Wales for Sale

Ben Wildsmith

A tiresome feature of the last few years has been Elon Musk fanboys assuming an air of patronising superiority as they regurgitate their hero’s utterances on life, the universe, and pronouns.

Muskphilia, along with enthusiasm for crypto currencies and misogynism are the defining characteristics of a 21st century bore.

Their worldview, buttressed by Musk’s X account and Jordan Peterson’s incel-friendly self-helpisms represents a toxic conformity to the economic status quo. In a nutshell, nothing will ever change so here’s how to game the system.

It is a pyramid scheme rebranded as political philosophy. Andew Tate offers a similar enterprise with added slavery.

Chuckle 

Not long ago, we could afford to chuckle at much of this. Most of the people espousing this stuff were simply in need of a girlfriend to make them trade in their Audi A1 for something less embarrassing.

It wasn’t big or clever. It still isn’t but, somehow, we now find the future of the UK, and Wales specifically, to be wrapped up in the kaleidoscopic fantasies of Musk and Donald Trump.

We are, you see, in the eye of the storm. It is difficult to imagine where in the world the UK can look for friends. Having trashed our relationship with the EU, we have been the most bellicose supporters of Ukraine against Russia and been ham-fistedly supportive of Israel in Gaza to the detriment of other relationships in the region.

That position might have found some love in the Biden Whitehouse but leaves us out on a limb if Trump comes to terms with Putin and ends the war.

The UK, with its newly elected pseudo-left government seems out of step not only with the USA but continental Europe.

Anomaly

With Germany and France seeming likely to follow Austria, the Netherlands, Hungary, and Italy in rewarding populist right-wingers in elections, Keir Starmer’s administration could soon look like an anomaly from the past.

Labour’s majority belies its vulnerability to organised attacks. The party was elected on a manifesto so vague as to be worthless.

Reform UK split the Tory vote which was, in any case, at its lowest ever ebb in terms of motivation. So, the party’s thumping majority arrived without public enthusiasm for its policy, as there was so little, and despite voters being lukewarm about its personalities.

Labour’s best hope was to be bold quickly. Voters are unanimous about the state of public services and robust intervention on these would have looked like a new start.

If Rachel Reeves was going to mount a pantomime of ‘opening the books’ and finding a nasty surprise, she could have used it to levy a wealth tax and do what people expect of Labour governments.

Instead, she retreated further into austerity and Labour’s shallow pool of public enthusiasm evaporated yet further.

First-past-the-post

The distortion of the public vote by the first-past-the-post system has been a running sore in UK politics for decades. Criticism of it has focussed on the unfairness of the system as it applies to poorly represented voters.

We are now finding out that our democratic dysfunction was a national security problem that could be exploited by foreign actors.

Elon Musk’s obsession with Keir Starmer’s unremarkable UK government is best explained in relation to this vulnerability.

If governments are elected against the true sentiments of the population, they do not command loyalty and that is an invitation for antidemocratic forces to step in.

Musk’s problem with the UK government is not over ideology, it barely has one. He has targeted it because it is built on sand, and its removal would be a lesson to governments the world over that a new order is at hand.

The Senedd elections in 2026 will be, I caution you, a wild ride. If Labour is vulnerable to the manipulation of public opinion in England, its position here is parlous.

How, in a de facto one-party state where living standards decline as a matter of accepted course can the party defend itself against a lavishly financed attack on the status quo?

Now that there are no Tories in Westminster to blame for our ills, how will Labour explain the imposition of austerity that we are all suffering in our communities?

Onslaught

The hopes of many of us will lie with Plaid Cymru but how can they counter the onslaught of information that a Musk-backed Reform UK campaign will bring?

The capture of the Senedd would be a signal victory for the forces gathering on the global right. It would split the UK asunder in ways that independence campaigners never imagined.

Cymru, for once, is going to be internationally prized and that will come with moral choices for us all.

If Tesla factories with well-paid jobs were promised, for instance, would people look at a Labour/Plaid coalition as sufficient compensation for refusing them?

Perhaps, in an outbreak of common sense and decency, Labour in Westminster might offer its own inducements for the most loyal voters it has ever had.

As the old way of doing things unravels at pace, all is possible.