How can people without capital be expected to believe in capitalism? This is the challenge of our age, as ‘own nothing and be happy’ hardens into a new dividing line in Western politics. Westminster risks ignoring the emerging political economy of housing, even as public anger grows. Green Party leader Zack Polanski is already courting […]
The news from Gwynedd arrives heralded by a certain, perhaps premature, parochial, nationalist, triumphalism: house prices, it is proclaimed, have succumbed to the local council’s campaign against second homes, plummeting by a seemingly significant margin. To some eyes, this may appear a vindication of local prerogative, a victory for affordability wrested from the grasp of […]
What comes to mind when you think of Wales? You might think of men’s choirs, daffodils or warm pints of Brains Bitter. What you probably don’t associate with the land of the red dragon is the scourge of racist buildings. You bigot. This is a serious problem. An issue of such importance in fact that […]
After causing a long period of political paralysis, the body politic that is Labour in Wales has convulsed, excising the First Minister. Vaughan Gething is finally going, having lasted just four months. However, his exit was very long overdue. After accepting a £200,000 donation from a convicted criminal, after sacking a minister for leaking a […]
Lord Whitelaw, Margaret Thatcher’s loyal deputy, once denounced those who ‘went around the country stirring up apathy’. Sir Keir Starmer has been brilliantly effective at stirring up apathy. ‘This isn’t just rhetoric,’ he declared in his speech to the Resolution Foundation this week. Rhetoric? If only. The turgid flow of banalities delivered in a whining […]
Can Britain hit its ambitious climate targets and keep building new roads? The Welsh Government do not think so. In February, they scrapped all their major road-building projects on the grounds they would make it harder to reach Net Zero. Technically, they haven’t banned roadbuilding, but the conditions that any new road project must now […]
‘Reckless’ and ‘cavalier’. This is how the Welsh Conservatives’ are being characterised by Labour and Plaid Cymru members for saying that it’s time to follow England’s example and learn to live with coronavirus. There has been a lot of criticism directed at those who have said we are reaching the point where the country needs […]
In June last year Labour’s then-economy minister, Ken Skates, appeared before the Welsh Affairs Select Committee at Westminster to talk about the economy in Wales and Covid-19. During questioning by my colleague, Aberconwy MP Robin Millar, Ken – a much liked man in Cardiff Bay – discussed business support during the pandemic but was also […]
Back in 1946 Aneurin Bevan legislated for a National Health Service organised on the principle that when a “bedpan is dropped in a hospital corridor in Tredegar, the reverberations should echo around Whitehall”. Central government would deliver universal healthcare on the basis of need, not geography. This is what the Welshman meant when he pledged […]
Plaid Cymru have a new leader and he’s been committing news, from demanding a focus again on independence, to demanding an end to Brexit. But as neither of those are going to happen, let’s look instead at one of their particular bugbears: the Welsh language. I grew up on the border between north-east Wales and […]
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