Tag: Jane Dodds

Senedd Elections 2026: Picking Through The Bones

On By JacIn Conservative and Unionist Party, Greens, Plaid Cymru, Reform, Senedd, Welsh Labour43 Comments

Where to start? A truly momentous result. But will it make much difference? Join me as I ramble through the results.

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THE VOTING SYSTEM

Let’s start with the widespread and growing feeling that the party list system, in 16 vast constituencies, was a mistake, and one that must not be repeated. But how did we end up with this monstrosity?

It started well enough, in February 2017, when the self-styled ‘Welsh Government’ appointed an ‘expert panel’ of academics to look into various electoral systems and come up with recommendations. Which the panel did. But Labour (possibly also Plaid Cymru) didn’t like those recommendations.

The panel favoured the Single Transferable Vote (STV) system. And it specifically rejected the system used last Thursday. In this piece I put out a couple of years ago, I wrote:

On page 128 of the report we read the ‘closed list proportional representation’ system was rejected. It’s ‘weakness’ spelled out as, “No choice for voters between individual candidates. No accountability for individual Members directly to voters.”

Through a series of further – more political – groups, we arrived at the abomination forced on us last week. Based on the understanding that Labour would be the biggest party, with less than 40% of the vote in a low turnout, propped up by Plaid Cymru.

To put that into context: In 2016 Labour won 30 out of the 60 seats with 34.7% of the vote. Plaid Cymru came third with 11 seats and 20.5%. The turnout was 45.3%.

Never was it imagined that Labour would finish many lengths behind in third.

But it’s happened; and now Plaid Cymru needs to promise something better before the elections of 2031. With Wales now having 32 Westminster constituencies one obvious option is to elect three Members from each.

A simple system that would mean:

1/ Parties putting up three candidates in each constituency. Giving each party a total of 96, the same as we had on May 7.

2/ This  system would be far more representative in that it would allow voters to pick and choose from candidates. Even vote for three different parties 1, 2, 3.

3/ It would be fairer for smaller parties and independent candidates.

But will Plaid Cymru want to change the system that gave them victory, at last?

◊

PLAID CYMRU, REFORM, ALSO-RANS

Not for nothing do people say of me: “That bloke’s no curmudgeon“, and now I’m going to prove it . . . without getting carried away, you understand.

The victory last Thursday eclipsed everything Plaid Cymru has achieved in its century-long existence. Without wishing to sound ungracious, I believe Plaid did so well, in part, from negative voting. Because much of the Plaid vote was against other parties.

There’s an irony here. In campaigning ahead of the election Labour and the rest of the ‘progressive’ parties urged us to vote against Reform; but Labour didn’t appreciate just how many people also wanted to vote against them.

Now if people decide to vote against Reform and Labour – where they gonna go?

This can be seen in my home city. Swansea has been a wasteland for Plaid for decades; no councillors, hardly any presence whatsoever. Yet in the Gŵyr Abertawe constituency, corresponding roughly with the old seats of Swansea West and Gower, Plaid Cymru won 3 of the 6 seats, but with just 31.9% of the vote.

Another factor in the Swansea results was the feeling that the city has been short-changed by Cardiff-obsessed Labour governments in Corruption Bay. I’ll return to this aspect of the picture later, when I address what Plaid should do to live up to the hopes of those who voted for the party.

Especially those who voted Plaid for the first time. Hoping for real change.

It might be worth mentioning that of the Plaid intake 27 are women and just 16 are men. Plaid has been pushing ‘equality’ for a long time, but it appears they might have gone too far.

For as George Orwell warned us in 1984:

It was always the women, and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies and nosers-out of unorthodoxy.

Substitute Globalist-Woke agenda for Party.

Reform UK could have done better. Had they remembered this was an election in Wales, to the Senedd. Not a lot to ask, you might think. But it seems to have been too much for Reform. And many of their candidates.

What Reform offered was the usual England/UK spiel with a few unconvincing tweaks, offered by candidates many of whom seemed unsure where they were.

And yet, Reform got a good vote with 29.3%, and 34 of their candidates elected. With a better campaign Reform might have come out on top. If nothing else, the vote for Reform reminds us that we’re in uncharted territory.

And nothing shows this change more than the collapse of Labour’s vote. But this was long overdue. For too long Labour relied on the ‘hereditary’ vote in post-industrial and urban areas. Appeals to remember Nye Bevan and other emotive distractions from the embarrassing reality of modern Wales.

Throw in ‘Two-tier Keir’, and 27 years of failure from the Bay, and maybe Labour should be thankful they got 11.1% of the vote and 9 seats.

The Conservatives were almost squeezed out of the debate, and this wasn’t helped by the party’s woeful recent performance in Westminster. That said, 10.7% and 7 seats is not to be sniffed at. Just 0.4% behind Labour.

Reminding us that the Tory vote may be low, but it’s always there. Had things worked out differently they could have come third and been the junior partner in a coalition. That may be stretching it a bit, but an arrangement of some sort might have been agreed with Reform.

A month ago the Greens looked set for 7 or 8 seats, but recent revelations about the leader and some of his cronies put paid to those hopes. It’s all very well being weird, but when you’re weird and dangerous, then people will turn away.

The Lib Dems got their one seat with Jane Dodds in that ‘camel’ of a constituency, Brycheiniog Tawe Nedd. Nationally, they managed 4.5% of the vote.

I won’t dwell on the minor parties and independent candidates except to show you this from the Welsh Communist Party statement. It was put out after the election. I show it because it tells us what’s wrong with Wales. (I didn’t know we had a Welsh Communist Party!)

“Fair, green and socialist Wales“. . . “progressive coalition between Plaid Cymru and Welsh Labour” . . . “extra-parliamentary pressure“.

In other words, more of the same. Too many thinking that way explains why Wales is in the mess she’s in.

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OUT WITH THE OLD, IN WITH THE NEW?

Plaid Cymru has a golden opportunity – and a popular mandate – to put right the mistakes of the past 27 years.

For the first time Plaid can genuinely claim to be ‘The Party of Wales’, for it now has a better geographical spread in its support than Labour ever enjoyed, having been confined to the south (east of Llanelli) and the north east.

As I mentioned earlier, many in the Swansea area voted Plaid because they feel the city has been neglected by Labour administrations in Cardiff. This feeling is not confined to the city of my dreams.

Because administrations in the Bay have behaved as if they were an extension of Cardiff council. I pointed out a few months ago that five (of six) first ministers had served on the city council. (Carwyn Jones is the only exception.)

The leader of Cardiff’s Labour-controlled council, Huw Thomas, was elected last Thursday, the party’s only successful candidate in Caerdydd Penarth. No doubt he’s being lined up for bigger things. Or he was.

Remembering that they sit in Senedd Cymru not Senedd Caerdydd will be a big test for Plaid Cymru. But it’s essential.

On one of the post-election programmes former Plaid leader Dafydd Wigley was asked what the party should focus on in power. His answer was short and simple: “Economy, economy, economy“.

And as BusinessNewsWales reported on the Monday following the election:

‘Joshua Miles, Head of Wales at the Federation of Small Businesses calls on the new Welsh Government to provide “a clear economic strategy, with achievable targets and genuine accountability”.’

‘Russell Greenslade, Director, CBI Wales, also called on the new government to focus on partnership working, including with business.’

If Plaid Cymru is to honestly focus on building up the Welsh economy then they’d have the support of other parties. Certainly Reform. Or would they reject that to stay on the same path of failure with their soul-mates in Labour and Greens?

In her powerful farewell speech outgoing first minister Eluned Morgan faced her Ceausescu moment by arguing that Labour needs to re-connect with the working class. This is the working class that relies mainly on jobs provided by the business sector.

We need to go back to being the party of the working-class. We need the Labour Government nationally to change course. We need the wealth of this nation to be more equally distributed away from the South East.

Though working with business would be unpalatable to many in ‘progressive’ parties who have neither experience nor knowledge of real world economics. Worse, many believe job provision should be the preserve of the state, local councils, third sector, and nationalised industries.

With workers ‘represented’ by trade unions answerable to the state.

But the real obstacle to fulfilling Eluned Morgan’s vision is that the Labour party, like socialist parties elsewhere in the West, lost a large component of working class support through net zero costing jobs and raising bills; then further alienated the toiling masses with open borders, CRT, self-ID, and all the other ishoos from the Student Activist Toolkit™.

Fundamentally, Plaid needs to distance itself from all the things Labour did wrong.

One worth mentioning is the obsession with Wales saving the planet single-handed which, in practice, meant allowing windfarms and solar complexes, BESSs and pylons just about everywhere, all to benefit foreign companies providing no jobs.

Plaid talks the talk on community ownership of renewable energy projects. Give it a go; but to walk the walk community projects must be more than vehicles for activists to push their political hang-ups and soapboxes for enviro-nut good lifers.

Oh yeah, and make sure there’s a reliable backup supply.

◊

DR DAF GETS ON HIS BIKE

So will Plaid Cymru be an improvement?

Worth asking because Plaid may be more Woke than Labour; and even more in hock to the pressure groups, the lobbyists, and the single-issue fanatics.

Too many of Plaid’s intake view business – and the jobs it provides – as the capitalist enemy. Of the 43 Plaid SMs I doubt if more than a handful have experience of the real world economy.

Telling me that Plaid will follow the same disastrous path as Labour, forcing on us unpopular policies dictated by pressure groups. One such policy will be the war on private transport and the undesirable freedom it gives individuals.

As I pointed out in my previous piece Who Ya Gonna Vote For? Labour SM Lee Waters had worked for cycle group Sustrans (now Walk Wheel Cycle Trust), and he was the driving force behind 20mph speed limits, even on rural A roads.

Waters stood down last week, but he has a successor in newly-elected Plaid SM for Caerdydd Ffynnon Taf, Dr Dafydd Trystan Davies. And it didn’t happen yesterday.

And what a performance Dr Daf put on in his acceptance speech! He talked of the climate emergency, and he promised to go everywhere by bike, train, bus, or else he’d walk. But if it was pouring down and the bus didn’t turn up then he might resort to a car – but he’d record it so everybody would know what a good boy he is.

I’m sure most of the 151,198 registered voters in his constituency wanted to hear something better, hope for the future; but all they got was this sanctimonious little bugger telling them nothing is going to change.

And let’s remember that much of Plaid’s support is still in rural areas. Where there are few trains, sparse bus services, and ageing populations; so how will “on yer bike” be received?

Bad enough; but the whole concept of ‘Active Travel’ has been an expensive failure.

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CONCLUSION: PLUS ÇA CHANGE, PLUS C’EST LA MÊME CHOSE

Devolution has failed Wales because for 27 years Labour, either alone or in alliance with Plaid or Lib Dems, has ignored the economy, the NHS, and the real needs of the people. Choosing instead to play student politics; making gestures and taking ‘positions’.

Jo Stevens MP for Cardiff East and Labour’s Secretary of State for Wales, agrees. She also agrees with me that, “Plaid’s victory in this Senedd election was not a reflection of nationalist fervour or a genuine enthusiasm for independence. It was a rebuke of our own performance and a vote to stop Reform in Wales.”

IMAGE: @20NPHartleyHare

Those responsible for Labour being ‘distracted’, and the only ones to benefit from it, have been gangs of swivel-eyed activists. The “extra-parliamentary pressure” demanded by the Welsh Communist Party.

In the process, this failure created, and is now perpetuated by, a new political class that Djilas would have recognised. Members of this class were brainwashed in school and university. They then got jobs as spads and advisors to politicians. Or they joined lobbying outfits and pressure groups. Maybe they worked in the third sector and for other bodies reliant on the public purse. Some became ‘journalists’.

This political caste, this New Class, is increasingly distanced from the people, and is now entrenched. It’s become generational. It’s self-perpetuating. And it’s concentrated on the left. A very real threat to representative democracy.

Plaid Cymru won because people want change. But if Trystan Davies is any guide they’ll be disappointed, as Plaid will make the same mistakes Labour made.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2026

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Who Ya Gonna Vote For?

On By JacIn Conservative and Unionist Party, Corruption Bay, Devolution, Elections, Globalism, Greens, Gwlad, Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru, Reform, Scotland, Senedd, Welsh Government, Welsh Independence, Welsh Labour52 Comments

Well, we’re almost there. Thank God! Because this has been the most uninspiring and negative election in the history of devolution.

Never have so many deadbeats, activists posing as ‘journalists’, party hacks, and nut-jobs, wasted their time trying to rouse a people who’ve just lost interest.

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RUNNERS AND RIDERS IN HEAVY GOING

This election was doomed to be uninspiring and confusing once Labour rigged the voting system. (Almost certainly with the connivance of Plaid Cymru.) It’s a party list system that no one understands, contested in 16 vast and insane constituencies.

An affront to democracy.

I detailed the various stages of the process just over two years ago in Senedd Cymru (Electoral Candidate Lists) Bill, explaining how better and fairer voting systems were rejected in order to arrive at today’s abomination.

For one thing, it’s designed to make life as difficult as possible for smaller parties and independent candidates. Jac Larner of Cardiff University calculates the system imposes a threshold of 14% before a party can hope to win a seat.

Given the quality of the debate, and the paucity of credible candidates, the election has been uninspiring. But this is to be expected. If a Senedd of just 60 Members attracts only people who’d struggle to run a stall at a village fete, what hope is there of improving the quality when the numbers are increased by over 50%?

And this couples with the negativity I also referred to in the intro. The Globalist Uniparty, the self-styled ‘progressives’, Labour, Plaid Cymru, Greens, Lib Dems, have had little to say beyond – Stop Reform!

There has been nothing positive on offer. Certainly no inspiring vision for the future. But this is only to be expected. Because with the exception of the Greens these are the parties that have failed Wales for 27 years of devolution.

Adding the Greens to the mix – and a potential coalition with Plaid – only offers something worse. While the other components of the Uniparty promise more of the same, the Greens want to double down on the mistakes of the past 27 years, and force on us new ones.

It’s also been a very ‘British’ campaign in that Welsh issues have been crowded out. For the London media has tended to lump the Senedd elections in with the Scottish Parliament and English local authority elections.

Their focus has been London-centric in debating whether Starmer will survive bad results “across the UK“. Treating May 7 almost as a general election, or a vote of confidence in the Labour party in Westminster.

And yet, this neglect of Welsh issues serves the interests of some parties. Plaid Cymru, for example, can blame Labour for the mess Wales is in, while claiming a vote for them is also a vote against the most unpopular PM ever.

Ironically, this is Labour’s old election tactic of urging punters to, “Send a message to London“. Which is what many will be doing, but now it’s working against Labour.

Reform can neglect Wales to focus on the issues that figure with the mainstream media and social media; small boat migrants, net zero, anti-Semitism, high taxes, benefit payments, knife crime, etc. Giving out mixed messages about their attitude towards devolution doesn’t do them any harm either.

The Greens have the advantage of being an unknown quantity, something different. But the Greens are universally and correctly described as ‘the Watermelon Party’. Green on the outside, red on the inside. And now attracting Islamist support.

Plaid Cymru has also been dipping its toe in that toxic oasis pool for some years. Though I’m not sure Mrs Evans in Pencader will take kindly to being told she has to wear a hijab to Capel Sion or else be branded Islamophobic.

As for the Lib Dems, does anybody know what they offer? In Wales it’s that strange Jane Dodds, with the party led at UK level by Ed Davey, who backed the Post Office in persecuting postmasters when UK Postal Affairs Minister from 2010 to 2012.

In short, and Reform excepted, various forms of that curious beast, 21st century Western left-liberalism divorced from any concerns for the once-idolised working class.

Offering socialism that can only run an economy for as long as other people’s money lasts or – as we’re now learning from Minnesota and elsewhere in the USA – if it can tap in to official funding which taxpayers thought was being properly used.

Few issues lay bare the deceit and duplicity more clearly than race. Here are a couple more things I picked up over the past week on X.

On the left we have Plaid Cymru dreaming of a multicultural Wales in which it seems white people are a minority. On the right, someone claiming that “Cymru belongs to us, not Reform“.

Now I don’t know Siân Parry, so I can’t say for sure that she’s a Plaid supporter, but she’s certainly on the political left. But what is she trying to say? Come to that, what is Plaid Cymru trying to say? Let’s attempt a synthesis.

An illegal immigrant can be Welsh; but someone who is Welsh to their core, speaks the language fluently, ceases to be Welsh – if they support Reform?

How insane, and offensive, that is. And all in the service of some transitory Woke nonsense. But too many put socialist dogma and childish obsessions above the interests of Wales.

To continue down this path Plaid risks becoming a full-blown anti-Welsh party.

For that’s the course it seems to have charted, with a Gwynedd councillor suspended for not appreciating that the false god of inclusivity is more important than the Welsh language and the community he was elected to represent.

So sod the Uniparty. And with Reform increasingly looking like controlled opposition, I’d avoid them too.

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STUDENT POLITICS AND DYING BIRDS

Twenty-seven years of virtue-signalling, ineptitude, and failure have taken their inevitable toll.

It’s an uphill task for those who’ve run devolution for 27 years to persuade people to forget about bills and hospital appointments, and instead take pride in Wales being the first country to declare a climate emergency, the first to have a Future Generations Commissioner, and to remember that Wales is working to be Anti-racist by 2030.

It’s student politics. And it’s explained very well by a young man named Owain Williams, whose one-minute video I stumbled upon last week.

When I saw “Confederacy” my heart soared!

Now student politics is all very well in its place, but the real world is not that place.

Digression alert!

There’s a little quote from Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man that was popular with the left in my younger days. Paine was responding to Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France, in which Burke floridly defended the Ancien Régime. (But still a great read!)

Paine condemned Burke for being more concerned with the pomp of Versailles than with the wretchedness of most French people. It was a radical responding to a conservative, telling him to ignore the ephemeral and focus on the realities.

Paine wrote: “We pity the plumage, but forget the dying bird“.

We can turn this on its head in 21st century Wales; for here it’s the radicals, the progressives, who obsess over the plumage, the ephemeral. But who ignore the dying bird, Wales.

And things won’t get better if we let Plaid Cymru take over. For Plaid, either alone or in alliance with their new wobble-headed pals in the Greens, will only push us harder and faster down Disaster Road.

But on the plus side . . . breast enlargement will be available on the NHS from fully-trained tit whisperers, all accredited by the Zack Polanski School of Woo-Woo.

Let’s be honest, devolution has been a disaster for Wales, and so replacing one bunch of bullshitters with another won’t make a bit of difference. And people know it. This piece from last week’s Western Mail says it all.

“A majority of voters in Wales are either indifferent to devolution or opposed to it . . . only 27 per cent of those asked said they supported devolution“. A majority of those polled couldn’t name the first minister.

But what do you expect after 27 years of failure that has alienated people from the whole idea of devolution, and they see no hope of improvement?

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IS DEVOLUTION EVEN DEMOCRATIC?

A fundamental problem of devolution, and the main reason for being subjected to policies for which there is little public support is the hangers-on, the influencers, the pressure groups, the lobbyists, that attach themselves to the politicians, to by-pass and subvert the democratic process.

You vote for a party that promised this that and t’other but you end up suffering legislation that was never in the manifesto and on which you were never consulted.

That’s because most of the Uniparty members in the Senedd went into politics to promote their pet ishoos rather than represent the constituency for which they were elected. Many came from charities, pressure groups, and lobbying organisations.

The aptly-named ‘Swamp’.

Take Lee Waters. Ostensibly the Labour Senedd Member for Llanelli (though he actually lives in Penarth). Waters had worked for cycling charity Sustrans (renamed Walk Wheel Cycle Trust), and was instrumental in bringing in the 20mph legislation.

There was a petition opposing 20mph that raised almost 470,000 signatures – but the self-styled ‘Welsh Government’ ignored it.

While other petitions, with little support, result in legislation – because the issue promoted lines up with the Uniparty agenda. You even get your photo took with some gurning politico in a presentation ceremony!

On the left in the image below is Mike Hedges, Labour SM for Swansea East; on the right, Natalie Buttriss, who’s represented a number of bodies trying to grab Welsh land under various ‘save the planet’/’biodiversity’ guises.

Red carpet treatment – and a chance to meet Mike Hedges! – for just 2,385 signatures!

That’s democracy, folks; the Voice of the People . . . being ignored.

Saying loud and clear that devolution is a sham. But we’re expected to believe it’s going to get better because – just like socialism – it hasn’t been properly tried yet.

Worse, there are those believing Wales could survive as an independent country with the same calibre of politicians pursuing the same policies.

This goes beyond the definition of insanity attributed to Einstein.

At present, all the lunacies we endure from Corruption Bay are funded by the block grant from Westminster. Take that away with independence, and give full powers to politicians who understand nothing about economics, but who will be determined to pursue the same Globalist-Woke agenda, and Wales will go broke within 5 years.

Then it’s into the clutches of the EU and the World Bank; allowing land and other assets to be bought up by BlackRock and the like to give the impression of economic activity, or inward investment.

Socialism has never worked as an economic model. Which explains why the only ones pushing it are either still wet behind the ears or have jobs for life on the public payroll.

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CONCLUSION

Plaid Cymru believes that a few years of the party running the Senedd will win people over to the idea of independence. Thinking of Scotland. They’re wrong.

After the SNP took control in 2008 (as a minority government) it increased its popularity under the leadership of Alex Salmond. To the point where it almost won the 2014 referendum on independence.

But Salmond, in addition to being a very astute politician and a great debater, was an economist. You know, the real world economy. He persuaded many Scots, and many economists, that Scotland could be better off as an independent country.

And it almost worked. I was in Scotland for the referendum, and I know that the polls just before the vote were showing a majority for Yes. The London parties panicked and came out with ‘The Vow’, promising Scotland just about everything short of independence.

That swung it and the vote was 55 – 45 against independence.

Worth noting that the Labour leader at the time was Ed Miliband. Who – like Cameron and Clegg – understood that a great part of the appeal of independence was the promise of oil and gas revenues staying in Scotland. So maybe him closing down North Sea oil and gas fields isn’t just about saving the planet.

Whatever, and to get back to Wales, Plaid Cymru knows nothing about economics; I think the last genuine economist in their ranks was Dr Phil Williams, a good old stick despite everything, but he died in 2003.

Wales has no oil and gas fields to speak of. And there’s been no attempt to develop an indigenous economy over the 27 years of devolution. Funding cronies and charities to run make-believe ‘businesses’, and allowing carpetbagger companies to exploit Wales, is a third world economy.

All Plaid Cymru offers is more of the same, with a different spin. Because while Rhun ap Iorwerth may come across as an affable sort of guy, behind the scenes, still running the show, are dark forces from Plaid’s recent past.

And if Plaid gets power, especially in a link-up of some description with the Greens, then even nastier specimens will start popping up.

Wales needs radical change, in the form of a return to the eternal verities and facing up to economic realities. The Uniparty will never be allowed to provide this. Reform gives no thought to Wales beyond getting votes to pursue a different agenda.

Here’s Owain Williams again. I don’t know his politics, but I suspect they’re not a million miles from my own.

UPDATE 04.05.2026: Well, bless me! Young Owain is the son of Rhodri ‘Billions’ Williams, former boss of S4C and various other bodies. Owain is, or was, a Labour stalwart. The doubt might be justified by the party excluding him from being selected.

The only sensible option is a party that puts Wales first and foremost. One that prioritises the economy we all need. That understands Wales needs real jobs not more gesture politics. That teaches our children to think for themselves rather than brainwashing them. That won’t wage war on the family farm. Or the family unit.

The only party that fits the bill is Gwlad. Of course, Gwlad can’t win this time round, they don’t have the strength yet. But they’ll grow and, with fair media coverage, be back stronger next time. In the meantime, I’m sure Gwlad will be fighting for Wales in council elections and other ways.

The only Welsh party willing to address people’s real world concerns is Gwlad.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2026

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Labour And Plaid Cymru Plot To Destroy Welsh Democracy

On By JacIn Corruption, Plaid Cymru, Welsh Government, Welsh Labour59 Comments

In this post we’ll look at the proposed Senedd ‘reforms’, focusing on the closed list system, the method of counting the votes, the design of the ballot paper, and then I’ll try to explain it all.

There have been calls for many years for a bigger Senedd so that it can give better ‘scrutiny’. That may have been the original intention, but I believe other considerations came into play. And these account for the deviations from the original proposals made by the Expert Panel in 2017.

At present, we have 60 Senedd Members. One from each of our 40 Westminster constituencies, elected by first past the post; the other 20 from 5 regions, each returning four Members, these elected by the less than perfect d’Hondt system. Explained here by Labour MS Mike Hedges.

Wales’s representation at Westminster is being reduced to 32 MPs. Those controlling Senedd reform have decided to ‘pair’ these seats to give 16 huge and unwieldy constituencies each of which will elect 6 Members by the d’Hondt method.

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1/ THE EXPERT PANEL

The process that brought us to this point seems to have begun with the appointment in February 2017 of an Expert Panel (EP) to look into expanding the (then) Assembly.

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This group reported in November 2017. And among other things, suggested three possible electoral systems (p 129). These were:

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The system favoured by the Panel was the Single Transferable Vote.

You’ll perhaps note, by it’s absence, any mention of the closed list system that has been decided upon, and is now being widely criticised.

Or rather, the closed list was mentioned, and rejected (p 128).

This EP report was studied by our esteemed tribunes, its recommendations initially accepted, before being cast aside. Not because it wasn’t a fine piece of academic work, but because, as time went on, it could not deliver changed priorities.

Making the whole EP exercise a waste of time. Unless the hope was that the public would think what politicians subsequently came up with had the imprimatur of those experts.

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2/ COMMITTEE ON SENEDD ELECTORAL REFORM

The next step was the Committee on Senedd Electoral Reform, which first met in January 2020. The Committee was dissolved following a debate on its report on Wednesday 7 October 2020.

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Here’s the Committee’s Report from September 2020, and here’s a summary of its recommendations. Note that it agrees with the Expert Panel in recommending the Single Transferable Vote.

Though it also makes a reference to “diversity quotas for protected characteristics other than gender”. I think we can guess where that’s heading.

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3/ SPECIAL PURPOSE COMMITTEE ON SENEDD REFORM

Now we move on to October 2021, when a fresh Committee was established to take things forward, with Huw Irranca-Davies providing continuity.

Here are all the members. From what I can see, the only Conservative, Darren Millar, soon distanced himself. I guess he could see the direction of travel.

The remit and the committee. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

The Special Purpose Committee on Senedd Reform published its report ‘Reforming our Senedd: A stronger voice for the people of Wales’ on 30 May 2022. Here’s a link to that report. Let’s pick out a few choice bits.

In the ‘Recommendation’ (pages 9-12) two that caught my eye were . . .

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In 14 we read that all political parties are to be ‘encouraged’ to publish “a diversity and inclusion strategy”. More ‘diversity’!

I found 17 remarkable in that it says those framing these proposals fear being referred to the Supreme Court. Suggesting that what they’re proposing may be unlawful.

Moving on to ‘Electoral System’, on page 26, where we read, solemnly inscribed: “Electoral systems are one of the fundamental building blocks of democracy”.

Too bloody right, Comrade! Let’s all remember that.

The Expert Panel’s favoured system of the Single Transferable Vote, endorsed by the Committee on Senedd Electoral Reform, was rejected by Huw Irranca-Davies and his new playmates because it, ” . . . was an unfamiliar system in Wales and that the method of translating votes into seats would be seen as complex and difficult to explain”.

In other words, electorates around the world may have got used to STV, but Welsh voters are uniquely stupid.

So why not elect three Members from each of the 32 new constituencies in the same way we elect councillors? It’s a system we twp Taffs are familiar with.

Jane Dodds (Liberal Democrat) favoured STV, so did Siân Gwenllian (Plaid Cymru), but, “in the spirit of achieving the supermajority required to deliver Senedd reform” Siân Gwenllian fell into line.

Not a whimper of dissent was heard from Elin Jones (Plaid Cymru).

So the Committee rejected the Single Transferable Vote, also the other two options  recommended by the Expert Panel. Instead, and for no obvious reason, went for what it calls, “the closed proportional list” system.

Certainly, the current method for electing our regional list MSs is a closed list, but does any country elect all its politicians by the closed list system?

When it comes to working out who gets to go to Corruption Bay the EP looked at two methods. The d’Hondt and Saint-Lagué divisor systems. The latter gives a more proportional outcome, and also gives more of a chance to smaller parties and independents.

Irranca-Davies and his friends of course plumped for the d’Hondt method.

Now we come to the most remarkable and worrying thing I encountered in all 92 pages. Scroll to page 38, and there you’ll see under ‘Ballot Papers’ . . .

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

“We would anticipate . . . some of the names . . . of candidates will appear . . . “.

ALL candidates’ names on the ballot paper should be a ‘given’. That it’s even being discussed strengthens my suspicions of the true motives behind this exercise.

So, let’s recap . . .

This Committee not only rejected the voting system recommended by the Expert Panel and accepted by the Committee on Senedd Electoral Reform in favour of the closed list, it also opted for the less proportional system for allocating seats, and finally, it even suggested not naming candidates.

How the hell does this improve democracy in Wales?

Moving on . . .

◊

4/ REFORM BILL COMMITTEE

A Reform Bill Committee was established 12 July 2023. In the panel below you can see the Committee’s remit and its members.

The role of this group was to go through the Bill that resulted from the report of The Special Purpose Committee on Electoral Reform. Making Recommendations where it felt the need.

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The Reform Bill Committee’s report was published last month, and debated in the Senedd 30 January (No 8).

The motion: ‘To propose that Senedd Cymru in accordance with Standing Order 26.11: Agrees to the general principles of the Senedd Cymru (Members and Elections) Bill.’ was passed by 39 votes to 14. All Conservatives voted against.

It’s a weighty tome, 224 pages, and you can read it if you’re so minded. But I’ll focus on the issues I’ve already discussed, and see what, if anything, has changed.

In his Introduction, the chair, Labour’s David Rees MS, has this to say:

We have not reached consensus on all matters . . . But, we are unanimous in our concerns about the proposed closed list electoral system . . . We believe the link between voters and the Members who represent them is paramount.

We therefore urge all political parties in the Senedd to work together to ensure the electoral system in the Bill provides greater voter choice and improved accountability for future Members to their electorates.

He’s clearly not happy with the closed list. Neither is former Labour minister Lord David Blunkett. But as things stand, we’re stuck with it.

Next, I went to check on the design of the ballot paper, which Huw Irranca-Davies’s Committee had suggested need not carry the names of the candidates.

On page 105 I found what you see below. The ‘Member in charge’ is Mick Antoniw MS, Counsel General and Minister for the Constitution, who defends the recommendations of Huw Irranca-Davies’s group.

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If the closed list is used in 2026 then it’s unlikely it will ever be changed, because those who’ve benefitted from it, and then control the Senedd, will not vote to change it.

On page 111 Antoniw is pressed as to why the Bill being presented to the Senedd does not state categorically that candidates’ names will appear on the ballot paper. He gives the mealy-mouthed reply that it didn’t need to be set out in the Bill, but the matter will be addressed in “secondary legislation“.

On page 129 David Rees makes it clear that he believes candidates’ names on ballot papers should be stipulated in the Bill itself, not left to secondary legislation . . . which may never happen:

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In fact, a search of the published Bill for ‘ballot paper’ draws a blank.

I cannot believe that we have got this far in the passage of a ‘reform’ Bill that won’t promise candidates’ names on ballot papers.

But then, Antoniw is Zelensky’s man in Corruption Bay. And Zelensky’s not a big fan of democracy; he’s banned opposition parties and closed churches. But we’re still expected to believe that he’s fighting the Ivans in defence of democracy.

◊

MAKING SENSE OF IT

When this process started, back in early 2017, with the appointment of the Expert Panel, there may have been a genuine intention to ‘improve democracy in Wales’.

Somewhere along the way the focus changed, it became more politicised, more partisan, and less democratic. I believe we can pinpoint when this happened. And also explain it.

It happened some time between the Committee on Senedd Electoral Reform reporting in September 2020 and the Special Purpose Committee on Senedd Reform publishing its report 30 May 2022. A year and a half in the time of Covid.

And here’s why it happened . . .

There’s a phenomenon I’ve reported on more than once and why, last June, I published, Wales: Ruled By Pressure Groups.

Pressure groups and organisations, some global, others organised on a UK-wide basis with a Welsh branch, but all pushing the Globalist holy trinity designed to destabilise and weaken the West:

  1. A climate-nature ‘crisis’ that demands a ruinous drive to net zero
  2. Constantly reminding White people how evil and privileged we are
  3. 101 genders that means men can have babies by ‘chicks with dicks’

This also explains calls to constantly lower the voting age. For children who’ve come through a school system influenced by Stonewall and other groups may be unable to read and write but they’re more likely to be suckered by a charlatan pushing the Globalist agenda.

The so-called ‘Welsh Government’ is now controlled by Agenda-loyal pressure groups. Having just mentioned Stonewall, you can see from this table that the ‘Welsh Government’, whether directly or through bodies it controls, is now that group’s largest single UK funder.

Another worrying feature that I’ve observed recently is the ‘Welsh Government’ taking over various organisations that should be independent. This is invariably achieved through funding, in the form of loans or grants, which is then used to justify ‘appointees’.

We’ve seen it across the board, from the Welsh Rugby Union and the Football Association of Wales to Bannau Brycheiniog National Park. I wrote about this dangerous trend, also last June, in ‘Taking Control, Of Everything‘.

What we see happening with the subverting of the Senedd reform process is a synthesis between the growing power of pressure groups and the increasing control freakery of a Labour party wholly committed to the Globalist agenda.

It will give Labour bosses control over the electoral system, and Senedd seats for pressure group parasitoids. Making the Senedd less representative because it will have more Members for whom the interests of Wales will be largely irrelevant.

It will also give the Senedd a near-permanent left / far left majority.

The only way to achieve a Senedd that works solely in the the interests of Labour and its rural variant (Plaid Cymru) is through a closed and anonymised list system.

Such a system also makes Plaid Cymru more of a hostage than a partner.

◊

CONCLUSION & RECOMMENDATION

Until I started flicking through the various reports and other documentation I hadn’t fully appreciated how corrupted and dangerous the ‘reform’ plan had become.

Ask yourself – would anyone believe that in a European democracy in 2024 politicians could seriously propose closed list elections that are also anonymised?

Try not to laugh. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Why recruit an Expert Panel and then reject all three of its proposals for organising elections? And then, after comparing the d’Hondt and Saint-Lagué divisor systems, why choose the one that’s less proportional?

The answer is obvious, and so I repeat – these ‘reforms’ are not to make Wales more democratic, or provide ‘greater scrutiny’. They’re intended to give the leftist political class total control through an electoral system that can almost ignore the wishes of the people.

It’s a very obvious power grab. 

Power to serve The Agenda, that will demand the end of farming; 10mph (or no traffic at all to allow for daily Pride parades); 15-minute ghettoes; butchering confused 12-year-olds on the NHS; re-writing history; more foreign-owned wind farms; ‘inclusivity’ that will exclude most Welsh people, etc., etc.

While away from the noise of articulated idiocies and the din of clashing egos, out ‘there’, in the real Wales, people die in ambulances outside hospitals, and kids go hungry.

What has been stitched up by Labour and Plaid Cymru is so obviously anti-democratic, bordering on the dangerous, that it must be fought all the way.

To the Supreme Court, if necessary.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2024

Miscellany 04.06.2019

On By JacIn Brexit, British Nationalism, Cardiff, Cardiff Bay, Colonisation of Wales, Conservative and Unionist Party, Devolution, Englandandwales, European Union, Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru, Third Sector, Welsh Assembly, Welsh Government, Welsh Independence, Welsh Labour, Welsh Nationalism28 Comments

I haven’t prepared any in-depth or weighty post for this week; instead, I’ve put together a few things I’ve been thinking about, or been sent, that might also be of interest to you. You know me – always trying to please!

◊

COALITIONS

One of the more bizarre responses to the 2016 EU referendum result came from Leanne Wood, then leader of Plaid Cymru – ‘Let’s go into coalition with Labour!‘, she suggested.

Quite what this was supposed to achieve no one seemed to know, but it struck me at the time as a predictable response from Plaid Cymru’s clenched fist and beret tendency. Those who would still regard the Tories as ‘the real enemy’ even if ISIS invaded the Rhondda Fach.

I mention this because even with the Red Queen dethroned Plaid Cymru seems to be thinking along similar lines today. With new leader Adam Price calling for a coalition of Remain-supporting parties for the next UK general election.

click to enlarge

Ideally, of course, Plaid Cymru would like a coalition with Labour, but thanks to Comrade Corbyn’s vacillating that is not possible. So with that hope dashed, Plaid now seeks a deal with the Liberal Democrats, the Greens, Change UK and the SNP.

(UPDATE: It’s all happening! Now the ‘Welsh Government’ has come out for Remain.)

Let’s consider the SNP first. Things are very different in Scotland, where the SNP will be hoping to win every seat in the next UK general election; so the chances of them doing a deal with other parties, which would almost certainly mean standing down in some seats, is a non-starter.

The SNP could even turn the next general election into a vote on independence and EU membership, especially if Westminster refuses to allow another independence referendum.

Next up is Change UK. If you’re unfamiliar with this lot, then let me explain that they’re a bunch of preening egotists who couldn’t get their own ways in their previous parties. Before the next election comes around clashing egos will have destroyed this collective huff of a party and that’ll be the end of Change UK.

(UPDATE: Within hours of publishing this piece the bust-up happened!)

On to the Greens, aka the Green Party of England, for there is no Wales Green Party. Worse, last year Greens in Wales voted on whether to set up a separate Green party and decided to stay as the Green Party of Englandandwales. Which means that Plaid Cymru wants to work with a party that refuses to recognise Wales as a country!

Note how the BBC reports it, as if common sense prevails against dangerous separatists seeking to sunder a sacred bond. Click to enlarge

Finally, the Liberal Democrats, the party that kept the Tories in power at Westminster between 2010 and 2015, and the party that – with its single AM – helps keep Labour in power down Cardiff docks. A gang of opportunistic and amoral politicos that would sell their grannies for a sniff of power.

Despite decades of trying to promote themselves as the ‘nice’ party I have a deep and abiding contempt for the modern Liberal Democrats. I had time for old Geraint Howells and a few others from the genuinely Welsh Liberal tradition, but the modern party is a venomous thing not to be trusted or handled.

Containing individuals like Callum James Littlemore, who is ‘Diary Manager’ for local party leader Jane Dodds. (She needs a diary manager!) I thought for a minute it was a typo, and he worked on her farm, but apparently it’s true. Anyway, young Callum bears out all I’ve thought about LibDems.

click to enlarge

Though he can’t have been in Wales for long if he thinks Plaid Cymru “support divisive nationalism”. Listen to Uncle Jac: Plaid Cymru is a bunch of evasive, wishy-washy, ishoo-botherers, forever seeking distractions to avoid confronting any specifically Welsh issue. Brexit being the latest such distraction.

Let’s hope we hear little more from Littlemore. (Couldn’t resist it!)

Ruling out the SNP for the reasons I’ve given, these are the parties that Plaid Cymru is ready to co-operate with thanks to Plaid’s fixation with Brexit. What would Plaid get in return – I mean, would these parties campaign for Welsh independence, or even greater devolution? I think not.

It also means that by turning the next election into a single-issue affair Plaid Cymru will ignore the things people care about. Done in order to line up with England’s Brahmin left, thereby alienating thousands upon thousands of people that must be won over if Wales is to escape the humiliation long ago imposed on us by John Bull; a colonial system loyally maintained into the present day by ‘Welsh’ Labour and its rag-bag of hangers-on.

There’ll be a price to pay for this posturing, this self-indulgent myopia. I sincerely hope.

♦

CORRUPTION BAY

This is a term I coined well over twenty years ago as the title of an opus describing the ‘regeneration’ of Cardiff’s docklands. Perhaps the biggest milking of the public purse ever seen in Wales.

Made possible by Secretary of State for Wales (1979 – 1987) Nicholas Edwards, who set up, in April 1987, the Cardiff Bay Development Corporation (CBDC), to be run by his good friend and fellow High Tory, Sir Geoffrey Inkin. The CBDC became the conduit for pumping hundreds of millions of pounds of public money into land owned by Associated British Ports (ABP), of which Edwards was a director.

The CBDC was wound up in 1999 and Edwards – Lord Crickhowell since 1987 – stepped down from the board of Associated British Ports Holdings Ltd 28 April 1999.

Of course, Edwards/Crickhowell didn’t have it all his own way. For example, despite donning his Welsh National Opera tricorn he failed to get a new opera house to the Bay, but learning from that disappointment he made sure that the ‘consolation prize’ of the Notional Assembly building was located on his patch.

And while it was being built he saw to it that ABP continued to coin it by having AMs and staff use Crickhowell House – at £2m+ a year.

Crickhowell House/Tŷ Crughywel/Tŷ Hywel, click to enlarge

Crickhowell House was soon renamed Tŷ Crughywel, and is now Tŷ Hywel, apparently in honour of Hywel Dda. Which looks very much like an attempt to hide the Crickhowell connection, for I’m not aware of Hywel Dda having any local connections.

Despite having moved into the new Senedd building over ten years ago the ‘Welsh Government’ still agreed a series of leases that bind it – and us – to Tŷ Hywel until 2049, or Armageddon, whichever comes sooner. Guaranteed to cost us many more millions of pounds.

I mention this to give the background to what we see today in Cardiff Bay; the squalid and incestuous wheeler-dealing, the lying and the backstabbing, the cronyism, the incompetence, and the waste of public money.

The latest example of the incestuousness comes with Daniel Bryant leaving lobbyists Deryn for Plaid Cymru. This ménage à trois involving Deryn, Plaid Cymru and the Labour Party is not good for democracy or for Wales.

click to enlarge

(Cathy Owens is a director of Deryn. Though I shudder to think what ‘Deryn standards’ might be referring to. Could it be sarcasm?)

But this is what devolution has done. It has given us a class of people, divorced from the real world, who study politics, help out local politicians in their spare time and then, when they finish university, get a job working for a politician, or lobbyists, making contacts, and getting on their party’s list of approved candidates.

They then become politicians and make decisions affecting the lives of people with whom they have little contact and for whom they may have little concern. I say that because politics is no longer about serving the people, it’s a team game of abstractions and all that matters is scoring points against the opposition. (Though in Wales it often seems to be just two ‘teams’ involved.)

This system of musical chairs that begins with teenagers choosing a ‘career’ in politics goes a long way to explaining why Wales is in the mess she’s in today. And also why, alone in western Europe, Wales has no register or regulation of lobbyists – because the lobbyists won’t countenance such legislation!

Speak out in favour of such legislation – as Neil McEvoy has done more than once – and you will be hounded and vilified – by lobbyists, your own party, and anyone else the lobbyists can influence. Is this democracy?

Of course not, but it is Corruption Bay; and those we find lurking there today are worthy successors to the Cardiff Bay Development Corporation.

♦

REMOTE CONTROL

For anyone who missed it over on Jacqui Thompson’s blog, soon-to-be-retired Carmarthenshire chief executive Mark James plans to stay active with Ffynnon Consultancy Ltd . . . of Brighton. A company formed 23 April 2019.

‘Why Brighton?’ you ask, and the answer is because that’s where his mates are. ‘Mates!’ Yes, you must remember his partners from the Cardiff Bay property business. I wrote about it in Baywatch and Baywatch 2. In particular, Mark Philip Carter, a director with James of Building and Estate Solutions Today Limited.

That company is based in Cardiff, but Carter has other companies based at the same Brighton address – 161-163 Preston Road – where we find Mark James’s new venture. Companies such as Friend-James Accountants LLP, Friend-James Ltd and Opher Ltd.

The two directors of Ffynnon Consultancy are James and his missus. He with 400 shares, she with 100.

click to enlarge

It was always unlikely that when James retires later this month, and surfboards out of county hall on a flood of tears, that he would put on his slippers and take up some innocent pastime like counting his money, or evicting bloggers.

But now, with his own consultancy, his protégée Wendy Walters taking over his job, and Emlyn ‘Two Barns’ Dole keeping the councillors in check, James should be able to run the show by remote control!

For as the old saying has it – You can’t keep a good man down. Or in this case, a vindictive and manipulative megalomaniac, and Private Eye Shit of the Year 2016.

You know he can’t just walk away – for there is a Wellness Village to build!

Talking of which . . . there’s something nagging me, for there is another company with a very similar name to James’s new venture. This being the Ffynnon Consultancy Group Ltd.

What’s interesting about the Ffynnon Consultancy Group is that its entry in the ‘Welsh Government’s Directory of Welsh Businesses tells us: “At the Ffynnon Consultancy Group we identify and establish business connections across a wide platform of business sectors in the UAE and the GCC”.

‘UAE’ is of course the initials of the United Arab Emirates, and ‘GCC’ stands for Gulf Cooperation Council. So why would this obscure little company be operating in the Gulf?

click to enlarge

I ask because I’m sure you’ll remember that it was links with that part of the world that led to suspensions at Swansea University and the halting of city deal funding for the Wellness Village.

The sole director of the Ffynnon Consultancy Group – a one-share company that appears never to have traded or done anything since being formed in June 2016 – was Angela Louise Williams of Llandybie, until she was replaced last Friday by Kevin Williams of New Quay, Ceredigion, with the company’s registered address also transferring to New Quay on 3 June.

Given the Gulf connection, I got to wondering if there might also be a link with Swansea University, the Wellness Village, or with outgoing Carmarthenshire CEO Mark James’s new company Ffynnon Consultancy Ltd?

In the hope of getting answers I e-mailed Ffynnon Consultancy Group and received a reply from Kevin Williams, who expressed surprise that Companies House had allowed registrations from two companies with such similar names.

He assured me that neither he nor Angela Louise Williams had any links to either Carmarthenshire County Council or Swansea University. So that would appear to be that . . . just an amazing coincidence . . .

♦

M4 OR NO M4

As I write this, on Monday evening, the word is that tomorrow the ‘Welsh Government’ will not back the proposed M4 ‘relief road’ through the Gwent Levels and Newport docks. So, on that assumption, here are a few points that immediately popped into the cavernous Jac cranium.

  • Let us hope that this unexpected decision heralds a new era of development and investment spread across the country, thereby obviating the need for an M4 ‘relief road’.
  • Presumably the announcement will be accompanied by promises to invest in public transport. Again, I urge that thinking goes beyond the Cardiff region, because there is a country out there.
  • Nothing would prove this administration’s commitment to both Wales beyond Cardiff and public transport better than a west coast railway line from Carmarthen to Bangor.
  • Finally, this decision might deter commuters from Bristol and elsewhere moving into Wales for cheaper housing – have you thought about that? Well, have you!

♦

CAPTION COMPETITION

And, finally, this week’s caption competition. I am grateful to the person who supplied this wonderful photograph of Paul and Rowena Williams of Weep for Wales fame. The picture comes from the XscapeNow Facebook page.

click to enlarge

These crooks are former owners of the Radnorshire Arms Hotel in Presteigne, The Knighton Hotel, Plas Glynllifon, Seiont Manor Hotel and other establishments from Northumberland to Cornwall.

I can’t help thinking that holding an illustration of criminals being caught by the police might be seen as tempting fate.

♦ end ♦