I’ll do it now in a decade

Alun Smith

It’s not nearly enough, Mr Burnham. Oh, sure, it was a positive-sounding speech with broad, colourful, emotional notes, designed to pique the interest of the ‘left-leaning’, Guardian-reading, middle-aged champagne socialist. The morally well-to-do, comfortably off Labourite, who wants nothing to do with his ex-wife in Piddington, the Piddington Martha, as he calls her.

Yes, he’ll table his CAMRA-approved jar of Bishop’s Bumtoot, straighten the old racing-green cardigan and clap along with your Milibands and your Coopers and admirably perform the part of the relieved Labour man. “Finally,” he’ll declare, “a Labour leader with the nous and courage to make sweeping changes to the status quo. We didn’t get that with Starmer or Corbyn.”

Well… actually. If cardigan boy would care to think about it for a second and really look at what Burnham has said, he might find that the beer Burnham is offering is a bit… watery.

The cutting of VAT from your lecky bill was announced months ago. Yes, it will come into effect at the end of this month, but prices will go up to match/negate that and rise again before the end of the year and will continue to do so while the world is at war.

The National Care Service was in Corbyn’s manifesto, as far as I can recall. Why didn’t you support it then, oh Brian of the Bumtoot?

Burnham wants cross-party co-operation on the PR consultation. Good grief! Have you seen who you are going to be working with, Andy? So, yeah, that’s not happening anytime soon.

Look, I get the Burnham bounce thing, I do. I’m just struggling to see what’s likely to change, and how quickly, in the years after the NEXT general election.

Take the triple lock thing. That’s going to need devising. It’s going to need approval, it’s going to need committees and chats and consensus. That’s not even beginning until 2030.

I’m sorry, guys, but I really can’t see the lives of the average Joe and Joan changing very much between now and 2036.

Not because Burnham doesn’t want it, but because everything takes so damned long! That, and the heartbreaking fact that whatever colour tie is worn by the PM, he is not, in isolation, in charge.

Everything is deferred, delegated and diluted until, by the time a parliamentary vote is tabled, it’s not even close to the policy you came up with in the first instance.

When we couple Whitehall’s penchant for foot-dragging with the long-grass politics and pensive half-promises of ALL the major parties, we begin to see why nothing ever changes.

Gaza

Take Gaza. What’s with all the inertial dampeners, Labour? You’ll stand there and say, “We hear you and you were right” (you’re still proscribed, btw), and then, when we say, “Stop arming the regime then,” you say, “We’re looking at ways to make sure those arms don’t end up in the hands of settlers.” What?! What?! Why are we playing the non-sequitur game? That’s not what I asked you and you know it!

What has all this to do with Wales? Well, everything, actually.

The First Minister said at the march for independence in Aberystwyth that “we’re on a path”. Yes, we are, and it’s wonderful to see, and the vote in the Senedd on whether or not Wales has the right to decide its own future passed.

It’s irrelevant, though, sadly. It’s meaningless when Burnham has said he’s going to do everything in his power to ensure he’s not the last PM of the UK.

When Burnham says things like, “We’re gonna have a new industrial revolution like the one led by the Midlands and the north of England”—again… what?! I think you’ll find, Mr Burnham, that Wales, Scotland and Ireland played a rather large part in that.

Brussels 

YesCymru are saying they want a referendum by 2032. I say, Rhun, mate, get yourself off to Brussels, ensure equal funding (equal to what England is offering) and let’s go. Take the question to the ECHR and find out whether or not it’s even legal for Westminster to delay the inevitable.

What I feared would happen before the Senedd elections and before Burnham became PM is playing out.

If Burnham doesn’t speed this process up and change people’s lives pronto, he will lose to Farage and then Wales will be stuck.

The alternate timeline is one where Farage and Co. are muted because of all the investigations, the ‘patriots’ are dealt with and Burnham wins in 2029.

The trickle-down will be an end to Reform in Wales. Hallelujah. This will be aided in no small part by the work Plaid are doing, of course.

Burnham has an open goal with Wales. He keeps banging on about decentralisation of power from Westminster. Do it then. Get on with it, man. Currently, you’re saying NO to Wales and YES to England. That won’t do. That won’t do at all.

You’ve said you “love Wales”. Well, you’d better start carving her a spoon then, hadn’t you? And make it a good one.

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