Why is Labour killing its own creation?

The Labour Party in power in Westminster is a hollow shell of the Socialists who used to fight for the working man. Aneurin Bevan would turn in his grave. To see Starmer accepting and fiddling with Brexit, that has ripped the guts out of anything Britain ever stood for is to see a straw man leading a leaderless party. And this while the Wolves of Reform worry at the carcass of UK, and Welsh Labour flap impotently at the margins

I agree with the overall sentiment of the article. Especially, I can't see any reason why labour can't justify it stance on not pursuing further devolution; starting with railway infrastructure, crown estate and justice. I can see reasons why they wouldn't, but a labour government can't remain silent on the issue. However one aspect missing from the article is the consideration that England overall performs better on healthcare outcomes, education results and economic productivity compared Wales, despite us having more spending per capita. Clearly we face challenges in outcomes like demographics, healthy life expectancy, cost of delivery etc - but fundamentally we lag consistently in areas that we have devolved. This is rarely disgust in these types of articles. Maybe the title of the article should be 'why is labour (and former coalition partners) not doing more with it's creation?!'

An appropriately coruscating analysis of the contempt the current uk labour govt has for Wales and for devolution. That said i think Desmond sees the early years of Labour's role in devolution thru somewhat rose tinted spectacles. Those of us involved in the 97 referendum campaign will recall there were plenty of labour activists and branches who sat on their hands and were nowhere to be seen during the 6 week campaign leading up to September 18th itself. And while the likes of Ron Davies, Rhodri Morgan, Leighton Andrews (and Peter Hain) did their best to rally labour supporters behind a Yes vote there were plenty of Labour MPs in Wales who did their best to engineer the same act of sabotage that had been carried out by the likes of Kinnock on the devolution referendum of 1979. Theres also the not insignificant matter of Labour - both at Westminster and in Wales - kicking the recommendations of the 2004 Richard Commission on further devolution into the long grass. Fact of the matter is so called 'Welsh Labour' barely exists and the party in Wales has always been little more than a extension of Labour in England - it is labour's 'branch office' in Wales. Hence it has always and will always place the interests of labour at Westminster above the interests of Wales (with Jo Stephens current pathetic tenure as Welsh secretary a painful reminder of this truism). While UK Labour's repeated public humiliations of poor Eluned Morgan have been toe curlingly embarrassing to behold. If you value Welsh devolution - and if you want it to go further - then vote Plaid Cymru next May it really is as simple as that. Indeed - with the frightening rise of the xenophobes of reform - it may actually be a case of voting plaid cymru to ensure the survival of welsh devolution itself

The issue with Starmer performance is not just confined to the relationship with Wales. London based organisations focus on race-to-the-bottom procurement and incentivize their staff through bonuses to pay the least, even if the suppliers enter bankruptcy and staff are paid poverty wages. London has massive industrial relations issues. British Airways supply chain staff are paid minimum wage and get no sick pay https://www.unitetheunion.org/news-events/news/2025/december/british-airways-cleaners-at-heathrow-to-strike-over-low-pay-this-christmas Will Unite keep funding the Labour Party? Maybe in 2026 Starmers issues will get much worse - the Birmingham unions are not happy https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/how-birmingham-bins-strike-unfolded-33136247.amp

How did it come to this? Cronyism, and a critical lack of Welsh Labour talent after Mark Drakeford stood down.

The second referendum on full law making powers was in 2011 and the result was 63% in favour and 36% against. That in anyone's book is a landslide. The problem the Labour Party has is they don't like it in London and those in Wales have done nothing with that mandate, in fact surrendered it.

If you're going to ignore more recent results why don't you remember that 67% voted to stay in the common market in 1975?

Destruction and self-harm is an Anglo-Saxon trait.

It,s utterly nauseating what this latest bunch of so called Politicians have allowed to happen to our Wales,we must never forgive or forget this,I cannot wait for their demise,come on Plaid Grens and whatever else it takes to get us what we need,along with Independence.

I agree with David Richards’ comment about a rose tinted assessment of the early years of devolution. There was a real opportunity to reform public services during that period (and the money to do it); but Welsh Labour flunked it, pandering to interest groups and their own preference for virtue signalling, never believing that the electorate would eject them. That was when the rot set in.

I think what’s missing here is the extent to which we have had a devolution of government, but not a corresponding devolution of politics in the minds of a significant number of people. Let’s face it, for all the many areas to criticise, Welsh Labours polling and local results where ticking along just fine until Labour came to power at a UK level and the popularity of that government then tanked. Same in Scotland, go to July 4 2024 and people were talking up Anas Sarwar as FM- they’re not anymore it’s fair to say. Though not in Gov in Wales the Welsh Conservative have the same problem, nothing their own spokesman say matters at all. When Boris Johnson’s Gov was popular in Wales (and it was) then they were doing fine, when that ceased to be the case; their polling collapsed too. I don’t really agree that Carwyn and Drakeford distancing themselves from the UK gov was much of a feat when labour where in opposition and I’m not sure it matters all that much now. For instance, Whilst I’m sure that the signatories of the recent letter from Labour MS’s was principally sincere. It was politically nonsensical. What did they achieve, but to transform an issue that most people aren’t all that interested in (constitutional wrangling over a minor regeneration funding) to one with much more salience which is political infighting and perceptions of chaos at the top. Embarrassing both their leaders on the way and delivering nothing.

This piece reads not as an audit from outside the temple, but as a lament from deep within it. Des Clifford was not a detached observer of Welsh devolution, he was Carwyn Jones’s chief bag-carrier. The First Minister who elevated the deflection of blame onto Westminster into a governing art form. Clifford’s analysis predictably inherits this trait and thus never asks the central question. Namely, why did those of us embedded in the system for two decades so profoundly misjudge the scale and persistence of institutional failure? Performance did not suddenly collapse. It eroded slowly and visibly but was rationalised away at every stage by the same people now writing elegies for a lost golden age. The claim that the shop was left in good order under Drakeford is risible. The evidence is overwhelming. Catastrophic PISA rankings, massive NHS waiting lists, repeated failures to reform local government, an economy permanently on life support. Worst of was the steady expansion of a bloated stakeholder state from the voluntary sector to universities that consumes huge resources while delivering diminishing returns. This was not misfortune. It was design failure. As ever, the rot is personalised and conveniently located. Vaughan Gething is cast as the point of collapse. Certainly, an inadequate politician, but also a useful scapegoat. This sleight of hand allows the wider system to escape scrutiny. The problem was not a single leader or a single moment. It was a governing culture that confused process with progress, consultation with competence, and moral posture with delivery. Any serious analysis must go back across the full 25 years and acknowledge that devolution was not abruptly killed after Gething’s defenestration. It was slowly strangled by bland managerialism (copyright Eluned Morgan), autonomy without self-criticism, and a political culture that mistook permanence for success.

Do I hop on the caravan here or play Devil's Advocate... hmm. I'd like to say that Kier Starmer is a micromanager and doesn't support Welsh Devolution and doesn't want to engage with the Senedd but... the evidence is largely to the contrary. It is true that Wales is not getting what it was promised, it is true that Wales has been shafted repeatedly... often being asked to pick up the bar of soap. Yet, and yet... it's also true that Wales has received a bigger funding settlement per capita than under the Tories. It's also getting more of the 'EU match' funding (albeit nowhere near all of it) than under the Tories. I guess sticking what'shernameagain... as the Welsh Secretary was not the smartest move as she's more keen on being a team player and not rocking the boat than managing her office appropriately. Starmer has advocated for more devolution of Welsh powers, and reinforcing those that have already been given... despite the Pride in Place scheme undermining this, providing a heap of controversy. While the Senedd has had zero say in this and funding has been reallocated, the pride in place scheme is a National project. It's worth noting that Wales hasn't been specifically targeted, Scotland has also seen some funding re-directed and it's also grumbling about the decision making being taken out of its hands. Despite all the powers devolved to Wales, these are not Sovereign powers and the UK government retains the right to intervene to ensure consistency particularly in a national project. Parliament is sovereign and Kier Starmer is the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, not Westminster, not England but the United Kingdom. In the grand scheme of things, this 'intervention' is a small one. Despite a chunk (a small chunk) of funding being taken away from the Senedd, Wales is seeing an uplift in funding overall, for what at the moment looks like a vanity project.... but is it actually an Anti-wales project? No. Pride in Place actually empowers communities at the neighbourhood level, basically skipping the middle men of councils and Senedd, giving communities themselves the right to say where they want funding to go. Whoever Kier Starmer's media team is, probably needs a swap because they're not getting out the right messaging (or the media is purposefully distorting just about anything and everything). Is Kier Starmer a bad prime minister... not nearly as bad as the polls suggest (which is unsurprising in a largely tory UK, UK generally elects more Tory or Right governments than it does left ones.) It is worth noting that according to Yougov most people regard Kier Starmer as either Left Wing or Very Left wing, with the latter becoming more prominent in recent months. It's also worth noting which papers are consistently hounding Kier Starmer and saying that he cannot govern. He's certainly had his fair share of car crashes, from trying to make disabled and sick people poorer, to cutting the Winter Fuel allowance and so on. Were these decisions he wanted to make or were they made by consensus in the Cabinet office of "wtf can we do to close this deficit?" It's not as if he could just turn the UK economy on a dime and upend all the orthodoxy on a whim. Had Kier Starmer gone the Liz Truss route and decided "tax big business to the hilt, tax wealthy people to the hilt, increase minimum wage to the real living wage by next april"... the economy would have simply crashed and burned as it did with Liz Truss, which we're still seeing the aftershocks from. I'm trying to think of anyone who could manage this any better. Kemi Badenough(sp?), Farage? Which current political leader could actually do better than Kier Starmer? I can't think of one, Rhud wouldn't even be able to command a government in Westminster. While we might give Labour a trouncing in by-elections and so on... come election day... do you want Farage or Starmer as your prime minister? Those will be the choices (or possibly Andy Burnham we'll see how that goes though!). It's not like Scotland who has 57 constituencies, Wales has about 38. Plaid doesn't target seats in England or Scotland.