It is about bringing change to the country through having economic stability, rather than economic chaos. And if we get economic stability, we can grow the economy.

“We can keep mortgage rates down; we can keep inflation down. That is what people are concerned about,” she added.

Responding to the shadow minister’s comment’s Ms Saville Roberts said: “Once again, Labour have reaffirmed their lack of commitment to Wales.

‘True colours’

“Whether on pledging to devolve policing and justice – a policy supported by Labour in Wales – or giving Wales the billions it is owed from the England-only High-Speed 2 rail projects UK, Labour are showing their true colours.

“Labour MPs in Wales will always put the Westminster whip first. That’s why I urge everyone who wants their community to have a strong voice in the UK Parliament to back their local Plaid Cymru candidate on 4 July.

“Labour Members of the Senedd must be furious hearing their own party’s Shadow Secretary of State show such disrespect towards their views and towards Wales’s needs.

“The self-proclaimed party of devolution seem intent on ensuring that it’s an event not a process.”


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Annibendod
Annibendod
5 months ago

Keir Hardie’s party once stood on a manifesto of Home Rule. Look what happened when they got into power. Locked themselves into Tory British Nationalism and called it progressive. What a joke. What a lie. When (apparently) half your support base supports Welsh Independence, you revert to type (a la Kinnock) and denigrate the democratic aspirations of your nation, what does that reveal? I will keep saying this – if you support the establishment of a Welsh State you are wasting your time with Labour.

Vote Plaid!

adopted cardi
adopted cardi
5 months ago
Reply to  Annibendod

as a long term Plaid voter, apart from the Jeremy Corbyn election, I’d say now that I will be voting for one party -for Plaid – IF Plaid Cymru come out and say that they support a Palestine state. Officially. If they do not then I will not.

Rhddwen y Sais
Rhddwen y Sais
5 months ago
Reply to  adopted cardi

Totally agree can’t get a fag packet paper between Jezza and Plaid.

Rhddwen y Sais
Rhddwen y Sais
5 months ago
Reply to  Annibendod

a la Kinnock. Pretentious Moi!

Annibendod
Annibendod
5 months ago
Reply to  Rhddwen y Sais

Here’s another for you – Ad hominem.

Rhddwen y Sais
Rhddwen y Sais
5 months ago
Reply to  Annibendod

Try cerigrafi

CapM
CapM
5 months ago
Reply to  Rhddwen y Sais

You should have tried
cer i grafu

Annibendod
Annibendod
5 months ago
Reply to  Rhddwen y Sais

No, I’m good thanks but I’ll keep another good one in mind – don’t feed the trolls.

Rhddwen y Sais
Rhddwen y Sais
5 months ago
Reply to  Annibendod

Don’t feed the trolls. A la Kinnock. Kinnock us still there and will be for a long time. Hide your head in the sand.

Annibendod
Annibendod
5 months ago
Reply to  Rhddwen y Sais

We all know what Kinnock did and said about his own country. Thanks to people like him we endured Thatcher and all the worst the Tories had to throw our way. Go hang your head in shame.

Rhddwen y Sais
Rhddwen y Sais
5 months ago
Reply to  Annibendod

Always other peoples fault.

Steffan Gwent
Steffan Gwent
5 months ago

It’s all very well and good for LSR to say Labour shows a “lack of commitment to Wales” but Plaid has shown that it lacks a commitment to women. Carmarthenshire Plaid Councillors with their Jonathan Edwards domestic violence forgiveness agenda prove this. This problem is so big that Rhun ap Iorwerth got ambushed on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme last week with accusations that his party is misogynistic. This issue not Wales dominated the interview.

Ernie The Smallholder
Ernie The Smallholder
5 months ago
Reply to  Steffan Gwent

Plaid has dealt with this. J Edwards will NOT be our candidate at this coming election.

Ann Davies is your Plaid Cymru candidate for the seat of Caerfyrddin.
Ann Davies was born and bred in Carmarthenshire and has served as County Councillor for Llanddarog Ward since 2017 and Cabinet Member for Rural Affairs, Community Cohesion and Planning Policy since 2021.

hdavies15
hdavies15
5 months ago
Reply to  Steffan Gwent

If you think the misogyny is confined to the Edwards case then you are kidding yerself.

Adrian
Adrian
5 months ago
Reply to  Steffan Gwent

None of this lot care about women’s rights. You’d be hard pushed to find any political party, or politician, who can even tell you what a woman is: at best they’ll tell you it amounts to nothing more than a state of mind. Labour, the Lib Dems, Plaid & the Greens are all completely wedded to so-called gender self-ID and would be quite comfortable with any grown man who ‘feels’ that he’s a woman gaining access to any and all women’s spaces. Bear in mind that there are free tampons available in the male toilets of the Senedd.

Laura
Laura
5 months ago
Reply to  Adrian

Wow the fact you manage to squeeze in some transphobia shows you know nothing about woman’s rights!! Stef was completely correct when he stated about Jonathan Edwards. He’s a dark cloud that won’t be able to shake off easily.

Adrian Bamford
Adrian Bamford
5 months ago
Reply to  Laura

It depends on your definition of ‘transphobia’: I suspect yours applies to anyone who thinks humans can’t change sex…in which case I reject it.

David
David
5 months ago
Reply to  Adrian

Chromosomes are different for males(XY) and females(XX). So if that is wrong, those who support self-id are basically saying science is wrong. Will they also say that the earth is flat!

Adrian
Adrian
5 months ago
Reply to  David

David – anyone who truly believes that humans can change sex is either breathtakingly stupid, delusional, or a blend of the two. Most politicians who make this claim don’t fall into either of those categories: they’re just gutless midwits who’ll say whatever they think will make them popular. Such is the state of the political selection pool.
The fact that you’ve been down-voted shows that the breathtakingly stupid walk among us.

Last edited 5 months ago by Adrian
CapM
CapM
5 months ago
Reply to  Adrian

It might get some people very agitated on either side of the argument but transgender issues aren’t going to play a part in determining this election or even how many seats parties get.

Neilyn
Neilyn
5 months ago
Reply to  Steffan Gwent

So, Leanne Wood wasn’t a woman then? Bobol bach!

Rhddwen y Sais
Rhddwen y Sais
5 months ago
Reply to  Neilyn

Leanne was a political heavyweight.

Gwyn Hopkins
Gwyn Hopkins
5 months ago

Labour certainly takes Scotland seriously but not Wales. This is clearly because the Scottish national movement is strong and threatens their beloved Union whereas the Welsh national movement is weak and, in its view, no threat to the Union. This is why Scotland is often favoured compared to Wales. Barnett consequential funding for HS2 for example. Although some trains for both Scotland and Wales will use HS2 it is designated as an England & Wales project so that Wales gets no funding but not as an England & Scotland project so that Scotland gets about £5bn.    

Riki
Riki
5 months ago
Reply to  Gwyn Hopkins

No, it’s because Wales is completely different, Wales doesn’t need to seek a referendum in regards to independence because England and Wales are not actually legally unified. All the elite in Wales have to do is withdraw consent to see the Germanic royals of England as their head of State and presto, Wales will be Independent. This is Why Wales is never discussed!!! England and Scotland are legally bound therefore they must follow the same legal procedures.

David
David
5 months ago
Reply to  Riki

Wales(Cymru) was colonised by England. So, we should follow the guidlines set out in the United Nations under De-colonisation to gain our independence.

Malcolm Jones
Malcolm Jones
5 months ago

The labour party will never do anything for Wales they don’t need to.the people of Wales only vote for the labour party even after stealing the money from the disaster fund that was set up for the children and families of the the dead in aberfan the Labour party stole the money to make the tip that had killed them safe.and people of Wales still vote for the labour party you couldn’t make it up so why bother doing anything for Wales even after taking that money from the disaster fund we still vote for them they only look after… Read more »

Cwm Rhondda
Cwm Rhondda
5 months ago

For Labour see the Tories.

Riki
Riki
5 months ago

Jesus! Why oh why do we insist in engaging with the English and their parliament when we have centuries of proof that not only do they not care for Wales, they actively seek to make it a county of England. This UK nonsense, as if the UK and England aren’t the same in all but name. They do this so how they act towards Wales and Scotland can be perceived in a way that it doesn’t come across as an Anglo project in regards to Wales especially. The UK was specifically designed or atleast built upon in order to keep… Read more »

Steve A Duggan
Steve A Duggan
5 months ago

Is this going to be the first Labour government? No. Have previous Labour governments given Wales a second thought? No. Yes, Blair saw the threat to the Union, after the last Tory mess, and allowed for some decentralisation for Wales and Scotland but the current Labour party doesn’t give a toss. Ultimately, Wales and Scotland will become independent in the near future, it’s only a matter of time.

Y Cymro
Y Cymro
5 months ago

What a surprise! How ironic that Wales invented the NHS UK Labour crows on about and we get the dripping off their bulbus nose. The Welsh people will always be last in the Labour queue. Keir Starmer and those treacherous Wales Labour MPs will never put our interests first, never. All he and they care about is Westminster power and screwing the public purse with expenses and free second homes. For Wales to succeed we must remove Labour from power in 2026. But first we must give Welsh Office Minister, aka Lord Haw Haw , David TC Davies and Conservatives… Read more »

Richard Davies
Richard Davies
5 months ago
Reply to  Y Cymro

You are wrong, it isn’t much but Scotland is losing 2 MPs by going from having 59 MPs to having 57 MPs.

John Ellis
John Ellis
5 months ago

Worth recalling, perhaps, that Blair was on record as saying that, in retrospect, he subsequently regretted the support which Labour, as a consequence of the advocacy of the likes of Rhodri Morgan and Donald Dewar, gave to the notion of devolution.

Labour essentially stands for the union, and under Starmer the party appears especially reluctant to rock the Westminster establishment boat. I doubt that those of us who aspire to greater autonomy for Wales can expect too much support from the Westminster Labour government which – as the polls suggest – we look likely to get after July 4th.

Richard
Richard
5 months ago

Worth a read and by our greatest historian auther of modern times 😃

IMG_9241
robin campbell
robin campbell
5 months ago

Jo Stevens – our next Colonial Governor?

Richard Davies
Richard Davies
5 months ago

Tired of mild reform,
Sick of hand-me-downs,
We topple all the theories
to the ground.

All real change must
come from below,
Our bosses must
live in fear of the factory floor.

And when they smile
and they ask for my support,
I’ll give them these words and
a bloody nose,
“You don’t help your enemy
when you’re at war!”

– Chumbawamba, “Never mind the ballots!” 1987.

Dai Ponty
Dai Ponty
5 months ago

For the near future the best we can hope for in Wales is all Tories lose their seats and Plaid win most of them and Labour or Greens the rest but in an ideal world PLAID WOULD WIN ALL THE SEATS but that will not happen yet until the people of Wales realise there is not much difference between Tory and Labour if any

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