Anti-establishment politics is sweeping the world – so why not in Wales?
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It did happen in Wales, with a big vote for Corbyn’s Labour. Plaid did slightly better than the 1997 equivalent when there was a big vote for Blair.
Which just goes to show how weak our democracy is in Wales due to the lack of media. Everyone turned out to ‘vote Corbyn’ when they were in fact voting for a bunch of Blairities who issued a totally separate manifesto. Most people believed they were voting for the abolition of tuition fees, only for Welsh Labour to go and raise them. Most people believed they were voting for an end to the public sector pay cap, only for Welsh Labour to leave it in place. We need to stop putting our faith in the idea that a white knight… Read more »
Yes it does, but even if one accepts that Welsh Labour controls those issues, the temptation is still to vote for the candidate who could oust Theresa May. This is what happened. I know people who voted Labour for this reason. You couldn’t do much differently to win 4 seats and it has to be a good result, no matter how narrow, and better than 1997 which was the last comparable Labour surge election. The real test for Plaid Cymru will be in Assembly elections but people are saying how divided they are. Leanne Wood would win her seat easily… Read more »
Ummm….slight exaggeration…bs. We have different voices from Plaid AMs. Adam Price is hardly radical while he supports cockamany vanity projects. The national executive committee is full of sycophants which means bad policy decisions. Add to that a personal vendetta against Neil McEvoy who is a true populist leaves the party split and unappealing. Shame.
RE – ‘personal vendetta against Neil McEvoy’ – most people in Plaid are waiting to see the results of the investigation against him before making a judgement on that one, so im sure sure the party is split. Certainly doesn’t look it, the suspension was unanimous. Lets wait and see what happens there
Maybe because Plaid are part of the establishment – coalition with Labour, then the ‘compact’ you cant be in opposition and government at the same time.
Also, to claim that Plaid was the only third party not to take a hit this year is ridiculous.
Yes Plaid gained a seat (by 104 votes) but they almost lost Arfon, their vote at a UK level was the lowest it’s been for 20 years. 200 votes in the right/wrong place and Plaid would have been back to 1983 with two seats. There’s also no logical target for them next time either.
This is a one eyed article. Plaid Cymru are in serious trouble and Leanne is leader, she is a genuine and talented person, there is a place for her in politics but she hasn’t shown the leadership needed to slap down the weasels in her own party, Plaid Cymru are SO the establishment as well as Welsh Labour in Wales,Plaid need a purge and get back on track: No more deals with Labour; Be a proper opposition; Work with others in opposition; Campaign for independence; Stand up for Welsh people at home and abroad; draw attention to Wales rather than… Read more »
Why do so few commentators use their full real names? Is it because people don’t want to stand by their words in Wales’ ‘village politics’? Happy to debate anyone but would be nicer if i knew who i was debating
Try being a conservative (no less pro-Wales) in this country for one month, and see how your own countrymen treat you. It is a problem we need to talk about more as Welsh people. Supporting Welsh independence, I have had fellow Welshmen spit in my face simply for answering a question honestly, and speaking against inheritance tax. Wales is poisoned to the core by hatred, and we need to talk about it as a country. Being a financial liberal, a social conservative, a royalist, does not make anyone any less Welsh, not does it bear jurisprudence on who Welsh nationalists… Read more »
With Labour adopting soft nationalist (small n) policies Plaid is in danger of losing is unique selling point. I believe that Leanne is an asset, she does come over as genuine and warm with the people she meets and came off relatively well in the TV debates, with her sharp one line put downs of the more outrageous remarks by her opponents – and more importantly her radicalism is genuine, and it shows. I would argue that trying to fight Labour on its own turf is always going to be a loser for Plaid. Having said that tacking to the… Read more »
My take on the title is that everyone is too busy moaning, bickering, whinging, fighting old political corners that don’t apply anymore in a 21st century world let alone Wales. It is funny to watch and read whether, in the north were there be Tories, in the south were there be Labour, around abouts Plaid, with loads of distarcting odds and sods in the middle, all going round and around in an ever decreasing downward spiral. We have all been there, been a part of it and done it without exception. It is what we intend to learn from these… Read more »
Thanks Dafydd, You’ve hit on my main problem with the Yes’ campaign. The main advice for someone writing a novel is “show don’t tell” and i think this is true of the independence movement too. The vast majority of the work i see Yes activists involved in is directly pushing the indy arguments. In other words, ‘telling’ rather than showing. You said “there are thousands of ordinary people mobilising to firstly, better their individual communities before turning toward thoughts of Independence.” Is that true? Its certainly a welcome development if it is. Yes activists would have 10x more impact if… Read more »
Be the party of providing jobs for Wales and a Wales-focused economy not dependent upon the State. That would be radical.
a grass roots campaign against dumping nuclear waste and prisons in Wales would be a start
Hopefully you mean a campaign against nuclear power? Please tell me you’re not pro nuclear power but anti the waste as you can’t have one without the other.
As for prisons, I assume you’re happy for them as long as they’re not in your back yard?
I think wales has enough prisons already. And i for one am sick of the detrius englands is dumping in wales , be it pollutants or white trash
It would be nice if you took your rose tinted specs off RE: Wood & Plaid, but that’s not going to happen. This is not a debate it’s an article people are commenting on, I find it weird you asking for people’s full names to be honest.
Plaid would have done well to borrow the methods deployed by Neil McEvoy in Cardiff West, and replicated them across the ‘Labour heartlands’. Numerous times, Leanne, and others ‘at the top’, were asked to roll out the community activism across Wales. But, no luck. Po-faced professionals apparently known better than the voters they are meant to be begging each election. WHO in the leadership of Plaid is responsible for hampering the party in this way? Is it Leanne Wood herself, or as Adam Price suggestions, others, hell-bent on sleek professionalism as priority #1? Price, or someone, should do the decent… Read more »
Leanne Wood does lots of community activism. Look at her various pages. They won a lot of extra councillors because of this.
Labour is firmly entrenched in Wales because the opposition to them is incompetent at best and colluding at worst (and that’s a criticism aimed at all the opposition parties here in Wales). It’s that’s simple. The staggering lack of objective thinking on display here contributes to this – Roger Scully’s recent blogspot of Plaid Cymru’s lack of progress on Elections in Wales highlights some of the problems. For God’s sake, listen to people who haven’t got a stake in the party and offer an objective view of the situation instead of living in a dreamworld. Leanne Wood’s exposure wasn’t down… Read more »
Jason having ttended a post summer constituency meeting with Plaid i cannot agree more with you. The situation on ground level is desperate. No branch system, no local campaigning on community issues that matter , no credible radical county council willing to turn its back on overdevelopment, unsustainable town developments, no challenging the orthodox or third sector gravy trains, no exposing corruption and policies detrimental to Wales, . Just keeping on carrying on and no recognition that their votes are eroding at a faster rate than glaciers in the alps. No social media campaigns to engage young potential voters. Just… Read more »
Keep to the truth. Neil McEvoy has NOT been found guilty of bullying staff by an independent tribunal. HE was found guilty of a ‘bullying’ comment whilst helping a constituent at court who the Cardiff labour council was evicting. A trumped up charge by labour opponents. Plaid should have stood up for him but instead allowed Bethan Jenkins to pillory him and stir up a storm with labour people in the press and social media. Obvious unedifying spectacle targeted at her ex partner. This made Plaid look ridiculous. She should have been suspended for that. The Plaid ‘in crowd’ can… Read more »
Dear Steve, like many others you seem to have jumped the gun. I am not aware of any investigation into me, so what is it? I have only read about complaints which were in the media about 8 months ago. If you know more than me, please enlighten me how you have come across your information. Thanks.
Thanks Lyn Thomas for your clear-sighted and incisive contribution – and for dispersing some of the shouting and bluster round the rather divisive figure of Neil McEvoy. You make the point that Labour has to some extent stolen PC’s clothes, in adopting ‘small n nationalist policies’. From a narrow party point of view this is annoying, but if we’re actually interested in policy and action in the real world it is rather to be welcomed. If PC is to demarcate itself from Labour it is surely, as Lyn puts it, by offering ‘a unique vision of a decentralised, humanist Wales.’… Read more »
The author, a Plaid councillor on Cyngor Gwynedd, seems to be labouring under the impression that all the party needs to do is “let Leanne be Leanne” and that allowing her radical message to come through unfilltered will regalvanise the members and convince the people of Wales to support Plaid. I’m afraid this is just wishful thinking. Unfortunately the harsh reality that must be faced is that Plaid are going nowhere fast under Leanne’s leadership. Any attempt to re-brand it in any shape or form is merely postponing the inevitable. As another contributor said, there is no doubt that Leanne… Read more »
One consequence of Mrs May’s surprise election in June is it may well be that sequence of Assembly election and Westminster election has been reversed. If so, the elections in Wales and Scotland are likely to receive heightened attention form the Labour and Conservatives in London as a trial run for what will for them the main event. There will be a squeeze on the non-Labour-non Conservative electoral pool. The challenge will be on for any Plaid Cymru or other Welsh based party leader. Arguably Jeremy Corbyn was politically shrewd in realising that not only might his leadership put off… Read more »
Steve, you have been diligent replying to comments from everyone else. Can you reply to mine please? How do you apparently know more than me about my disciplinary process? I know nothing officially, but gleam information from posts like yours. I was also able to tell a BBC journalist in my press Conference yesterday that he knew more than me.
Neil McEvoy. You’ve played well given your starting position as an ethnic minority man in Wales dislodged from Labour. But you have one obvious weakness from the unclear vantage point I have from a far having only you twice and once when you were unaware you were speaking to me. You don’t change your tactics, and you make whom your fighting far too obvious and clear to win against foes more inclined to deception-based weapons. In a chess tournament. When a player is a vicious attacker and throws his bishops out quickly and pushes his non-protecting pawns up at once… Read more »
The 6.40pm comment appears as my name and it is not me. Thanks and best wishes all.
I don’t understand how comment 6:40pm on October 18 in Neil McEvoy’s name was allowed to get past the moderators. It is clearly not him. It undermines the whole point of having moderators. Surely you can tell when Neil is commenting since you have his email address.
Unfortunately the comment system isn’t particularly sophisticated. By using the same name and email the comment system thought it was the same person and passed the comment without flagging it up for moderation. We hope to improve the comments system. – Ifan
Thanks for the explanation. I wish people would stop wasting your time by trolling the website, a few fools risk ruining what is turning into a rare & valuable platform where Welsh politics are discussed in detail.
It may be worth banning IP addresses of people who clearly won’t debate issues. It’s not fair on the people running this site that they have to deal with such things.
Hi Steve, interesting discussion you’ve got going here. My opinion is too many in our great little country have become anglicised either by over use of the London based media or by dilution of incomers. I personally find Plaid Cymru a little too liberal, especially down south. What we need is to target young, future voters that Wales is a vibrant country with enough about it to stand alone. Look at the natural resources we have, the renewable energy, farming, tourist trade. We already have an infrastructure in place which younger nations didn’t have before they became independent and have… Read more »
Plaid are an establishment party, they have either been in Government in Wales, been the official oppoisition or have had a deal with the Welsh Government. Scotland is also voting for establishment partries still (the SNP have been in Government in Scotland since 2007, hardly anti-establishment)
Brexit was an anti-establisment vote, for better or for worse.