The left need to realise that just being right won’t win them elections

A guy knocked on my door; I let him speak. In about 50 sentences he'd mentioned Palestine, something about binary I didn't know what it was, showed me a Worker's magasine, talked about 'the elite', corporate produce, veganism and something called intersectionality, about which time I just blanked it out. Then I said to him, 'Your shoes cost more than mine. Why aren't you talking about jobs?' And I shut the door.

This article is itself an good working example of where "the Left" get it wrong - although not in the way Ifan espouses. First of all, Ifan states his belief that policies of "the Left" are the best ones and correct (making any contrary positions de facto wrong). Quote: "The left have a simple strategy ... explain to people that they’re right ...". We are immediately confronted by a lack of self-reflection and an authoritarian level of certainty. "We can debate - but I am always right", so to speak. It resembles conviction of a religious mind, not an open, democratic one. Later on Ifan states that the Remain/Leave argument was more about identity than economics - conveniently failing to mention the elephant in the room - democratic accountability. The EU has little if any democratic accountability. When the EU commission passes laws and regulations we don't like, unlike in Wales or the UK, we don't get to vote them out in a few years. That issue is central yet "the Left" won't mention it because it doesn't suit their agenda. The most damning flaw of "the Left", or "the New Left" to be more precise, is their inability to hold honest debates around controversial topics such as transgender, mass-migration, Islam, climate change, etc.. Just like in the former USSR and currently in China, dissident thought is not tolerated. Like religious fanatics of the past, their knee-jerk reaction to contrary positions is to first slander (racist, far-right, Nazi, etc.) then to de-platform or censor. Taking it even farther, people who identify as "the Left" will try to harm the "wrong-thinker" through doxing, getting them fired from their job, even advocate violence against their opponents. Examples? One woman was actually fired from here work recently for stating her belief that there were only 2 sexes. Another man was fired for posting an old Billy Connolly joke on his Facebook page. These examples are just a tip of the iceberg. Even the Conservative party is getting in on the act by shaming an MP who attended a conference on European conservatives where (gasp!) popular elected leader Viktor Orban was speaking. So who is left to argue for Free Speech and open honest debate? It's the cornerstone of a functioning democracy yet it is being trampled on by virtually all political parties. If a political party wants to achieve electoral success, all it has to do is listen, not plug its ears and deride those (the majority) who has a different opinion on important matters. There's a lot more I could write about this but I'll leave it there ;)

Surely the drift of the author's argument is irrefutable. The simile for me is the Jehovah's Witnesses who've turned up on my doorstep at least occasionally in every single place where I've lived. The ones likely to get furthest with me - if by no means all the way - are those who, in their opening gambit, take a little time and make some serious effort to first explore where I'm at, and then tune the communication of their message accordingly. The ones who get absolutely nowhere are those who from the outset make it clear that they're the enlightened ones and they've graciously come to deliver me from my morass of utter ignorance and ungodliness. A bit late now to be revisiting the Brexit controversy, but the weakest point in the Brexiteer argument always struck me as the imputation that staying in the EU was the agenda of an alliance of political, economic and financial elites concerned solely with their own interests, whereas the Brexiteers were the selfless tribunes of honest ordinary citizens. Nothing about the coalition of Brexiteers made that imputation credible, in that the Brexiteer leaders looked no less elite than the leaders of the faction arguing for 'remain'. You might indeed conclude that anyone failing to discern that fact was perhaps a tad thick; but common sense surely tells you that disclosing that conclusion absolutely guarantees that you wouldn't win hearts and minds! Exactly the same surely applies to the argument for total - or even just greater - autonomy for Wales. As and when that argument starts to relate to the concerns of numbers of average Welsh voters, some will start at least to give it a hearing. If it doesn't, they simply won't. It's not a question of 'pandering' to the beliefs of people who thus far have no interest in Welsh autonomy, on an agenda of 'what do we think Jones will swallow, and we'll - timorously and tentatively! - offer no more than that'. Rather it's about trying to put yourself in the place of Jones who's asking, in the context of his own real life concerns, what there is to eat.

The article is a frank and open admission that the middle-class self-designated "left", armed with the axiomatic certainty of the rightness of their position ("four legs good, two legs bad") in the manner of Oliver Cromwell or Lenin, made the rookie mistake of treating the working-class section of the electorate with contempt while trying to secure their votes. I mentally shake hands with Ifan Morgan Jones for being man enough to acknowledge that. The adoption and use, however, of the emotive terms 'left' and 'right' contribute nothing to any political debate today (this is not the 1930s!) and should be dropped. Are Welsh independence supporters 'left' or 'right'? I see nothing very 'left wing' about Welsh Labour's spineless kow-towing to Westminster and its agents such as the Planning Inspectorate, nor Lisa Nandy's description of the independence movements/parties in Wales and Scotland as "narrow nationalists". And this BritNat viewpoint has been a feature of Labour for decades, at all levels -- when I was a student in Cardiff many years ago I attended a political debate in which a young Scottish Labour supporter complained, in utter sincerity, "My country is plagued by nationalism", and threw it open to the large audience to suggest a solution. Wales has serious problems that are a direct product of a colonial relationship, and they need either to be dealt with one at a time using the toothless instruments of limited devolution, or hoovered up in one go by means of independence. The problem facing the 'left' (and one that Ifan neglected to mention) is that many or most of its current tenets are of little or no relevance to pre-independence Wales, and this, as much as calling Brexit supporters thick, geriatric or racist, is what has condemned the new left to the political wilderness. Once they realise that such wokery will not wash when potential Welsh voters are battling poverty, drug abuse, the fracturing of communities (both anglophone and Welsh-speaking), and homelessness, then the Yasmin Begums of this world can plead their case and perhaps get a more sympathetic hearing.

The problem is that the right hasn't "won" by doing what Ifan suggests, by respecting opponents. The right has won by demonising and othering opponents, we are "traitors", "Europhobes", "anti British", "deserve to be executed for opposing Brexit" etc. The problem is that the left can't do the same, because of who controls the MSM. Fake Labour "antisemitism" is called out, true Tory blaten racism isn't! And the idea that social media can somehow overcome MSM right wing bias is also fake, the Facebooks / Googles / Twitters of social media are bigger right wing corporations than even the Murdoch Empire. The only chance that the national cause has is to piss off the establishment so much that they start attacking Wales and the Welsh and "othering" us. Neilj McEvoy has pissed of the establishment, but pissed off Plaid in the process. And therein lies a major nationalist problem! Perhaps Plaid should think more about being part of the campaign to piss off the establishment in favour of the Welsh National Cause and less about being a "nice, let's not upset anybody" party! Look back at the period before Plaid won in the same area it has won since the 1960's and never moved out of. It was an antiestablishment party, hated by the English press. Now we are a party that loves an occasional nice but condescending article about our leader in the Guardian!

avail yourself of the information you need. stop 'straw manning' everyone. I don't need 'left' 'right' or 'centre' telling me 'facts' when I bothered to find out for myself. My political conclusions have been reached by what I learned myself - not from the vague opinions of phantom strangers that allegedly knock on doors. Who exactly is defining these political stances? Despite having the same political outlook for years, I have been accused of moving accross the spectra depending on who I'm speaking with!

It's good for Ifan to be honest in his views but all this divisive talk of left and right is a bit archaic and , it has to be said and as Simon Gruffydd has mentioned , the worryingly authoritarian talk of 'the left being right' and the paranoid creation of 'populist right' bogeymen is, indeed, a bit worrying. As is the 'othering' of how 'they' should 'not be pandered to' as if they were some diseased people in need of banishing. If left and right has to be brought into it, it's worth remembering that the old left actually understood what was going on with neo liberal projects such as the EU, and were not yet destroyed and sabotaged by insane wokery and identity politics mixed in with Blairite neo liberalism and globalisation. As this video shows for example, the left were once more rational and were anti-EU and the right were pro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V70X2UNSkUI

The Labour Party was transformative in the 20th century when it understood people's fears: the fear of getting sick, losing your job, getting old and understood the self respect that came from meaningful work and supporting yourself and family. In the 21st century people are oppressed by feelings of loss of control over their lives; the uncertainty of "JAMs" and "gigs" and "hustles"; generation-can't-afford-to-rent-let-alone-buy; mountains of debt; toxic lifestyles affecting relationships, mental and physical health. "Left" or "Right" the answer is not sticking-plaster policies or invented scapegoats.

There are rare polticians who when faced with truth being spoken to power, either they explain in terms you get why your world view is missing a few important items of information or they nod, agree and try to enguage in a shared empathy and frustration with you about why the particular issue is so hard to fix. I have only encountered 2 such politicans, 1 in Cardiff and 1 in Westminster. From Council Office to Westminster, the rest are scared of anything that embarrses or exposes them. Until these muppets gt over their ego being more important than the people who they work for, we are ....... The best and the worst exist in each party.