Book of the Month: Who Cares About Wales?

This is the second book I've reviewed on my blog by Will Hayward, who is now probably the most influential journalist covering Welsh politics and current affairs. (Read my review of Will's book on Welsh independence.)

This latest book, published earlier this year before Plaid Cymru's historic win in the Senedd election, was a birthday present from my friends Justin and Annabel. So, a big thank you to them!

The basic premise of this book is that Wales has been spectacularly let down by it's politicians in the first quarter of the 21st century. Whether they have been in Westminster or Cardiff Bay, the people making decisions for Wales have often got things wrong. 

Will thinks the people of Wales should get angry about this, and he certainly seems to be. There are plenty of swears to underline points of particular frustration. It gets his point across, but I didn't feel they were all necessary. 

However, he has also managed to produce the most readable explanation of the Barnett funding formula that I've ever read. That gets talked about a lot in politics chat in Wales and it's never entirely clear that people know how it works. 

I can't vouch how right he is on a lot of the issues he covers, but from my perspective of working in the NHS, the issues he identifies in the section on health are bang on. The section on transport, especially rail, is a neat distillation of how Wales has been woefully hard done by. 

There were some real nuggets of interest along the way. For example, the creative sector generates far more economic activity in Wales than agriculture does - and for a fraction of the government subsidies. 

Will is critical of all the political parties, although most of his anger is directed towards Labour as they were the party in government in Wales for the entirety of the devolution era up to the point this book was written. He is particularly scathing about how Labour blamed so many problems on having to work with a Tory government in Westminster, but since Labour swept to power in London in 2024, Welsh Labour was very reluctant to push for all the things they'd been saying Wales needs. 

There is a hopeful conclusion, with some ideas of what could change. Whether any of that will come to pass in the tricky terrain of the first Plaid Cymru government in the Senedd is yet to be seen. I'm sure Will is already working on a book about 2026 onwards!

Election Leaflet Update 2026

I have been tallying up the leaflets that have come through my door at election time since 2007 and have just updated my graph to reflect the campaigns of the various parties for the Senedd election in 2026. We had a record number of leaflets through the door this time, and the Green Party now holds the record for sheer volume of leaflets, topping the previous high point held by the Labour party in the first election when Jeremy Corbyn was leader. 

So with no further ado, here's the graph:

The overall trend is up, with four parties distributing five or more leaflets. Admittedly, the Plaid Cymru figure this time is slightly skewed because on occasions when I posted leaflets in my street I skipped posting one through my own letterbox. But even if those were counted, the total number of leaflets we would have received would only have been 8, less than half the total we received from the Green Party. 

I haven't spoken to anyone who thought the Green Party didn't send them enough leaflets and I do wonder if the incessant leafleting backfired on them a bit. In fairness, their first leaflet landed on our doormat in November 2025 and then we had a Happy New Year leaflet in January as well. But the trickle became a flood in the last few weeks of the campaign. 

Getting so many leaflets didn't feel very "green" in the environmental sense. It also didn't escape my notice that almost all the leaflets were printed in Essex. I hope the party offset their carbon footprint for all the road miles. In contrast, all the Plaid Cymru leaflets we distributed in our constituency were printed by a printer in Splott (if we used a commercial printer). 

It is mildly amusing that with so many battles now fought online between bots and keyboard warriors, we are seeing such growth in analog paper leaflets. I'm just sad that this year I didn't have time to do a pre-election round-up. I was too busy with campaigning (ironically, giving out leaflets myself!) to do a full dissection as I have in years past, especially as we had so many!

You can read all my previous election leaflet round ups here.

On "Separatism" - a post for Star Wars Day 2026

Happy Star Wars Day. May the force be with you this May the Fourth.

I often blog about Star Wars on Star Wars Day, and this year I'm linking my post to the very current Senedd election (happening on Thursday!) 

I've decided to write about a trending word in politics here in Cymru, that always makes me think of Star Wars. Recently some politicians have started using the word "separatists" to describe people who support Welsh independence. 

Which, of course, makes me think of the conflict in the Galactic Republic in a galaxy far, far away....

CIS ("Separatist") flag

Brief recap: in the original Star Wars film, there was a passing reference to Luke Skywalker's dead father fighting in "the clone wars". Very little was explained about that but 20 years later, when George Lucas wanted to write the Star Wars prequel films, he decided it would be about the 'clone wars'.

If you're going to write about a war, you need to have two sides. In 'star wars' the combatants were the Empire and the Rebels. But something different was needed for the prequels, so we had the Republic and, um, the Rebels Separatists.

In the prequel films, the Separatists were either conniving warmongers looking to make money from galactic upheaval, or were being manipulated by the Sith Lord, Darth Sidious, who was using the war as a way of gaining total power for himself. However, in later media, like the Clone Wars cartoon, Separatist characters were introduced who had nobler reasons for wanting to be independent from the Republic.

But initially we were meant to regard the Separatists as bad guys. The offical name for the Separatists was the "Confederacy of Independent Systems" (CIS). 'Confederate' is a loaded word in US-centric cultural media. So the narrative dice were loaded against the Separatists from the start.

However, like I said, later Star Wars product has introduced some ambiguity. Can there be noble reasons for wanting to be independent? In other words, is separatism automatically bad?

Well, it seems the answer to that depends on what you are separating from and why.

We see in the first prequel, The Phantom Menace, that the Galactic Republic, is ineffectual at responding to an urgent threat to the planet Naboo. Decisions are being made at a distance from the flashpoint and there are multiple competing priorities. The reported suffering of the Naboo population doesn't speed up the decision-making process.

Additionally, there are wider issues. Slavery still exists on several planets. Large areas of the galaxy are under the dominion of crime lords and gangsters. The Republic has not used its strength and power to liberate people from lawlessness or to lift up people living in poverty. 

Certainly, within the Star Wars galaxy, "separatism" can spring from noble aims. 

And the Galactic Republic's response to the separatist movement reinforces the doubt about the Republic's legitimacy. They go to war. They take control of an army of clones - disposable humans - and fight against the Separatists. Now, sometimes this is justified because the Separatists are attacking planets loyal to the Republic, but as the war rolls on, any planet in the CIS becomes de facto an enemy. 

The other thing the Republic does is centralise power. The Chancellor becomes a proto-Emperor with emergency powers that become difficult and then impossible to revoke, and the Republic becomes an Empire.

And then, ironically the 'good guys' flip. What had been the good Republic against the bad Separatists becomes the bad Empire against the heroic Rebel Alliance.

And so to the discussion of Welsh Independence or Welsh Separatism...

I don't think 'separatist' is the terrible slur that people using it seem to think it is. Because, as I've said, that depends on what people want to separate from. It's fair to say the UK has problems and part of that is weak leadership both domestically and in a volatile international setting. 

It feels like Labour's hegemony has been broken in Cymru. While canvassing I have met loads of former Labour voters, including ex-members, who say they are done with Labour. The promise of change that many people hoped for when the Westminster government changed in 2024 hasn't been delivered.

And Westminster has had decades to make life here in Cymru better. Successive governments - Labour and Tory - haven't dealt with root issues, especially poverty in both rural and post-industrial areas. Poverty is always a political choice, whether it was David Cameron's cabinet of millionaires introducing 'austerity' or Keir Starmer's Labour Party taking away financial support for disabled people.

There are structutal and societal issues behind this too. Supporters of annibyniaeth (independence) are always told Cymru is too weak and too poor to go its own way - and when we ask why Cymru is so weak and so poor, we don't get an answer.

If we always do what we have always done then we will always get what we have always got. There is no plan in any party manifesto for parties that support the status quo to bring in any structural or constitutional changes to make life better in Cymru. It's more of the same, or slightly less.

Star Wars presents the warning that overarching political structures seek to protect themselves first and foremost. They respond to threats by centralising more and punishing those they think are an enemy. That natural sense of protectiveness is easy to manipulate by people who seek personal gain. They might not be Sith Lords, but they don't have to be.

In that context, if the government feels far away and seems more interested in it's own ends, that feels dominated by the wealthy and has permitted poverty to persist, is being a Separatist so bad?

Caerffili election reflection

The dust is settling after Plaid Cymru's win in the Senedd by-election in Caerphilly. Several days after the election my friend Anna asked me if I was going to blog about it, and I said it was on my list of things to do. At this rate, I think I might be the last commentator to pass comment. 

Senator Whittle a few days before the win

There are some headline takeaways. It's the first time Plaid Cymru have won in Caerphilly. Lindsay Whittle, Plaid Cymru's candidate, was standing for the 14th time in an election. It's the first election in a hundred years in Caerphilly that hasn't been won by Labour.

Oh, and Reform lost. By a considerable margin in the end. 

Turnout was high - 50% of the electorate, which was higher than in the last Senedd election. Reform tend to get people who don't usually vote to vote for them, but this time it seems like they encouraged a lot of people to venture out and vote for their main opponent.

Although they've put a brave spin on it, this was a major slap backwards for Reform. They expected to win. They had their victory party booked. Nigel had been to town a couple of times to gee up the locals with his anti-immigration dogwhistles. Reform's media cheerleaders had made the story all about them. And Reform had certainly splashed the roubles trying to get that seat in the Senedd. My friend Ben sent me pictures of all the leaflets and Reform churned out loads!

But Plaid Cymru won. Wales won. 

It's annoying that the media coverage seems to have been a) Reform came second, b) Labour got battered in a safe heartland seat, c) er, Plaid Cymru won.

Although... without the Reform angle, I'm not sure how much interest there would have been in this. I doubt the result - and Lindsay's name - would have been reported in the New York Times. I doubt (K)GB News would have had pundits staying up all night waiting for the result. (They were, apparently, quite disappointed.)

The following day this was circulating on social media. It summed up how a lot of people felt.

My main feeling was relief. I went to bed on Thursday night in a high level of anxiety. On Friday morning when I checked my phone I felt close to crying. Politics has been so relentlessly grim recently it felt so alien to be happy at an election result. 

I had reason to be anxious. I had been canvassing in Caerphilly a few times and the number of Reform placards and posters had increased over time. People said they were thinking of voting for them or were very coy on the doorsteps, which I interpreted as planning to vote Reform but being embarrased to admit it. There was fear too. An Asian family who ran a shop said the rise of Reform made them feel afraid for the first time about living in Caerphilly. I hope they celebrated the Plaid Cymru win.

Canvassing wasn't always easy. I got soaked to the skin in Ystrad Mynach. But the result makes it worth it. 

Ystrad Mynach before the deluge

The general consensus among people I've talked to is that this election isn't a very reliable indicator of how the Senedd election next year will go. This was a straight 'first past the post' election and, like many other commentators, I have a feeling people chose to vote Plaid Cymru as they had the best chance of beating Reform. As I said back in August after the Grangetown council election, it's hard to make floating voters stick. 

But hope springs eternal. Caerphilly's new Senedd member is a great advocate for his home town and the surrounding communities. I hope the people who voted for him see that and choose to vote for him again in May next year. 

Election reflection

Last Thursday was election day in the Cardiff Council by-election in my ward. 

Obligatory voting day selfie

I couldn't get to sleep on election night and kept checking the WhatsApp group set up for us canvassers. A little after midnight the provisional vote counts came in and they were confirmed shortly afterwards with an image of the results.

The Green Party won the seat by 44 votes. Labour came second. Plaid Cymru were the third placed party. Worries that split voting among those three parties would let Reform win proved unfounded. They placed fourth with only 13% of the vote. 

I felt sad for Neil, the Plaid Cymru candidate. He worked really hard campaigning. One of the first things he told me was that he wanted to run a positive campaign and focus on the issues not just complain about other parties - and our campaign was positive. I feel we asked people to vote for us because of what we promised, not just because we were "not Labour". 

Our campaign was in marked contrast to the Greens campaign, but I do wonder whether they can convert one time protest voters who wanted to "punish Labour" (like a Green leaflet said) into repeat voters. Personally, as a former floating voter, I don't think protest voters stick, and previous anti-Labour protest votes in Grangetown evaporated when Senedd or Westminster elections came round.

Even if it does turn out to be a one off, it was quite the result for the Greens - their first ever Cardiff Council seat and their first by-election win in Wales. I met the new Green councillor on Saturday morning and he told me it hadn't really sunk in yet.

And now some statting... Turnout was only marginally over 26% of the electorate, meaning only a quarter of people who could vote bothered to vote. From the time I spent canvassing I suspect a reasonable percentage of people were away on holiday on election day and possibly hadn't bothered to sort a postal or proxy vote. This election was held on relatively short notice and certainly wasn't in anyone's plans when they were booking their summer holidays. Turnout was 35% in the 2022 council election, which rather spoils the comparisons of vote share, however, I will give it a go...

In 2022, all four Labour candidates were elected with over 50% of the vote. In this by-election the Labour vote dropped by about half. In 2022, Plaid Cymru and the Greens campaigned together in the "Common Ground" alliance and came second with about 26% of the vote. The former Labour votes presumably went mainly to the Greens and Plaid Cymru this time round, as their combined share of the vote was about what Common Ground got last time plus the missing Labour vote. 

Meanwhile, it looks like Reform took a good chunk of their votes from the Tories. Propel, another pro-independence party, scored about 10%. The Tories and Liberal Democrats finished bottom of the heap. We didn't see a single leaflet from the Liberal Democrats and it really feels like they are completely finished as a force in Cardiff now. Strange to think the Lib Dems held all the council seats for Grangetown as recently as 2012. 

On a personal note, I enjoyed getting stuck in to my first active electoral campaign since going "Big P" political. Canvassing was more fun than I expected. I was a bit out of my comfort zone at first, but many people wanted to chat about what they thought the key issues were to a stranger who knocked on their door. I have developed an intense dislike for Ring doorbells though - both the chime, and the mild paranoid feeling that people are looking through the camera and deciding not to open the door. 

Certain conversations will stick with me -  chatting to the people smoking outside the Cornwall pub (who we had heard chanting "Starmer's a wanker" at Labour canvassers a few minutes previously), the lady who immediately left her house to go and vote when I knocked on her door on election day, the woman who told me Labour had "mesmerised" her ethnic community and she kept telling all her friends to vote Plaid Cymru instead. Only one guy told me the biggest issue that needed to be fixed was to "stop the boats". He didn't tell me who he was going to vote for, but I felt pretty confident I could guess. 

It's a good thing I enjoyed canvassing. There is another council by-election coming up over in East Cardiff and it's likely there will be a Senedd by-election in Caerphilly in early November, after the tragic death of the sitting Senedd member there. And then we have the full Senedd election next year, then the next full council election is due in 2027, and then some time in 2028 or 2029 we will get a general election. 

And that's if everything goes to plan, but politics has been volatile in the past 15 years, so it would be a foolhardy to bet on the future election schedule not changing! 

Election Day! (Cardiff Council by-election)

It's election day in the council by-election. Three late pieces of literature arrived yesterday. This included a fourth leaflet from Plaid Cymru - the only one I haven't been out delivering myself. 

A Labour postcard arrived with the post. It's monolingual. Honestly, I quite liked the minimalist approach on one side. 

The other side shows the Labour candidate in Blaenclydach Street, which is where he lived as a child.  

The other leaflet we received was from the Green Party - a big double A4 spread. Cathy said they are trying to use up all the trees.

I have looked at the picture on the front several times and I can't decide if it's real or whether the crowd behind are photoshopped. I recognise the candidate but I don't know who the other people are.

It's a hung jury in our house about the next picture. I thought it was quite effective in trying to get across a message that people are planning to vote Green. Cathy thought it was "filler".

In a conversation online, a Green Party member told me that several Liberal Democrats joined the Greens after the Lib Dems entered their disastrous coalition with the Tories in 2010. That was their explanation for why so many Lib Dem tactics from 15 years ago are reappearing in Green campaign literature now. Like dodgy graphs. 

I would question whether putting another party in the lead on your election literature is a good thing. The Tories did something similar back in 2017 when they compared Jeremy Corbyn's chances to other "unlikely victories" like the Brexit Leave vote and Trump's first win. And of course, Corbyn forced a hung parliament in a much closer contest than most commentators expected.

We will find out whether it makes a difference tonight! 

Council by-election leaflet review

Since 2007, I've been reviewing election leaflets on this blog (there's a list on this page) but this year is the first time I've had 'skin in the game' because I've been out delivering some of them! (ICYMI, I joined Plaid Cymru last month!)

We are having a by-election because one of our four Labour councillors resigned recently. (Probably because of events covered in this rather unpleasant news story that doesn't paint the Cardiff Labour Party in a nice light, and I can understand why she left.) The councillor who resigned is someone I've talked to about problems with a local park being closed, and, on a personal level, I thought she was a good councillor. But she's left a party I feel has been failing Cardiff as a city for a while now. 

And the result is this by-election. So, with just a couple of days left before polling day, here is a run-down and review of the electoral campaign leaflets that I've seen. Looking back at the council election in 2022 and the General Election last year, I didn't do my usual thing of awarding and deducting points. So, I don't feel too hypocritical not doing it this year either. (Obviously, this year, I think everyone should vote for Plaid Cymru.)

I should also point out that not all these leaflets have come through our letterbox. I have been given some of them by other people. It's been fun being in the canvassing WhatsApp group and seeing people sharing different leaflets they have received - usually new ones ended up coming through our door too, so it was a bit spoilery. But that's fine. 

I'm going to assess the leaflets on whether they are bilingual, their 'photo effort' and also the number of dragons or other Welsh symbols that appear on leaflets. The dragon quotient (DQ) is important. I enjoy seeing graphs and 'race' or 'winning' diagrams so will mention them too. I'm also going to sum up their overall message.

I'm going to do this in rough order the leaflets arrived, and first off the mark were Labour. They may have had the advantage because they knew their councillor was resigning, and as they run the council they had some sway over when the election was set. Their 'Grangetown Labour News' and a generic leaflet actually arrived before I knew there was a by-election.

Party: Labour / Llafur

Number of leaflets: 3 (candidate leaflet, Grangetown Labour News, generic Welsh Labour "Delivering for you" leaflet)

Candidate: Khuram Chowdhry (only features on one leaflet)

Photo effort: 1 of Khuram by Grange Gardens; a group shot of Khuram with Labour canvassers. Grangetown Labour News had head shots of the three incumbent Labour councillors who haven't resigned. The generic leaflet had five photos of Eluned Morgan, the First Minister on it. There were also some stock photos and the artist's rendering of what the new Channel View Development will look like, if it's ever finished. It seems to have been stuck in a half-built stage for months. 

Cymraeg: Yes, all 3 leaflets. 

Dragon Quotient: 1, an arty one on Khuram's candidate leaflet

Graphs: none

Overall message: Labour and Khuram say they know what the problems are - parking, litter, antisocial behaviour etc. And they have plans in place to fix it. Although, as they are the party that runs the council, it seems fair to ask why they haven't already put those plans into action and fixed it. There was a nice nod to the community litter-picking group in the newsletter. On the candidate leaflet, Khuram lists a load of things he would like to see happen - things like "protecting our parks and green spaces", when the Labour Council has approved plans to build on a chunk of The Marl, one of Grangetown's few parks. It does feel like all the things he wants to do would put him in direct opposition to most of his fellow Labour councillors. 

Party: Propel

Number of leaflets: 2 (both candidate leaflets)

Candidate: Vincent Yewlett (local guy who runs a business on Clare Road)

Photo effort: 1 candidate photo used on both leaflets, of Vincent stood on Clare Road, 2 different photos of Vincent and Propel party leader, Neil McAvoy, looking at 'problems' - the overgrown river bank and some rubbish strewn streets. Vincent is wearing a Wales retro football top in those photos. 

Cymraeg: both leaflets were bilingual

Dragon Quotient: Propel have a dragon in the logo and Vincent had a dragon on his football shirt in two of the photos, so that's a total of 4 across the leaflets. 

Graphs: none

Overall message: Vincent goes hard on his local status and claims to be the only candidate "walking the streets" of Grangetown. Propel are the "new Welsh alternative", apparently. 

Party: Plaid Cymru

Number of leaflets: 3 (2 candidate leaflets and 1 generic leaflet about how Plaid Cymru will fix NHS waiting lists)

Candidate: Neil Roberts

Photo from delivering the leaflets

Photo effort: 2 different head shots of Neil and a group photo with canvassers next to the bandstand in Grange Gardens. A couple of photos of problems - fly-tipping and a new development that is blocking out light for residents. The NHS leaflet is all stock photos. 

Cymraeg: wrth gwrs!

Dragon Quotient: Plaid Cymru use a daffodil in their logo and it features as an embellishment four times besides the logos. No dragons, though. 

Graphs: 1, showing the recent YouGov national poll that shows Plaid ahead generally in Wales.

Overall message: Neil offers a change from Labour and promises to challenge the Labour run council as "a fresh voice for Grangetown". He also wants to celebrate the diverse communities in Grangetown and challenge divisive rhetoric, with a direct reference to dogwhistle terms used by the Labour Prime Minister recently. Having talked to him, I know Neil wanted to run a positive campaign focusing on his ideas for improving life in the community rather than criticising other parties - a different approach than most of the other leaflets we received.

Party: Green Party

Number of leaflets: 5 (3 candidate leaflets and 2 attack pieces aimed at Labour)

Candidate: Matt Youde (knocked on our door while I was out canvassing; Cathy said he seemed nice)

Photo effort: multiple reuse of two photos taken in Sevenoaks Park (not Grange Gardens for a change) and one of Matt with his arms folded in an alley next to a big pile of fly-tipped waste. Two photos of another chap, who I think is the prospective Senedd candidate in next year's election but it doesn't actually say that. One of the hit pieces has a picture of Kier Starmer - which is one more picture of him than all the Labour leaflets combined. 

Cymraeg: all 5 pieces are bilingual

Dragon Quotient: zero! (Disappointing)

Graphs: a dodgy line graph based on "doorknocking data"; a race showing Labour and the Green runners leaving everyone else behind; a set of results from the last council election that claims Greens placed second, even though the Greens were in an alliance with Plaid Cymru for that election and the result was therefore a vote for both parties.

Technically not true

Also, technically, not entirely true

Overall message: Despite three candidate leaflets, I don't think Matt is offering much different from other candidates. He talks about litter - and, across all five leaflets, that is the only thing mentioned that could be considered an environmental issue. Nothing about the climate at all. Rent caps get mentioned several times. 

However, what is really different about the Greens' campaign is their two hit pieces - one is a letter from a former Labour councillor who has now joined the Greens and the other just says "Punish Labour, Vote Green!" I mean, that's a take, and I'm sure this will appeal to some people who are really angry with Labour but long-term you want to be more than just a protest vote because those don't stick. 

Wanted: angry voters!

Party: None (Independent)

Number of leaflets: 1

Candidate: Ahmed Abdillahi Abdi Samater

Photo effort: 1 candidate photo

Cymraeg: yes

Dragon Quotient: zero

Graphs: none

Overall message: quite positive, but the leaflet is a bit all over the place in terms of topics. Also the text was all centrally aligned and I find that hard to read.

Party: Conservative

Number of leaflets: 1 (given this landed alongside a leaflet for a builder, I suspect this was delivered by a leaflet delivery firm rather than a volunteer)

Candidate: James Hamblin (a Tory I know told me James lives in London but will be a Senedd candidate next year, so this is really just about him being able to say that he ran for the council as part of his Senedd campaign)

Photo effort: pretty decent - six different photos on one A4 double-sided leaflet. Photos of James outside the new central bus station (had he just arrived on a bus?), by the Tramshed venue, with Darren Millar (leader of the Welsh Conservatives), outside the Senedd with Andrew RT Davies (former leader of the Welsh Conservatives), with another guy I don't know possibly outside a pub, and an action shot of him cleaning some graffiti on Virgil Street. They aren't all taken on the same day either, unless he had a change of clothes with him. 

Cymraeg: None (except for the bilingual Welsh Conservatives logo)

Dragon Quotient: Zero

Graphs: none

Overall message: The Conservatives are using the hashtag #fixwales and there is a mix of ideas here, like night buses for Cardiff  and supporting live music venues. But there's some proper bollocks on here about "Labour's war on motorists" and how the Senedd shouldn't be expanded. At the same time as saying "36 more politicians? No thanks!", they are also saying they want a community council for Grangetown, which would be, er, more politicians, wouldn't it? Anyway, this is probably a good insight into the key themes the Tories will be campaigning on for the Senedd next year. 

And the very last leaflet to land on our mat was from...

Party: Reform UK

Number of leaflets: 1

Candidate: Joseph Martin

Photo effort: 1 candidate photo, where, weirdly, he's not looking at the camera.

Cymraeg: ha, ha, ha, no. 

Dragon Quotient: zero

Graphs: none

Overall Message: minimal really. "Cardiff needs Reform" is the slogan. There's a claim that Labour will introduce three week bin collections, which isn't true as far as I'm aware. On the scale of scaremongering, it's picayune stuff, but still it's misleading. I try to be fair in these reviews, even to parties I would never vote for, but there isn't much to say about this. When you have three policy statements and one of them is opposing something that isn't happening, then it's hard not to think it's a deliberate attempt to hoodwink people. 

So, that's the round up. 

Thursday is polling day. If you live near me and are voting, then vote Plaid Cymru!

The "lucky" unlucky Politics students have even more to write about

Back in 2022 I compared the mundanity of studying Politics in the 90s with the chaos of the last few years. My mum brought that up when we were chatting last night. As things seem to have gone even crazier since that blog post, I thought it might be time for a follow up. 

In the last two years we have had three Prime Ministers. One of them now holds the record for shortest Prime Ministerial term, which yet somehow also aligned with the death of the UK's longest reigning monarch. Then there was a coronation - the first in a lifetime for anyone under 70. 

We had changes in leadership in the devolved governments as well, and for a brief moment both First Ministers and the Prime Minister in mainland Britain were non-white. Vaughan Gething, who was Cymru's Prif Weinediog for about four months, made history by being the first black leader of any European country. 

The fact that none of them lasted very long in charge and two have already been replaced by white men (the other post is currently vacant) feels a bit regressive. Vaughan's tenure ended this week after bitter rows about screenshots of ministerial group conversations during the pandemic being leaked to the press, and ongoing questions about campaign donations. Along the way he became the first First Minister to lose a Senedd vote of no confidence. 

The most recent change in UK Prime Minister came about due to a General Election, which I've already blogged about. It was an unusual election, with Labour achieving a huge majority but other, more interesting stories on the fringes, like independent candidates winning in areas with large Muslim communities, the Green Party winning 4 seats, and success also for Plaid Cymru and Reform UK. 

And that's just politics in the UK. For my A-level we spent a year studying American politics. So I understand the system quite well. But back in the early 90s, current events were, frankly, boring. Bill Clinton had yet to get accused of anything untoward with an intern and American politics was far less polarised.

Contrast with current events now. Last weekend former President Donald Trump was wounded by a shooter at one of his campaign rallies. A couple of days later he was named the Republican nominee for the Presidential election later this year. He's also named a running mate who apparently thinks Britain has been taken over by Islamists. It's a bizarre claim considering the Muslim protest vote against Labour.

And now it seems the incumbent President, Joe Biden, might decide not to run for a second term. It's really not clear who would have the profile to step in at this late stage and take Trump on.

There is an old curse 'May you live in interesting times'. I'm beginning to think the times are too interesting. And I feel really sorry for anyone doing a Politics A-level at the moment. 

Anyone sitting their exams this summer would have enough material to write about just from events that happened while they were studying! I have no idea if they could keep up with everything. 

2024 General Election Review

The result: Wales stops feeling blue

I stayed up until almost 5am watching the election results come in. Admittedly, I didn't watch it all - after the exit poll announcements at 10pm I watched the Star Wars film, Solo, to kill a bit of time before the actual results were declared.

By now, everyone with a passing interest in politics will know the headlines. Labour won with a big majority - something that felt unthinkable after Boris Johnson's huge win for the Tories in 2019. 

The Liberal Democrats went big as well, their 72 seats being the party's highest total for a century - going back to when they were just Liberal, no Democrat. 

Plaid Cymru won 4 seats, doubling their representation in the House of Commons. The number of constituencies in Cymru had dropped from 40 to 32, so some MPs had been squeezed out already. Every remaining Tory incumbent lost - including a record 4 former Welsh Secretaries. Most of the seats were won by Labour and the Liberal Democrats got one. 

The exit polls predicted a depressing total of Reform winning 13 seats. In the end they got 5, including panto politico Nigel Farage finally becoming an MP. Subsequently there have been questions over whether several Reform candidates were real people. The picture of their candidate in Clapham appears to be AI generated. Several candidates in Scotland have a nonexistent digital footprint. They still got thousands of votes though. 

I was happier to see the Green Party win a new record total for them of four seats. Jeremy Corbyn held on to his seat in Islington as an independent candidate having been ejected from the Labour Party. Amazing to think he was leading Labour in the previous two elections. Other independents won in areas with large Muslim populations, which is being taken as a protest vote against the Labour Party's stance on Gaza. The success of the independent candidates took some of the gloss off Labour's victory. 

I was flicking between channels on election night. I stayed mainly on BBC 1 Wales which focused on results from Cymru. BBC2 was the general BBC UK coverage chaired by Laura Kuenssberg, who I feel has been very partisan towards the Tories for several years. She was matey with Boris Johnson and seemed like his personal PR machine at times. Watching Laura slowly assimilating what was happening was quite amusing. Her expression turned increasingly sour as the night wore on. 

Meanwhile, on ITV there were some decent guest pundits including Ed Balls and Nicola Sturgeon. Sky's coverage was also quite good. It seemed that Sky announced results a fraction before the BBC. Sometimes they announced a bit too quickly, at one point they erroneously credited the Greens with a win in a seat Labour won off the Tories.

Early on in the night Andrew RT Davies, leader of the "Welsh" Conservatives, lost his cool on BBC1 Wales and lumped the blame for the Tory defeat squarely on (now ex) Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. In fairness, he wasn't wrong in his criticism of the decision to call an election without a coherent campaign strategy. Rishi may have felt a July election would wrongfoot his opponents but it also seemed to wrongfoot his own party. 

I knew two people personally who were standing as candidates. My fellow Barry Town fan, Ian, was the Plaid Cymru candidate in the Vale of Glamorgan. A former work colleague, Charlie, stood as the Tory candidate in Llanelli. Neither won, but props to them both for standing. 

Now the dust has settled and we get to see whether Labour have been all mouth and no trousers in their promises of change. It's been barely a week and so far they seem to have made the right noises. I'm a bit concerned that the new health minister has links with private healthcare companies. But overall it feels that things may be different now. 

2024 General Election Preview

I've been putting off a review of election leaflets because... we simply haven't had any to review. Labour are the only party to get in touch. We have had three leaflets from them. So my traditional review of pre-election literature feels like a waste of time this time.

All we got...

Technically we are in a newish constituency because the boundaries have been redrawn. The net result of this is that the number of parliamentary seats in Wales has reduced from 40 to 32. That means we get 20% fewer politicians.

The irony is that Labour's central message is "Change", except, as Cathy pointed out, all we've ever had here in Grangetown is Labour. Real change here would mean voting in an MP from any other party!

Unfortunately we don't get the option of voting for an official Plaid Cymru candidate this time. Plaid announced they were withdrawing support for their candidate because of anti-semitic tweets just after the cut off date to get a replacement in (more details in this report, which includes details of the tweets). This isn't the first time Plaid have had a candidate with a dodgy track record on social media in our constituency. It's a real shame this has happened again because I wanted to vote for them.

Other people I've talked to have had lots of leaflets. I have noticed a major difference between a Labour leaflet posted through my mum's door and the ones we have received. The leaflet delivered in Shrewsbury was this:

Yes, actually a Labour leaflet!

In contrast, the Labour leaflets we have received have not featured this 'Stop the Boats' messaging. I strongly suspect that is because Shrewsbury's population is 97% white and skews towards older people, and the profiling experts would assume that means they will respond positively to anti-immigrant rhetoric. (My mum didn't!)

Meanwhile where we live is the most multicultural community in Wales. This is reflected in the (possibly photoshopped) picture of Labour supporters with our incumbent MP on his leaflet. 

I find that the most cynical aspect of this - the blatant racist 'Stop the Boats' rhetoric is bad enough, but Labour don't even have the guts to stand by their racism in communities that are more likely to be offended by it.

I am completely repelled by the leaflet that was delivered to my mum's. I've written before how my grandmother moved to Britain when she was 19 and how both she, and my mum, experienced racism. One day I will blog about my experience as a five year-old refugee - and how my family were given a 30 minute warning to pack everything and head to the nearest border. It happened while we lived in Africa and it has taken me years to properly grasp what was going on and come to terms with how much danger we were in. 

I wouldn't wish the experience of racist abuse or being a refugee on anyone. But you shouldn't have had to have experienced those things to have empathy and compassion for people in that situation. The way the people crossing the channel in small boats are monsterised and treated as less than human by the media and the right wing parties is sickening. And now Labour are doing it too. 

This is a deal-breaker for me. Labour are pandering to racists - and doing it dishonestly at that, by saying racist things to get racists to vote for them and then being careful not to mention it in other communities. The duplicity in that makes them completely unpalatable. 

Council election round-up 2022

It's council election day!

I've been blogging about election leaflets since way back in 2007. I don't always bother with council elections, but this year felt noteworthy for two reasons. Firstly, only two sets of candidates seem to be campaigning. Secondly, we have an electoral alliance that may herald a new joint approach in Welsh politics. 

We had people knock on our door on the same evening from both campaigning platforms. And we have had a bit of bumf from both of them. It seems a bit pointless rating them as there are only two. Here is a brief run down instead.

Firstly, here are the challengers - Cyngrhair Tir Cyffredin / Common Ground Alliance

Plaid & Green sounds like a terrible paint colour combo, but it's actually the alliance between Plaid Cymru and the Green Party of Wales. Both have put up two candidates for the four council seats in our wards. This may end up getting replicated in other elections, because it's probably the only way the Green Party are going to get influence in the Senedd, and it might just give Plaid Cymru the extra impetus they need to make headway outside their normal heartlands. 

We got six bits of bumf from them with their key pledges about improving local health services, more youth facilities and apprenticeships, affordable housing "for local residents not for greedy developers", better transport connections and better parks. 

I'm all for those. Although, realistically, health services aren't council jurisdiction so I don't know what they plan to do about the shortage of GPs in our area. I'm also jaded enough to interpret "better transport connections" as making it harder to drive anywhere rather than actually providing transport people want to take. Build me a monorail and I will be on it every day. 

One bit of bumf was a "letter" delivered on election eve ostensibly from a former member of the Labour party explaining why he was now voting for the Plaid Green Alliance. An interesting approach, but one I dislike. I prefer positive politics rather than having a go at other parties. 

In response, here are (three of) the incumbents: Grangetown Welsh Labour

If I was awarding points this time round, the use of a selfie of the four candidates would get a bonus point. But I'm not awarding points. Before I say anything more about this, I should point out that I've met Ash (the selfie taker) at recent Grange Community Action meetings and he has a genuine passion for the area, and another counsellor, Lynda, was very helpful sorting out some ongoing antisocial behaviour in our street. 

We had three bits of bumf from Labour. I noticed the careful branding choices that this is electoral communication from "Grangetown Labour" or "Grangetown Welsh Labour", almost as if the local candidates are trying to put some clear red water between themselves and the soulless binfire that is the Westminster opposition party at the moment. 

Promise-wise, there's some overlap with the Common Ground Alliance. Affordable housing, green stuff, opportunities for young people, reducing the number of cars driving around the city (they don't obfuscate that point). There is also an emphasis on education and promises of improving personal safety through tackling street crime. I saw some inflation going on in terms of the funding for the latter - in one leaflet they mention the specific figure of £432,000 being awarded from the Home Office to make streets safer. In another leaflet, this gets rounded up to £500,000. 

That sounds like a lot of money, but the average salary in South Wales Police is £42,000 per year. So, that's only about 10 new police officers. For the whole of Cardiff. And unless it's recurrent funding, at the end of the year, that's it. Breaking down really big amounts of money like this into what it can actually achieve is always depressing. 

There are apparently some other candidates standing but they can't be bothered to ask for my vote so I can't be bothered to go looking for their manifestos. Quid pro quo. Back in 2008 when I first blogged about the council elections, the Liberal Democrats were pouring resources into campaigning, but that party seems to have disappeared from the scene after becoming the enablers of Tory austerity in the 2010 "coalition" UK government.

So the choice this year seems to be just Plaid Green or Red.

Reflecting on 2021 – the year in politics

Another review post, of yet another year that's been interesting politically...

In January the UK officially left the European Union. This was Boris Johnson’s promise that won his party a majority in the 2019 General Election – that he would “Get Brexit Done”. Except, of course, it wasn’t as simple as that. There is a general reluctance to honestly assess the problems the UK is facing as a result of Brexit. Instead the government line seems to be that everything is going fine and if it’s not going fine, that’s the fault of those pesky Europeans.

But there are loads of things that aren’t going fine. Earlier this year there was a lot of coverage about the shortage of lorry drivers, due to Brexit. There has been a steady stream of different businesses that have been badly affected by new import and export barriers. More recently, a trade deal with Australia looks like it is going to be a disaster for Welsh farmers. We still don’t know what is going to happen with regards to Northern Ireland where the peace agreements signed in the mid-90s are dependent on open borders with the Republic. It’s all a mess and the people who are meant to be sorting it out keep quitting.

Throughout the year there have also been revelations of government sleaze and corruption at an unparalleled level. From Boris Johnson purloining funds to pay for expensive flat furnishings, to preferential treatment for political donors when emergency contracts related to the pandemic were awarded, through to the media breaking story after story of government ministers and advisors flouting covid restrictions and partying while the rest of the country suffered, it seems to have been a non-stop train of grubbiness, pilfering and backhanders.

This has led to an interesting phenomenon of a succession of Tory ministers going out onto the interview circuit to peddle the official lie (sic) to try and mitigate public anger, only for new evidence to be presented, which then prompts an admission that, yes, they have been naughty. The Prime Minister doesn’t seem to care that he is making his loyal acolytes look like chumps time after time. And yet he still seems to have a ready list of people willing to go out and lie for him and then be exposed as liars themselves. Clearly they aren’t that smart, that they keep doing it.

In comparison to the never-ending corruption circus in Westminster, the Welsh Government looks stable and boring, even. We had a Senedd election this year and everybody was surprised that Labour did as well as they did, retaining governmental power again. 

Senedd election leaflets

The Conservatives made gains too, at the expense of the various warring factions that used to be UKIP. I interpret that as evidence that the Tories are now very right wing, because they seem to have hoovered up those votes and hollowed out their opponents to the right.

Plaid Cymru didn’t make any gains in the Senedd, which was disappointing for people with a preference for Welsh Independence. It feels like much of the energy has been lost from the Independence movement. That may be due to lockdowns and living through the pandemic perma-crisis, but there has also been a lot of nastiness within the big independence organisation, Yes Cymru.

As the UK Government lurched from embarrassment to embarrassment in 2020, Yes Cymru membership grew to 17,000. However, it had dropped to less than 9,000 by the time of the vote on the future of the organisation in early December 2021. There have been some long-running toxic rows on Twitter. None of these rows are about the big questions of independence; instead they have almost all been focused on trans rights and opinions held by some people within the movement.

This seems to have completely derailed Yes Cymru as an organisation. I have heard some mutterings that the whole trans rights issue blew up after the UK Government formed a ‘Union Task Force’ to look at countering the growing independence movement. I feel it’s an overreach to claim the trans rights issue was a false flag used to splinter a progressive movement. Similar debates have taken place in the Green Party and in other movements, so it’s not unique to Yes Cymru. But it has damaged the organisation, taking away impetus and causing it to stagnate. Back in March I was planning to start blogging more on issues related to Independence, but the toxicity in the movement kind of put me off. I’m still a member of Yes Cymru, although I’m not really sure why.

So it has been an interesting year, politically. One more outcome of the Senedd election is a change of health minister, which in turn seems to have delayed work starting on some behind the scenes changes that will have an impact on my job. It’s one of those rare occasions when a politics news story has an effect on me personally. Or at least an effect I notice.

Senedd 2021 post-election review

Well the election took place last Thursday. Most of the results came in on Friday and the final couple of regional lists were counted on Saturday. We had one more leaflet arrive after I published my review last week. It was from Labour and took them into the outright lead in terms of literature. 

The updated graph looks like this now:

For the first time in my chronicles of election bumf there were more leaflets from "other parties" combined than from the main contenders. That included the Abolish the Welsh Assembly Party who were trying to become main contenders. 

There was an uptick in leaflets from all the main parties compared to the 2019 General Election when it feels like nobody was really trying. UKIP reappeared on the radar this time, although that might well be a 'dead cat bounce'. In fact, that is one of the most interesting aspects of this Senedd Election - the absolute failure of the right wing parties to score seats.

In 2016, UKIP gained 7 seats, mainly off the regional lists. The EU referendum was the big thing that year, with a month to go. However, since then those 7 Senedd members have fallen out with each other multiple times, sitting as 'Independents' or representing other parties. Hence why there were sitting MSs from Abolish the Assembly and the Brexit Party when the Senedd dissolved for this election.

The funniest comment I saw on Twitter about the right wing collapse was that Abolish the Assembly wanted to get rid of Welsh democracy, and then Welsh democracy turned around and voted to get rid of Abolish the Assembly. They claim they will be back but it's hard to imagine them surviving five years without a base in the Senedd. Meanwhile UKIP did incredibly poorly, and Reform UK, which was the Brexit Party two years ago, similarly made little impact.

UKIP, Reform UK and, to an extent, Abolish, were all pushing the same main policy point - get rid of the Welsh Parliament. But the original primary reasons that drew people to UKIP and Reform UK, the push for Brexit, have been robbed from them by the Conservatives. If people aren't happy with devolution and Wales governing itself within the current limits established by Westminster, then the Welsh Conservative Party are firmly Unionist and the natural home for the regressive right given their current stance on immigration, the EU, foreign affairs, and London calling the shots in the United Kingdom. 

Certainly, I would interpret the rise in seats for the Conservatives as hollowing out the hard right wing party vote, and combined with the infighting and rebranding and, let's be honest, toxic personalities involved in those hard right parties, those Conservatie policy shifts were enough to capture the voters they had previously bled to the right. 

So will any of these parties be sending me bumf in the next election? I wouldn't bet on it. But who knows? The regularity of elections these days mean we are probably due a General Election soon enough. We will definitely be getting one in 2024. The next Senedd election will be in 2026 unless something totally unexpected happens. 

Meanwhile, a wad of leaflets are going in my recycling bin tonight!

Senedd 2021 Election Leaflets Review & Ranking

With less than a week to go to the Senedd Election, here is a review of the political literature we have recieved so far. I introduced the scoring template in a preview post, but to recap, parties earn points for SMART goals, the number of leaflets, being bilingual, contact details, candidate photos, and endorsements. Parties are docked points for vague objectives, throwing shade - 1 point per target, photos of politicians from other parties, photos of the area that don't include the candidate, stock photos, and typos. I'm also going to list "pandemic points" as a possible tiebreaker.

As of this post we have received 20 pieces of post so I am going to list them by most leaflets then alphabetical order, which means we start with Labour.

Party: Labour

Number of items: 4. 2 of them are general for the list votes and 2 were from Vaughan Gething, the constuency candidate. Only 2 were bilingual, so 6 points

Quite like this design

SMART goals: 3 points - not many, as the leaflets tended to focus on what "Welsh Labour has delivered" rather than making promises. I like the idea of a new national forest - and that's a measurable goal. We will either have one or we won't.

Contact details: a total of 10 ways to get in touch with either generic Labour or Vaughan himself.

Relevant photos: 10, including lots of Vaughan in the consituency. All 4 regional list candidates had pics. Including the one called Mr Death. (He's never going to be health minister, is he!)

Endorsements: 6 different ones. Vaughan got an endorsement off Lynda Thorne who is one of my local councillors who has been very helpful in the past.

Vague objectives: -7. Including to make Wales "a greener country".

Shade: -2. Main targets are the Tories who get unfavourable comparisons across a lot of policy areas. Plaid Cymru apparently "want to put up barriers to our neighbours just over the border".

Irrelevant photos: 0

Typos: -1

TOTAL = (35-10) = 25. I think this is the most points Labour have ever scored in one of these rundowns. True, they racked up the easy points with the contact details, but overall their literature is a lot more positive than it has been in previous campaigns. If there was more detail to their goals they would have scored even higher.

Pandemic Points: 10! Vaughan Gething mentioned it a lot in his 2 leaflets. But then he is the health minister so I think that's reasonable. 

Party: Liberal Democrats

Number of items: 4. These all came like letters in proper envelopes. We had 2 from the local candidate, Alex Wilson, and 2 from the regional list candidate, Rodney Berman. All 4 mailings were a letter and leaflet, so 8 pieces of literature in total, all bilingual = a whopping 16 points.

Comms note: one of the leaflets is a CV of the candidate, which is quite a nice piece of literature. Given the lack of space I'm not sure why they needed to include his hobby of running a theatre group, though.

#TopTip: Only include necessary information on a CV

SMART goals: 3 - not much really that could be measureable. A lot of space on the regional list leaflets is used up explaining how to vote tactically and "lend your vote" to the Liberal Democrats. 

"Pssst! Lend us a vote, mister..."

Contact details: 3

Relevant photos: 9

Endorsements: 2

Vague objectives: -7. Things like "better schools and hospitals" are laudable, but not specific.

Shade: There's a personal swipe at "our current MS", ie.e. Vaughan Gething, but they don't mention his name. In it's own way that's extra-insulting. Plus "The Conservatives simply don't have the answers for Wales' future" while Labour "is a wasted vote" and "Plaid are focusing on consitutional issues ahead of the COVID recovery." While asking Labour voters to lend a vote to them, they say that could have kept UKIP out of the Senedd last time. I'm going to count that as shade too, so the total shade points are -5.

Irrelevant photos: -1 for a stock photo.

Typos: 0

TOTAL = (33-13) = 20, a respectable score

Pandemic Points: 3

Party: Plaid Cymru

Number of items: 4. 2 general ones and 2 for the local candidate, Nasir Adam. All bilingual, so 8 points.

Is it just me, or is this Labour's colour scheme...?

SMART goals: 11. Lots of these including specific numbers. 1000 more doctors for the NHS. 5000 more nurses and other healthcare professionals. 50,000 new homes. And a promise of an Independence Referendum before 2026.

As a note, just because a goal is SMART doesn't actually make it smart. I have grave doubts an extra 1,000 doctors could be recruited in just 5 years.

Contact details: 4

Relevant photos: 10 - lots of photos on Nasir in action including on a community litter-pick wearing a t-shirt that riffs on the cover of Straight Outta Compton by NWA. An interesting photo choice. Judging by these leaflets, Plaid have one approved photo of party leader Adam Price, which must appear on all their literature. Just that one photo. No others.

Endorsements: 0

Vague objectives: -10. Lots of aspirational stuff like "a fair deal for families". What does that even mean?

Shade: The thing about encouraging tactical voting is that you end up throwing shade on parties by just saying they can't win. That's said about the Greens and the Lib Dems. Generally though they don't really go after anyone. -2 points.

Irrelevant photos: 3 stock photos! -3 points. 

Typos: It's not a typo but on the leaflets from Nasir, he lists 4 pledges on one leaflet and 3 pledges on another leaflet and the pledges are different. So I'm going to ding a point for inconsistency. -1

TOTAL = (33-16) = 17

Pandemic Points: 1

Party: Conservative Party

Number of items: 2 bilingual leaflets = 4 points.

SMART goals: 5. Promises of 1,200 more doctors but only 3,000 extra nurses. 5,000 more teachers and lots of big new roads, all heading out of Wales, incidentally. Also a very cunningly phrased promise about council tax - constituency candidate Leighton Rowlands will "vote to fund a council tax freeze".

Contact details: 2

Relevant photos: 3

Endorsements: 0

Vague objectives: -5, including "more police on our streets". How many more?

Shade: Just the one reference to Labour failing Wales before the pandemic. -1 point.

Irrelevant photos: -5. Stock photos of policemen, a hospital, a motorway.

Typos: 0

TOTAL = 14-11 = 3 points

Pandemic Points: 1

Party: Abolish the Welsh Assembly Party

Number of items: 1 (saes yn unig)

SMART goals: 0, unless you count the name of the party

Contact details: 0

Relevant photos: 0

Endorsements: 0

Vague objectives: Do we count hashtags? #SaveWales #SavetheUnion. They reckon a vote for them will bring about one education system, one health service and one government. No real detail on what that would look like. I'm going to give them -2 for the hashtags.

Shade: This leaflet doesn't say anything beyond slogans.

Irrelevant photos: 2 stock photos, one of the Senedd with a red cross through it and a landscape. -2 points

Typos: 0

TOTAL = (1-4) = -3

Pandemic Points: 0

Party: Freedom Alliance 

(This appears to be some kind of anti-Lockdown party. There are also are a few conspiracist-tinged phrases in their literature, like "the current political structure and its controllers".)

Number of items: 1 (saes yn unig, although it does say "For the love of Cymru vote for freedom")

SMART goals: I guess "no lockdowns, no curfews" could be measureable. A generous 2.

Contact details: 3, including a QR code.

Relevant photos: 1 photo of the constituency candidate, Alan Golding.

Endorsements: 0

Vague objectives: This whole screed is a vague objective, starting with "a new way of doing politics is needed". Alan promises to return Wales to a position "where people matter more than our politicians". This will be through "honest conversations" and asking "difficult questions that need to be asked". To be honest by the time I got to the appeal to "common sense solutions", I had checked out. However, a quick run through brought me to a tally of 19 vague objectives. A new record. 

Shade: All other policial parties and "career politicians". And their controllers too I guess. I'm going to just give -1 point as he is the only candidate to throw shade on the controllers. 

Irrelevant photos: 0

Typos: 0

TOTAL = (7-20) = -13

Pandemic Points: doesn't actually mention the pandemic, despite claiming "Lockdowns have plunged the Uk into unimaginable debt, caused a national mental health crisis, devastated our children's education, and have been directly responsible for many avoidable deaths from cancer, heart disease and suicide." Still, 0 pandemic points. 

Party: Independent (David Rolfe)

Number of items: 1 (saes yn unig) - the smallest leaflet received so far.

SMART goals: There was no room for any on the leaflet.

Contact details: 4

Relevant photos: 1, of the man himself, David Rolfe.

Endorsements: 0

Vague objectives: David listed 3 bullet points, but with no details, they all count as vague objectives so -3 points.

Shade: David claims to be "An independent voice among the political chaos of mainstream parties" but he doesn't actually throw shade on anyone. 0 points.

Irrelevant photos: 0

Typos: there's a word missing in the legally required text on the leaflet. -1

TOTAL = (6-4) = 2

Party: Propel

Number of items: 1 bilingual leaflet = 2 points

SMART goals: "We will end Welsh lockdowns". OK. Well I guess that's measurable. It also mentions that Propel candidates have signed a "Contract with Wales" to introduce 10 Acts in the Welsh Parliament. The leaflet invites me to look them up online, but I'm not really that invested. So there may be details there that would turn them into SMART goals. I'm only giving 1 point though.

Contact details: 3 social media channels

Relevant photos: 1, of leader Neil McEvoy. And his signature. Which potentially gives graphologists a deeper insight into Neil's personality.

Don't need to ask for his autograph

Endorsements: 0

Vague objectives: the summary of the Contract with Wales lists 4 vague objectives. There is another vague objective listed as part of their proposed Coronavirus Recovery Act. So a total of -5.

Shade: Nothing. 

Irrelevant photos: 1 landscape stock photo, so -1

Typos: 0

TOTAL = (7-6) = 1

Pandemic Points: 0

Party: Reform UK 

(This used to be the Brexit Party)

Number of items: 1 (saes yn unig)

SMART goals: The one measureable goal is to halve the number of councils in Wales from 22 to 11. They are also promising no more full scale lockdowns. 2 points.

Contact details: 3 social media channels

Relevant photos: 2. There's a photo of the local consituency candidate Alan Pick, and one of party leader Nathan Gill (who was previously elected to the Senedd as a UKIP candidate and then quit that party).

Endorsements: 0

Vague objectives: They want to reform a lot of things but don't say how. I counted 5 vague objectives.

Shade: They accuse Welsh Labour of keeping children out of schools without good reasons. Otherwise, they use a good chunk of the leaflet to claim that 50% of people don't vote in Welsh elections so seem to be trying to cultivate people who don't vote rather than steal voters off other parties. So that's just the 1 shade point for the Welsh Labour reference.

Appealing to people who normally can't be arsed

Irrelevant photos: 0

Typos: 0

TOTAL = (8-6) = 2

Pandemic Points: 0

Party: UKIP

Number of items: 1 (saes yn unig)

SMART goals: They want a referendum to scrap the Senedd. They also want to cut alcohol duty and scrap business rates for small companies. I'm going to give them 3 points.

Contact details: 0

Relevant photos: 6 of their list candidates and Neil Hamilton who is the party leader (and is beginning to look like the Emperor Palpatine), so 7 points in total.

Endorsements: 0

Vague objectives: Lots of comments like "UKIP Stands against the knee-taking cultural vandals who want to erase Wales' history by removing statues to its fallen heroes." Talk about fighting imaginary enemies. 

Culture warriors screaming at clouds

There's other stuff too like ending illegal immigration and funding the NHS instead of sending foreign aid, which has echoes of the lies told during the Leave campaign about all that money that could be spent on the NHS and which then disappeared. I counted 9 vague objectives.

Shade: Lots of it. The Tories and Reform UK "are desperate to keep their snouts in the trough", the Abolish the Assembly Party weren't nasty enough to displaced people in a migrant camp, Mark Drakeford "cosies up to Plaid Cymru who want to destroy the UK and drag Wales back into the EU." They mention the EU a few times. It's clearly a bogeyman for them. The only people they don't mention are the Liberal Democrats, which must be quite demoralising for them in a way. -5 points.

Irrelevant photos: 0

Typos: 0

TOTAL = (11-14) = -3

Pandemic Points: 0

Party: Worker's Party

Number of items: 1 bilingual leaflet, so 2 points

SMART goals: 1 (free bus travel for kids)

Contact details: 3

Relevant photos: 4. (3 photos of the people I think are the named candidates and 1 of George Galloway, party leader, who is also on the regional list.)

Endorsements: 0

Vague objectives: 8, at least. But a lot of statements that aren't anything, like, for example: "There should be no homelessness in Wales... Affordable housing projects are not affordable for normal people." There's no actual commitment to do anything.

Shade: there's a swipe at "big business" but no mention of any other parties. 0.

Irrelevant photos: 0

Typos: 0

TOTAL = (10-8) = 2

Pandemic Points: 1

And that, dear readers is it, for now. Well done if you have made it this far. Hopefully you will get your strength back in time to vote on Thursday.