Author Archives: Alan Eurig Williams

As Shaun Ennis wrote about his frustration about the lack of progress in the North of England by our party, he should be lucky that he isn’t living in Wales.

As a party and a movement that was once the dominant voice of Cymru, seeing our leader Jane Dodds eke through the sixth seat in Brycheiniog Tawe Need at last week’s Senedd election showed what a parlous state the party is in Cymru at the moment. Overall, the situation has not improved since 2016 where our votes remain low and the number of seats won to match. We were lucky indeed to have Jane Dodds, who was a very effective debater and is well regarded by the community she serves and her party in general. But there was no escaping the facts she expressed frustration and dismayed that the party (once a bastion of Welsh politics) has been relegated to the peripheral.

I applaud the efforts by my fellow party activists and campaigners who spend years or decades within their communities pounding the streets, knocking on doors, campaigning in the local community. But when the time came for these communities to vote in the Senedd election, many of them went the other way and voted for Reform, who had candidates expressing horror for having the honour of being elected a member into the Senedd because they were assured by the party that they were paper candidates.

They are now led by a man who left his homeland over thirty years ago and was until very recently the Conservative Group leader in Barnet Council. Given the history of Nigel Farage’s numerous parties, we will look forward not to five years of holding power to account but a term of infighting, rifts, splits and no-doubt shaking down the Senedd for every penny they can get.