Spectator columnist explains 'where Wales went wrong'

Stephen Price

A columnist has explained 'Where Wales went wrong' in an article for the Spectator - describing her love for the 'magical' country and 'Mount Snowdon' before closing with a quote from Enoch Powell.

Writing on 12 January, Zoe Strimpel begins her opinion piece by praising 'lovely Wales', before describing some of her experiences walking through a 'magical' forest in 'Anglesey' (Ynys Môn).

Peppering in a sheep reference, whilst referring to Yr Wyddfa as Mount Snowdon, she shares how she once "struggled up Mount Snowdon while being pummelled by the angry Welsh wind".

According to Strimpel, Wales has "everything going for it" but instead uses its energy on "self-destruction".

She asks: "Why does it insist on turning itself into a laughing stock, drinking down unfiltered woke rubbish and dousing its wonderful natural and cultural heritage in the stuff?"

"The country is like the teenager who is clever, quirky, and loved – yet still chooses to become a rampaging nightmare who squanders all the good in favour of drugs, binge-drinking and Marxism."

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'Fairy porn'

Zoe Strimpel is a London-born historian, author, newspaper columnist and broadcaster who grew up in the United States.

She says: "Gender, relationships, dating, feminism and sexuality - past and present – are my main wheeze.

"I like to keep a critical eye on political dogmas, particularly those around gender and identity, and this is particularly clear in my columns for the Sunday Telegraph."

Her Spectator article was spurred on by the news last week that 'some' are offended at the success of ‘fairy porn’ which was published by the BBC in both Welsh and English, which reported on the opinions and works of Professor Dimitra Fimi, professor of fantasy and children’s literature at Glasgow University, as well as a bookseller from Carmarthen.

In her article for the BBC, Fimi shared: "It can be pretty patronising, it creates an image of the country which isn't realistic. That's not all that Wales is."

After focusing on 'fairy porn', Strimpel gets on to the "deeply concerning bigger picture" - namely Wales' poverty rates and "underdeveloped" economy, "disastrous" educational outcomes and "the UK's broken asylum system which she says is encapsulated by the jailing in October of an illiterate goat herder from Iraq operating as a drug seller in barber shops in Aberystwyth by way of Newcastle".

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'Historical revisionism'

With the NHS and addiction also added to Wales' "barrage of real problems", Strimpel shares that she isn't surprised "that Wales has taken up with gusto such US-style notions as ‘systemic’ social and racial injustice, diversity and inclusion, and unhealthy historical revisionism based on grievance".

Strimpel blames Welsh Labour for the example of David Lloyd George’s childhood home and museum in Llanystumdwy being ‘decolonised’ to ‘promote a multicultural, vibrant and diverse Wales’.

Announced in 2022 by the then Deputy Minister for Arts and Sport, Dawn Boden, the Anti-Racist Wales Action Plan, was proposed in response to Black Lives Matter protests.

It formed part of a £4.5 million drive to ensure councils promote a “decolonised account of the past, one that recognises both historical injustices and the positive impact of ethnic minority communities”.

Unaware of growing sentiment in Wales with regard to England's colonial history, and wide support for Wales' history to be written from the perspective of Wales, and not England, Strimpel moves on to Edward I’s Welsh castles – including Caernarfon – which she says are deemed ‘problematic’.

She tells readers: "Visitors should be made aware that these castles are not architectural marvels and places of cultural and historic significance, they are ‘symbols of oppression and alienation’ which ‘illustrate well the potentially divisive legacy of historical events’."

'Trans ideology'

Strimpel's next target is 'trans ideology', which she shares has been embraced in Wales' schools with a "zest unrivalled in the rest of Britain", using the example of a leaflet handed out in a Welsh school about periods and 'cisgender' people.

Wales, she tells readers, has one of the worst track records in the West on reading, maths and science skills, and to suggest the country's education's priorities are misguided, she shared news of literary classic, Of Mice and Men and To Kill a Mockingbird being removed from English language exams.

To close, Strimpel decries Wales' "contemporary gatekeepers", quoting Enoch Powell, who is best known for his controversial 'Rivers of Blood' speech from April 1968, which made him one of the most talked-about and divisive politicians in Britain.

Stressing that he spoke in Welsh, she shares that he argued that the ‘contribution of Wales to the history of Britain over the centuries to be an important one indeed… it would be a very poor thing if her contribution to British cultural life was confined to the borders of the principality’.

Read 'Where Wales went wrong' in full on The Spectator.