Farewell To the Puppets

Ben Wildsmith

If Labour’s politicians in Wales didn’t have enough reasons to curse Keir Starmer, they surely do now.

It’s not just the fact of his political bankruptcy that is so toxic, just three weeks out from the Senedd election, but the means by which he’s become insolvent.

The detachment of the party from Welsh political culture is surely personified by Peter Mandelson.

Metropolitan, emotionally void, ideologically vacant, and nakedly careerist, the essence of the man is at odds with the mythos of Labour, not just in Wales, in industrial England too.

Being ‘intensely relaxed’ with people becoming filthy rich was a chucklesome heresy in New Labour’s conquered middle-class territories in England. It suggested that benefiting from Thatcher’s parasite-friendly economics – all landlordism and hedge funds – needn’t be a bar to ethical bona fides as long as you voted for Labour’s teaspoon of sugar in the neoliberal emetic. ‘Sorry, we can’t provide any meaningful jobs in your village but, here, have a Flying Start centre.’

All well and good if your property portfolio is ticking along nicely and avocados are three for two in Waitrose. Eventually, though, people were bound to wonder why nothing was changing for us here.

After fourteen years of Tory austerity, ‘Labour at both ends of the M4’ needed to deliver and do so quickly for communities that felt no less shafted by Tony Blair’s economics than they did by Boris Johnson’s.

From the moment Keir Starmer’s government assumed office it seemed to take perverse pleasure in making the Labour Senedd cohort look like fools. After all the campaigning on HS2 payments being owed, suddenly the maths had been recalculated down to fourpence-halfpenny.

When Labourites across Wales demanded devolution of the Crown estate, their MPs in Westminster were whipped to vote against it. Here, in particular, lay the sting of contempt.

Labour is supposed to own devolution. It was the means by which Welsh people were told to express our political culture. In power again, under Starmer, the party moved explicitly to disadvantage Wales, not only in relation to the England, but in comparison to Scotland.

So, it’s a racing certainty that Labour is going to be wiped out in the coming election. Whether or not Plaid Cymru heads the next government, leadership of the broad left will pass from a unionist party to one committed to independence.

Rejection

Whilst the issue of independence has been deliberately muted by Plaid in this campaign, this shift is understood right well by the electorate. The scale of Labour’s rejection is such that swathes of unionist voters prioritise getting rid of them over concerns about the long-term viability of the UK. Nice job, Keir.

The effect of this has been to corral unionism into the jingoistic ghetto of British nationalism as espoused by Reform UK. The Liberal Democrats have seen a gap in the market and, incongruously, have attempted to offer a unionist makeover as a cattle prod into their revivification.

If the polls are anywhere near correct, the choir invisible still beckons them.

The prospect of a Wales-based party governing in Cardiff will demand a reordering of all Welsh politics.

Crisis of authenticity

Any party campaigning outside of an explicitly British nationalist position is going to face a crisis of authenticity if it takes its orders from London. ‘Welsh Labour’, ‘Welsh Conservatives’ and ‘Welsh’ anything else will, in future, actually have to be Welsh if the electorate is to trust their motives.

The ironic truth is that separation from London hierarchies will be the only way these parties can plausibly argue for unionism.

For Labour, the game may well be up forever. The shadow of Mandelson, that Epstein-tainted serial scandaleer, will fall over all they say for a long time to come. Puppets only convince if you can’t see the strings.