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The Challenge for… Plaid Cymru – politicalbetting.com
The Challenge for… Plaid Cymru – politicalbetting.com
This is the second in a series looking at the challenges and opportunities for the 7 main Great Britain parties. This time we will look at Plaid Cymru, the Welsh nationalists.
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(For LOLs Farage should encourage her to defect and then turn her down when she gets there. I believe it’s called doing an “Albanian”)
Economy shrinks by 0.3% in April.
Keep spending !!
https://x.com/edconwaysky/status/1933042500106699196?s=61
In the Sennedd if Labour collapse enough i can see a Reform minority held in place by the rump Tories (not in any formal coalition or even confidence and supply but locking out Plaid/Lab) until polling supports collapsing it.
The new set up could be very damaging to a forced minority administration
The Office for National Statistics, which collates the data, says that law firms and estate agents "fared badly" in April as house buyers rushed to complete deals ahead of changes to stamp duty.
It also says car manufacturing "performed poorly".
Mar 0.2
Apr -0.3
Off a cliff. Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
Labour fourth in Wales in seats looks good to me next year
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/company-insolvencies-december-2024/commentary-company-insolvency-statistics-december-2024
Have suggested a number of times that insolvencies are *good*. They clear away zombie companies (left over from COVID) and those that only exist on taxpayers' subsidies. But if you want to keep propping up this type of company and the taxpayer backhanders they get (see PPP) then vote for Kemi.
I voted for them for 50 years, and I am not going back on this form.
Doesn't look good.
Uncertainty is a word that’s being used a lot.
https://arstechnica.com/health/2025/06/yep-rfk-jr-appoints-anti-vaccine-advocates-to-cdc-vaccine-panel/
President Trump has cited the chief of the LAPD when it comes to bypassing Gov. Newsom and deploying the National Guard.
But Chief Jim MCDonnell tells me tonight, "We’re nowhere near a level where we would be reaching out to the governor for the National Guard."
https://x.com/kaitlancollins/status/1932984306089009210
Normalising such illegality is extremely dangerous, with an administration that very clearly has authoritarian aspirations.
Reeves wonderful?”. Don’t remember much of that on here.
Fixating on one month’s data which often proves inaccurate is the same as obsessing over polls with a one or two point move and building huge political changes from that.
We can probably argue the economy remains broadly flat currently - stagnation isn’t a good look I would agree.
I'd forgive him if at the end of the next season he sells the land to Kaleb for a fair price for use as a farm (e.g. something like £0).
This government is only better than the Tories in that they aren't malevolent banhammers like the Tories. Other than that they are as big a waste of skin.
We need to have the same attitude to grey benefits that the older generation had to free tuition ... numbers have gone up so its just not viable anymore.
https://x.com/GeneralStaffUA/status/1933021623499829513
What Putin unleashed his evil, he did so on his own country, as well as on Ukraine.
The three most powerful men in the world, Putin, Xi and Trump, all had extraordinarily traumatic childhoods. Trump, though wealthy, had a sociopathic father who sent him to military school and for whom nothing was ever good enough. Xi endured some of the worst of the Cultural Revolution. Putin grew up with street gangs in the worst parts of Leningrad.
And we wonder why the world is becoming more turbulent.
I wonder if there is a way to stop damaged, destructive psychopaths from rising to the top of political systems? Certainly Presidential systems, which favour deluded, lying narcissists, are almost designed for them.
It's an important issue which I don't think gets nearly enough attention.
Excellent piece @GarethoftheVale2
My great grandfather walked nearly 3 miles to a quarry near St Asaph and back every day and life was hard
At the turn of the last century my grandfather left North Wales to go to Manchester and hence why I was born in Greater Manchester
In 1966 and 1971 our son and daughter were born in the St Asaph hospital which my great grandfather walked past every day but was a workhouse in his day
All my children were schooled in Welsh and my daughter was able to go to our Welsh school on leaving primary school, but went with all her friends to the comprehensive school as Welsh became less important to her
All our grandchildren are schooled in Welsh and our 22 granddaughter is a fluent Welsh speaker
Welsh Labour and Plaid want all school children to be fluent in Welsh, and 1 million Welsh speakers by 2050 which simply will not happen
My wife and I went to Cardiff from Colwyn Bay by train last month and it took seven and a half hours, so it is little wonder we view Cardiff as remote and have far more in common with Chester, Liverpool and Manchester
As far as politics is concerned, Labour need to be defeated and as I have said I will vote Plaid if I consider they will beat Labour as I do not see independence as even a remote possibility but Labour need to understand they have taken Wales for granted for far too long and must pay the price
It has moved well beyong aspiration. The regime is in the firming up the implementation stage. It is already an authoritarian lawless state.
For the one with executive power as long as you ignore the rule of law, you start with all the cards and 10 nil up. You are quick, law is slow. By the time it announces, you have moved several stages.
A current stage is getting people used to internal military intervention.
Can it be stopped? I think we shall know fairly soon. Certainly by the end of 2026. At the moment I think it can't.
It's a worldwide effect of Trump's tariffs that are seizing up trade & causing a global contraction.
Blame Trump & not Reeves.
It is extremely important. Part of the reason many people don't examine backgrounds in this way is social norms like the idea of "cod psychology", which is one of the most dangerously overused phrases about, sometimes by people who don't want to examine any dysfunctions in their own background too closely, either.
I believe this to be literally true
Your comparison with tuition fees - which sank a political party for a decade -just reinforces that.
Unless and until there's a politician who can persuade us over 60s to make sacrifices for the generations below them, the demographics make it politically unviable.
I trust that "22 granddaughter" is age, not No 22 Grand Daughter (if we count them Charlie Chan style).
Furthermore Reeves was not blind to the consequences of her budget and trade woes
I agree that next year is quite probably the last chance.
No one will vote Labour just because it was Trump who screwed up their finances.
Which will act as a further disincentive to investing by business and more financial angst among individuals as to pensions planning.
Reeves would do less damage if she increased income tax by 2% now and got it over with.
Especially when Reeves decided to increase the most destructive and awful of all taxes, raising taxes solely on employment and not unearned incomes.
Again.
But what is "Rvaleeform UK" that we're promised next time ?
Polling is very stable lately. Reform high 20s to 30ish, Lab low 20s, Con high teens, LD mid teens, Greens 9 to 10
29 22 19 14 9 is about right
For the top job, the stages and filters in the UK are legion.
Get to be MP
Do well enough to be noticed and promoted
Be elected leader
Get 325+ seats in an election.
Each stage is gigantically hard, and takes up your life. As well as weeding out Putin and Trump, it probably weeds out loads of good people.
But, some will reply, 'Boris managed'. Yes, but he is not in the same league. He resigned over having a drinks party. His goverment obeyed court orders. Trump/Putin he was not.
So many people are short of money and that means making choices about what to spend it on which means less cash circulating.
The government could have done two things - cut the cost of housing and cut the cost of energy. The 1.5m new homes target is hopium with no route to recruit and train the construction workers needed nor domestically create the supplies needed. And energy bills remain pegged to the price of imported gas we increasingly use little of.
They're frit and they're shit.
a) Voted Labour
b) Voted Brexit
We don’t do that kind of pay cut though I know as some of the post-Communist countries reverted to capitalist systems in the early 90s, they did cut wages and benefits for those in the State sector and even Greece and Spain cut public sector wages during the Eurozone crisis.
The British approach is to freeze wages which translates to a real term cut as you know.
Raising the age at which the State pension can be taken is one option and that will no doubt happen. To be fair, frozen thresholds mean many people are seeing their workplace pensions increasingly taxed (the State pension itself isn’t) so perhaps we need to rethink that to encourage more people to fund their own retirement from workplace schemes which means the private sector stepping up to offer the kind of pensions to their workers other sectors achieve.
Some form of sovereign pension fund into which all private companies would have to pay and increased contributions from workers, he says, thinking aloud.
The logical endpoint becomes the end of the State pension with everyone self financing their retirement (hopefully not via the American style 401 with everyone playing the stock market). Can’t see that happening anytime soon.
The current system is in trouble but the irony is a lot of older people are currently doing very well so it works - to a point.
It is ....
Emma Barnett loves the sound of her own voice a little too much.
Either I'm getting old or Today really has gone downhill.
I know that the Chagos issue excites you because it is Far Away and you're a travel writer. Its three parts of Fuck All in reality and you're being wilfully disingenuous the way you are presenting it.
The bigger question is why we are footing the bill for a US Air Base in this way? I assume that we get something back for it, but with the manbaby now looking at AUKUS it comes back to whether or not we can trust this level of reliance on Murica.
And thanks for the interesting header, @GarethoftheVale2 .
Sooner or later, any decision made by Starmer’s Labour government turns out to be damaging for the UK
This is now being applied to the Gibraltar deal. Falling apart under scrutiny
Increasing SRA now when there aren't enough jobs to go round just pushes the cost into welfare imo. And then there are idiots like Torsten Bell who has previously talked about stopping people accessing private pensions earlier too, bringing minimum age closer to SRA. Absolute nonsense economics. Even though I am in the benefit system right now I'm looking at whether to take my limited private pension income early so I don't get locked out from it and trapped
Do to pensions the same as was done to many state employees over the past decade and a half "increases will be at 1% per year until the finances are sorted".
That's a nominal increase, but a real terms cut.
In real terms many people's salaries have been cut by over 20%, and that's people working for a living. Those who aren't working for their living deserve no more than those who are.
Similarly with the NHS
Of course this is blasphemy to many, but reality can at times be difficult to accept and new hard thinking is required
Likewise some are claiming this will apply to British troops or sailors in the Navy
When I retired, they hired someone literally half my age to do my job. That has to be the point - experience vs evolution. I couldn’t evolve the job because of my experience - someone new can.
There are huge disincentives even with public sector pensions if you want to leave early. Big penalties encourage older staff to stay. Remove those and you might get more younger people in earlier.
The other issue is the days of people staying at one job for decades are over - people move constantly for better base wages but if the pension aspect were attractive you might get more retention.
It’s complex and nuanced as I often say.
The hotel we are staying in has a Nespresso machine in every room. Can't complain at that.
Well actually, yesterday someone did complain that there weren't any sachets of instant!
Im all for means testing the NHS though
I exercise every day except Sunday (mostly not for long, although the exercise bike is an hour). The idea I should receive taxpayer funds for it is not something that sits well at all. I also don't eat very much. I shouldn't get paid for that either.
It may be more economical, but normalising state intrusion into personal habits and seeking to dictate these according to the whim of a government is not a sensible measure. Better an obese nation than one brute-forced into social obedience to the political agenda.
https://news.sky.com/story/controversial-aid-distributer-claims-hamas-has-carried-out-deadly-attack-on-bus-carrying-palestinians-13382379?dcmp=snt-sf-twitter
Today has reduced to a Gush or Gotcha format of which Barnett is a chief exponent (the Barnett formula!).
Interestingly she was on with Nick Robinson with whom she is supposed to have a fractious relationship to the point of refusing to appear with him. They've obviously been to the headmaster's office and been told to shake hands and get on with it.
"Reeves is a terrible chancellor, perhaps the worst we have ever had. She should read Frederic Bastiat, the French economist. As he put it, “the state is the great fiction by which everyone endeavors to live at the expense of everyone else.” One day, perhaps in 2026 or 2027, reality will reestablish itself, Reeves will realise that she has no money, and she will panic. By then, it will be too late: we will already be toast."
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/06/11/lazy-britain-chancellor-it-deserves-spending-uk-labour
1. The automatic misogyny. Yesterday @Foxy described it as the "Granny State". Of course, old women are the problem here. (Sarcasm alert). This is nonsense. Whatever the arguments for getting rid of the triple lock, charging NI on working pensioners and not giving benefits to those who are well off (all steps I favour), to claim as so many on here seem to do that if only there weren't any old people or old women things would be better reveals a nastiness which does those doing so no credit at all. The same applies to NHS spending which puts women's health low down its list of priorities.
2. The assumption that nothing has been done for the young or the working population. Everyone seems to have forgotten the £96.9 billion spent on furlough during Covid. It was spent on people in jobs i.e. the young and the working. That money needs to be recouped and it is absurd to pretend that the working population who benefited can somehow or should somehow be exempt from this.
3. People talk about tax on unearned assets - like homes. And yet when a proposal (however badly presented and explained it was) was presented stating that those with houses and savings should use those for their social care in old age, the fury on here and elsewhere from those insisting that this wealth should be preserved for inheritances was quite something. Assets for a rainy day should be used when the rain falls. Instead people wanted others to be taxed so that their own wealth could be preserved and passed on.
4. Everyone is going to have to pay more to put the economy on an even keel after Covid and given the issues we now face. The idea that those in work can somehow be excused and the money come from somewhere else, some other group is for the birds
I just want to get my own situation sorted. 3 smallish DB preserved pensions and a DC to work out how to maximise