In a shocking turn of events, most of the blogs this week carry some form of analysis of each parties fortunes at the Euro elections, which I guess was the biggest story of the week, finally knocking expenses off that spot for the first time in a month.
A fairly honest assessment (“dreadful result”) of Labour’s night is offered by Leighton Andrews AM, who shows that maybe he might just understand what Labour’s problem is. Or at least you might think that until you read the post from two days before where he returns to the traditional Welsh Labour message of “You should vote for us because we’re not as bad as the Tories”. It may be about as positive and inspiring as a cinema hotdog, but at the moment that seems to be the only message Labour have. Huw Lewis goes even further, calling it a ‘truly dreadful night’. A particularly honest view is expressed in that “It is not good enough to grasp around for the excuse du jour, be it MPs expenses (this time), 10p Tax rate (last year) or third term blues (two years ago)”. Maybe he just gets it a bit better than Leighton?
The Tories are obviously happy with their results last week. Well, except maybe Jonathan Morgan. As the Bevan Foundation point out, it kinda left him without much ammo to throw at his boss. Just when we thought there would be some movement on the Tory leadership, clips of a grinning Bourne next to Super Dave appear on every news channel, shoring up Bourne’s position, at least for the time being.
I still don’t particularly understand the idea of having primaries for the Conservative leadership. To have anything that could be considered even marginally successful, it would cost the party thousands of pounds. If the party has that much money to throw away, maybe they could think of more productive uses for it?
Clive Betts’ analysis of the European election result suggests that the results were a disaster for us. An easy conclusion to jump to, but an incorrect one. His assertion that we were ‘confident’ of getting the fourth seat is wrong for a start. Yes, we were hopeful, but we also realised that there would be many other factors that would affect our vote beyond our control, UKIP being one of them. No-one ever said we would get it, just that we had a chance. Clive also fails to take the 2004 result into account at all. We did slightly worse then than we did this time, yet still increased our vote in 2005. I might save his article and post it to him when we increase our seats in the General Election asking him to blog on just how wrong he got it.
Although not quite as wrong as Guerrilla Welsh-Fare who seems convinced that there is a massive split that is going to rip the party apart. Interesting to note that no source is quoted. Given how absurd this story is, I’m guessing the source is a Moustached Frog, or possibly some form of Leprechaun.
Plaid Cymru’s result was a massive missed opportunity according to the Cynical Dragon and accompanies it with a video of missed goals. I’d rather of had the video of Adam Price claiming they’ve pushed Labour into 3rd in Wales personally.
Miserable Old Fart has an interesting piece about the effect of the current public distrust of politicians on any potential devolution referendum. His conclusion is that the public would never back any changes now, and that we’ve probably got several years of the Tories ahead of us, meaning the window may have been lost. I guess I’d have to agree. If the Labour Party offered a referendum that promised to save the life of 10,000 puppies the public would probably vote to let them become pies right now.
Glyn Davies picked up on the dubiously sourced, but ultimately correct news that Mick Bates AM will not be restanding, which is also picked up on by Heledd Fychan and Matt Withers. Obviously as a Welsh Lib Dem I’m disappointed to hear this, but not as disappointed as a particular Cardiff steakhouse, who have begun a week of mourning.
With the Euro elections over, the next contest will be the one for Speakers, which barely gets a mention. Although there is a review of each of the candidates by Paul Flynn MP where he rates each of the applicants for the vacant position. He doesn’t state where his support will be going, but surprisingly the person who seems to get a glowing recommendation is Ann Widdecombe!
Finally, the recent article on New Labour by Alan Finlayson is highlighted by Tomos Livingstone. Dr Finlayson was one of my lecturers while at Uni, including on a project about New Labour. My complex analysis of ‘bastards’ was never one which went down too well with him…..
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