To explain the title . . . Back in the 1960s and 1970s, when there was any talk of a Welsh Parliament, Home Rule, or devolution, one of the arguments used against the idea was that such a creation would just be “Glamorgan County Council on stilts“.
The implication being that other parts of Wales would be ignored. That investment, jobs and other goodies resulting from self-government would be concentrated in that area.
In this piece I’ll try to persuade you that what we’ve seen since 1999 is even worse.
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FIRST SECRETARY, FIRST MINISTER
I’m going to begin by looking at the first secretaries and first ministers we’ve had since the beginning of the devolution experiment.
The first, said to be Tony Blair’s choice, even “Blair’s poodle“, was Alun Michael. He was never very popular, either within the Labour party or the country at large, and was first secretary for just nine months, until May 2000.
A former Cardiff City councillor, he later served as Labour MP for Cardiff South and Penarth. Then Regional Assembly Member for Mid & West Wales. And PCC for South Wales.
Michael was replaced by the much more popular Rhodri Morgan. Who stayed in the first minister role until December 2009.
Cardiff-born Morgan was MP (until 2001 GE) and AM for Cardiff West from 1999.
Next came Carwyn Jones. Despite being born in Swansea, and practising law there for a number of years, he represented the Bridgend constituency. His Cardiff connection was established by being a tutor for a few years at Cardiff University.
I’ve said it many times on this blog, and I’ll say it again, Cardiff University is joined at the hip to the local Labour establishment. The School of Journalism should be renamed the School of Globalist-Left Propaganda.
Jones stood down as leader in December 2018. He now sits in the House of Lords as Baron Jones of Penybont.
He was succeeded by Mark Drakeford, a former South Glamorgan County councillor who became the Assembly Member for Cardiff West in the May 2011 elections.
Drakeford was born and raised in Carmarthenshire, but moved to Cardiff over 40 years ago. And was a lecturer at Cardiff University.
From 1985 to 1993, Drakeford represented the Pontcanna ward on South Glamorgan County Council, with fellow future Welsh Assembly members Jane Hutt and Jane Davidson as his ward colleagues.
(Jane Davidson was at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, Labour AM for Pontypridd (1999 – 2011), and wrote the Well-being of Future Generations legislation that enforces ESG and DEI in every aspect of Welsh life.)
Drakeford stood down as first minister in March 2024. He will not stand again in May.
Then came the brief tenure of his successor Vaughan Gething. After serving as councillor for the Butetown ward on Cardiff City Council he became the Senedd Member for Cardiff South & Penarth in 2011.
Gething is also standing down.
Gething was succeeded in August 2024 by the current incumbent, and former MEP, Eluned Morgan, the Regional Member for Mid & West Wales.
Born and raised in Cardiff she sits in the House of Lords as Baroness Morgan of Ely.
So we see a Cardiff connection with all first secretaries or first ministers Wales has known in 27 years of devolution. And with five out of the six a strong connection.
Given that Cardiff makes up some twelve per cent of Wales’ population, this statistic is truly remarkable. And should be concerning.
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SOME INTERESTING SENEDD MEMBERS
Beginning with Bridgend, where we find Sarah Murphy. Who was born and raised in Pontypridd then, after Reading University, worked in Seoul and London. She came back to Cardiff; held posts with the Labour party, and the University. More exactly, the School of Journalism.
Next, Cardiff Central. The patch of uber wealthy Jenny Rathbone since 2011. She’s a member of the Rathbone dynasty of Liverpool, where she was born. Her knowledge of Wales is on a par with that of a stay-at-home Eskimo. Limited to Cardiff and the area around her holiday home up in Llanfihangel Glyn Myfyr.
Hubby, John Uden, who knows as much about wind power as the heretofore mentioned Innuit knows of Wales, somehow managed to get on the ‘Welsh Advisory Board’ of Bute Energy. Which was handy, seeing as Mrs Uden sits on the Senedd’s Climate Change, Environment and Rural Affairs Committee.
She’s standing down in May. Her vacuous wittering will not be missed.
Cardiff North is where we find Julie Morgan, widow of Rhodri. Cardiff born and bred, she is a former South Glamorgan and Cardiff City councillor, and was elected to the Senedd in 2011 after losing the Westminster seat of Cardiff North in 2010.
She is also standing down.
Cardiff South & Penarth is held by former first minister, Vaughan Gething. (See above.)
Cardiff West is held by former first minister Mark Drakeford (See above.)
Cynon Valley brings up Vikki Howells, who was born and raised in the constituency, and attended Cardiff University.
The SM for Llanelli Lee Waters is definitely a member of the Corruption Bay in crowd. A former ITV Wales journalist, director of think tank IWA, then director-lobbyist for bike charity Sustrans, he’s the man responsible for the 20mph restrictions.
Despite being SM for a seat west of Swansea, he lives just outside Cardiff.
He’s standing down in May.
Now we head up to Merthyr where the local representative is Bristol City fan Dawn Bowden. Another Bay insider who worked her way up through union ranks but who knows as much about the Heads of the Valleys as the denizen of the frozen north I mentioned earlier.
But that doesn’t matter – she was promised a safe seat.
Which she’ll thankfully vacate in May.
Another carpet-bagger can be found in Pontypridd in the form of Mick Antoniw. He came to Wales to study at Cardiff University, and stayed. One of those who drove through the absurd and corrupt voting system we’ll be using in May.
Of Ukrainian descent, he’s made a number of very public trips there to deliver ‘aid’. If Wales was independent he’d want us to declare war on Russia.
Another one standing down.
A odd one now, in Julie James, SM for Swansea West. Odd, because even though she was born in Swansea, travelled around a lot in her early life, she was involved in the Gilestone farm saga before being elected to the Assembly in 2011. As a solicitor working against the then owners, which paved the way for the land to be bought by someone’s chosen buyer.
Also standing down.
Moving east to Torfaen, ‘though born in Merthyr, Lynn Neagle is definitely part of the Bay Bubble. Wife of former Labour AM Huw Lewis.
Neagle has worked for, “Shelter Cymru, Mind and the CAB. She was Carers Development Officer with Voluntary Action Cardiff and also worked as a researcher for Glenys Kinnock MEP“.
And, finally . . . Jane Hutt, who sits for the Vale of Glamorgan, is another who moved to Wales to involve herself in charities and third sector bodies: National Co-ordinator of Welsh Women’s Aid, South Glamorgan Women’s Workshop, Tenant Participation Advisory Service and Chwarae Teg (Fair Play) . . .
Thankfully, she’s also standing down.
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REGIONAL SENEDD MEMBERS
Due to winning so many seats in the south and the north east Labour has just three Regional SMs. One in the North. Here are the two from the Mid & West.
One of course, is Eluned Morgan, the current first minister. (See above.)
The other is Joyce Watson. And she may be unique among Labour SMs because her official bio says: “Joyce has run several small businesses – public houses, restaurants and retail outlets – in Ceredigion, Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire.”
But did she own them?
But even that ray of hope is dimmed by the usual charity/third sector involvement: “Joyce managed the Wales Women’s National Coalition . . . senior member of the Wales Gender Budget Group . . . NHS Equality Reference Group”.
Watson is another jumping the sinking ship of devolved politics in May.
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WHAT IT MEANS
Let’s start with a statistic. The population of Wales grew between the census years of 2001 and 2021 by 6.8%. In the same period Cardiff saw growth of 18.7%. According to some, Cardiff is now the fastest-growing city in the UK.
Most areas of Wales saw negligible growth, with some even recording a fall. Ceredigion, Blaenau Gwent and Gwynedd have declining, and ageing, populations; while Merthyr and a few other areas struggle to maintain their numbers.
Newport’s population increases steadily since charges on the Severn Bridge were abolished, which allowed buyers from England to access the cheaper housing in south east Wales and commute daily to Bristol, or even further. While in many rural areas population increase is due to retirees and good-lifers moving in.
But turning Newport into a Bristol suburb and rural areas into al fresco retirement homes is neither desirable nor sustainable.
Welsh life is increasingly focused in Cardiff, for the benefit of Cardiff. This can be explained by a number of factors. The first, quite obviously, is political power. Then there’s the third sector, charities, pressure groups, which both feed off and feed into the political system.
A political machine serviced by regiments of spads, assistants and researchers, whose loyalty can be guaranteed by the carrot of a council seat, or, for the very lucky – a seat in the Senedd.
But let’s not overlook other beneficiaries, such as those to be found among the movers and shakers of the local business community.
An example would be the Thomas brothers, of the pie and pasty dynasty. It’s universally accepted that the ‘Welsh Government’ paid way over the odds to buy Cardiff airport. But who was the vendor?
And who bought that criminally undervalued land on the outskirts of Cardiff?
In both cases the lucky boy was Stan Thomas. Hot pies all round!
If you want a fuller picture, read a couple of pieces I put out ten years ago. Pies, Planes & Property Development, and Pies, Planes & Property Development 2.
But it’s not just the Thomas brothers. There are others.
Then there’s sport. Through funding, the ‘Welsh Government’ effectively took control of the Football Association of Wales and the Welsh Rugby Union.
Which explains why, when Cardiff Rugby went bust the WRU stepped in to buy it. And why the most successful region, the Ospreys, based in Swansea, is threatened with extinction.
The last-but-one owner of Cardiff Rugby was the late Peter Thomas, Stan’s brother.
The clowns currently wrecking Welsh rugby are political appointees, and they’ve been told to prioritise the interests of Cardiff. To the detriment of Welsh rugby as a whole.
Finally, there’s the media. Based in Cardiff and little more than a mouthpiece for those I’ve described above.
And all the while, our economy and our essential services decline and decay.
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WHAT MIGHT THE FUTURE HOLD?
If polls are to be believed then Plaid Cymru will emerge in May with most SMs, but not a majority. This will mean Plaid going into coalition, or having an ‘agreement’, or an ‘understanding’, most likely with Labour, possibly with the Greens.
We might even see a ‘progressive’ alliance of all the Globalist-Woke parties. It really won’t make much difference. (But what a nightmare that could be!)
Now some might think that with so much of its support being in the west and the north Plaid Cymru will adopt a different approach. And there might be a few moves away from the obsessive focus on Cardiff, but Plaid would be no real improvement.
Because Plaid wants to take Wales further than Labour on ‘ishoos’ such as Net Zero, trans ‘rights’, DEI, Gaza, ‘Islamophobia’, and decolonising Welsh cakes. And faster down the road of economic implosion and civilisational decline.
Party leader Rhun ap Iorwerth may be the Senedd Member for Ynys Môn, the seat furthest from the Bay, but he’s a former BBC journalist. He was educated at Cardiff University and he’s lived in Cardiff.
And ap Iorwerth may be a figurehead; for many believe the party is still controlled by the acolytes of a previous leader, the PoundShop Pasionaria of Penygraig.
Whatever the outcome in May in party terms, it won’t make much difference. Plaid, Greens, Labour, Tories, Lib Dems, they’re all just differently-badged elements of the Globalist Uniparty. That’s why they repeatedly tell us the upcoming election is solely about defeating Reform.
Is it?
Then again, Labour might welcome a ‘break’. Shun any co-operation, then come back untainted and refreshed in 2031. Hoping electors will have forgotten their record in the Senedd.
And who might lead the Labour comeback? If I was a betting man I’d put a few quid on Huw Thomas. If you’ve never heard of him, let me introduce him.
He’s 41 years old and from Aberystwyth, he’s bilingual, and he’s been leader of Cardiff Council for nearly 10 years. In May, he’s top of the Labour list for the Caerdydd Penarth constituency.
He’s guaranteed to be elected because Cardiff is an area where Labour will do well.
UPDATE: Soon after posting this article at 9am I went to Tywyn, picked up a Western Mail, read it while having my first coffee of the day. In this article Huw Thomas gets a mighty plug.
If it comes to pass as I predict, and Labour gets back into power in 2031, under his leadership, then everything will revert to the status quo ante Plaid, with Cardiff grabbing the lion’s share of investment and jobs.
Which, to respectfully amend Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, will mean a return to: Government of Wales, by Cardiff, for Cardiff.
♦ end ♦
© Royston Jones 2026
It needs to be rammed home like the fucking clappers, that the Senedd is an arm of the British government. As I’ve said before, it’s almost as if the shit show was designed from the ground up to explicitly put people off full-on independence. We need to break the idea of that perceived continuum. Gwlad, hopefully, can, by presenting a real alternative to the chromosome-bereft of Reform.
I would abolish the Senedd and say to the people: ‘Right, we know devolution don’t work, so it’s independence or permanent London-Brussels rule. Make your choice’.
Yes, with a definite emphasis on how devolution didn’t work because it was a Westminster project from the start. I can imagine a graphic, one of those of that style with a quote and the quoted’s mug on it: “Power devolved is power retained”. I never realised it was Enoch Powell who first said that till I just looked it up now, funnily enough.
Remember that in Scotland, where devolution was made to work, it very nearly led to independence in the 2014 referendum. But the SNP government was led by Alex Salmond, who knew a bit about how the world worked, he’d been in the oil industry for years and he knew that Scotland could be like Norway with independence.
But then came the contrived ‘scandals’, the rise of Sturgeon, and the takeover of the party by the same kind of lunatics we see in the Senedd. People with no background in, or experience of, the real world. Playing student politics. Sturgeon eventually brought down by insisting that a double rapist be put in a women’s prison because he wore an ill-fitting wig. (The news about hubby dipping into the party piggy-bank came later.)
If I was a conspiracy theorist I could see the fall of Salmond and the rise of Sturgeon being externally controlled to thwart Scottish independence.
I’ve thought as much myself. What a stupid hill to die on – so incredibly tone deaf it seemingly could only be contrived as a definite plan to annoy and repel as many as possible.
We live in the age when of people getting to decide far too much for themselves. The logical next step of absurdity must surely be people being able to decide their net worth. I’m reminded of what the fat prick who barred me from Bangor Wetherspoons for ‘racism’ said at the time, that it’s apparently up to the ‘victim’ to decide what is or isn’t racist.
This kind of subjectivist, kangaroo court bollocks way of thinking isn’t normally espoused by your common or garden chief microwave monger in a budget chain pub kitchen. It must have come from on high, delivered to management staff as the received wisdom of today’s society in ‘re-training’ seminars, delivered by some sanctimonious, gravy train-riding twat.
I’m a blow in. I studied at University College of Cardiff and eventually met and married my Welshman. We often say how sad and run down Cardiff is compared to when we were students. Even when I returned to Cardiff in the early 90s when there was a distinct buzz and optimism. Now nothing much. We both wonder where all the work is in the area that the huge housing estates are being built to accommodate the workers. Perhaps it is just building the houses. The Senedd is a huge drain and hasn’t done a thing for Wales and I think it’s only going to get worse with the new voting arrangements that have been put in place.
If you think Cardiff’s run down you should travel up the Valleys.
We go up the Valleys often, as my BB is a Valleys Boy. Valleys people are great, but have they been really let down big time.
dont get me started. My husband was in hospital on Saturday for a biopsy. Admitted at 10am and no food except a slice of toast! and discharaged at 4pm. So that is basically almost 24 hours without food!!…disgrace…and this wont change and neither will the Welsh Govt and neither will Plaid or the Greens make any difference. Conservatives are dead in the water and as for Reform. No comment. So tbh being doom and gloom…oh and there was no reason why he could not have had food post op..my parents from S Wales both said it would be jobs for the boys in Cardiff and their words were never so true..nuff said.
Devolution has created a political system and a political class that’s divorced from the real world and incapable of improving it. Most of the time they’re just playing games amongst themselves.
Exactly but its got a lot lot worse. Drakeford should be ashamed of himself slowly closing down Haverford West, Withybush Hospital by slow death since he was health minister and now no more emergency care so he will cause people pain, suffering and death….The blessed Wgov promised a hospital near Witland on the Pembs Carms border…never to happen was announced last year…dreadful…
That new hospital may have figured again in the “ghost list” of goodies offered up by the blessed Eluned yesterday in a limpwristed attempt to regain the affections of the Welsh electorate. And a relief road for the M4 round Newport. By the time they finish building those effin’ things, if ever, we’ll be banned from travelling by road anywhere and if you are sick you’ll have to treat yerself at home. Rock on, viva the revolution. I feel the same love for the Bay regime that old hillbillies in remote bits of Iran feel towards the recently departed Ayatollah.
Lol…priceless….a new hospital at the Alexandra in Rhyl or regeneration of it has currently been offered but I dont think ppl are falling for it. There was a conversation with the AM about it on fb. Most ppl werent taken in as care at Glan Clwyd falls into the abyss there as it does at the Maelor..you couldnt make it up…so I have started watching Fringe again…haha…and thinking how different 2008 was even with the American created Crash.
I believe Eluned did mention that the new hospital would take 10 years to plan. It’s been talked about for the last 10 years. I think we are heading for AI generated robo-doc, that will diagnose the problem in seconds and deliver your prescription by drone to your doorstep.
But vote for them in May and they’ll make it a priority. Honest!
That “honesty” is their only attribute, perhaps their only one! Now for the defects …..I just don’t have enough time to list them.
Life’s too short.