Cymrectitude*

Ben Wildsmith

WhenChancellor Rachel Reeves was pretending to have had first sight of the government finances on Monday, her speech was an object lesson in performative indignation.

Pitched between Emile Zola and someone on a local Facebook group whose bins haven’t been collected, Reeves bristled at the irresponsibility of her predecessors.

The public ledger is in the worst state since World War II, I mean FFS, what have these people been doing?!?!?!

Shock

The data is, of course, available to anyone online and always has been, so the big reveal wasn’t quite the shock it was billed as, but well done to Rachel for carrying off the performance like the tipped-off recipient of a surprise party.

OMG!!!! I had NO idea…

The UK’s public finances aren’t, in fact, in their worst state since the war but that isn’t the point. We, the hardworking people, are outraged by mismanagement of the country and our new government is inhabiting that fury on our behalf.

The vibe is of parents returning from a weekend at Center Parcs to find the fallout from a teenage party in their suburban home. We hoped you were better than this…

Sir Keir himself is, of course, possessed of a potentially lethal sense of integrity. When he ties his shoelaces, he feels a greater burden of responsibility than you did upon becoming a parent.

He burps ethically. During one of the leaders’ debates, Starmer was asked whether he, a millionaire, would consider paying for private healthcare if a close family member was gravely ill.

How very dare you?! The putative PM looked as if he’d been stung by a wasp at the very suggestion. Stuttering a little, he explained that ‘in his house’, where he is the sole moral arbiter, nobody had even heard of BUPA.

His expression suggested a religious aunt who had been offered a line of cocaine at a wedding.

Inconvenient

All of which is wretchedly inconvenient for Vaughan Gething. Timing is everything in politics and his emergence on to the national scene as it embraces puritanical rectitude must be a proper ball-ache for him.

A few months ago, when Westminster was all popping champagne corks and Covid contracts, Gething’s ask-me-no-questions-I’ll-tell-you-no-lies style would have been of a piece with the wider scene.

One can picture Boris Johnson knowingly joshing him, you old roister doister, you…

Now, though, with the earnest, bequiffed Starmer wrapped in a Union Jack and turning national life into an interminable Morrissey concert, the shenanigans down the Bay look jarringly at odds with the zeitgeist.

Today, the Senedd Labour Group were off for an ‘away day’ designed to cohere them around the First Minister. One can only imagine the scenes in the minibus when Nation.Cymru confirmed that Hannah Blythyn was not the source of Vaughan Gething’s woes.

Reports that Mike Hedges attempted to lighten proceedings with a chorus of ‘Gin Gan Gooly’ are unreliable and possibly a result of incoherence.

Whatever transpired at today’s David Brent meets Richard Nixon corporate beano, we’re left with the impression that Labour in the Senedd is the ugly stepchild of the national party.

In Westminster, for now, everything is shiny-new and untainted by the sludge of realpolitik. Here in Wales, we are decades into entrenched Labour governance and the inevitable stench of complacency is about to waft over the border.

How the party deals with the multiple scandals enveloping the First Minister could have far-reaching consequences for devolution. Nothing that Keir Starmer or, more worryingly, Jo Stevens has said indicates any enthusiasm for Wales as a political entity.

On returning from their outward- bound course this evening, Labour Senedd members need to construct a case for their usefulness to the political process.

For all that Labour’s predicament might delight opposition parties; by embarrassing their Westminster bosses, they could disenfranchise the nation.

*With apologies to Peter Finch.