Yesterday’s announcement from Whitehall that HS2 would proceed – at an estimated cost now of £100bn, a figure that seems likely to rise substantially – has opened a wide fault-line about the future of Wales and Welsh devolution. As Plaid Cymru MP Jonathan Edwards argues persuasively in a piece in Nation Cymru, the issues for […]
Tag Archives: devolution
Among the twenty-four inscriptions that line the walls of the Scottish Parliament, one – attributed to Alasdair Gray but, as he freely admitted, borrowed from the Canadian poet Dennis Lee, seems hugely apposite to the position of we in Wales who still have faith in progressive politics: “Work as if you live in the early […]
During the Welsh Labour leadership election last year, the victorious candidate, Mark Drakeford – an early supporter of Jeremy Corbyn and with a campaign largely organised by the Corbynist Welsh Labour Grassroots, which styles itself as the voice of Momentum in Wales – argued that Labour in Wales needed to support and trust Jeremy Corbyn. […]
With ballot papers about to arrive for the Welsh Labour leadership election, it’s been a time to think about what sort of Labour Party and indeed what sort of Wales I want to see in the years ahead. Carwyn Jones will be an enormously difficult act to follow; thankfully, in this election Welsh Labour members […]
Last night, at Cardiff University, Welsh Labour leadership candidate and current Cabinet Secretary for Finance Mark Drakeford set out his vision of twenty-first century socialism. This was not a typical hustings speech but an intellectually-serious lecture in which he explained the guiding principles that he would follow if elected as First Minister. He began by […]
Last night saw the first in a series of hustings debates between the three candidates for the Welsh Labour leadership – Mark Drakeford, Vaughan Gething and Eluned Morgan. Held in Cardiff, it was a well-attended, passionate, constructive debate that showed that there are clear choices in front of Welsh Labour members when the ballot papers […]
Yesterday, Westminster Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn came to Wales to address a meeting in Tredegar commemorating the 70th anniversary of the NHS. He also addressed a meeting in Barry, and later issued the following tweet: There are, of course, two problems with this. First, the Tories don’t run the NHS in Wales. It’s run by […]
Prime Minister Theresa May has made it clear that she intends to trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, giving the UK’s formal notice that it will leave the EU, by the end of March 2017. How that process happens depends on a case in the Supreme Court, whose verdict is expected shortly; it will […]
Following the rejection of Scottish independence in yesterday’s referendum, David Cameron immediately announced his decision to set up a review to ensure that Scottish MPs could not vote on English affairs – presenting this as a constitutional change that would result in a “fair and balanced” settlement – and expressed a hope that this would […]
So Scotland voted to stay with the Union – the silent “no” vote giving a bigger “no” majority than once seemed likely, on the back of a huge turnout. Immediately, David Cameron appears before the cameras to start talking about English devolution, calling for a cross-party consensus. For the British political establishment, this has been […]
Notes from a Broken Society 