Jane Dodds, the Leader of the Welsh Lib Dems, has been selected as the top name on the Mid and West Wales list for the Welsh Parliament. At the last Senedd election in 2016 we came very close to winning a seat in this region.
Jane was briefly MP for Brecon and Radnorshire, winning a by-election in 2019, but sadly lost the seat in the bloodbath that was the General Election later that year.
Congratulations! Meet your new Mid and West Wales Regional Team! đđ pic.twitter.com/4giuCOsWru
â Welsh Liberal Democrats (@WelshLibDems) March 3, 2021
* Mary Reid is a contributing editor on Lib Dem Voice. She was a councillor in Kingston upon Thames, where she is still very active with the local party, and is the Hon President of Kingston Lib Dems.
9 Comments
That means that there will be at least one Lib Dem in the Welsh Assembly, as I believe that Ms Williams, currently âon loanâ to the Labour administration, isnât standing again. And then…..
It’s really not certain that we’ll even get one Lib Dem elected in Wales. It’s sad that unless something drastic happens in the next two months, the best we can hope for is that either Jane Dodds or Bill Powell get elected.
With the latest Welsh opinion poll giving the Welsh Lib Dems 2% in the regional vote and 4% in the constituencies the only chance is that Bill Powell can hold Brecon and Radnor. His personal popularity may just be enough to counter the Partyâs dismal poll ratings. With the Abolish the Welsh Assembly Party on 9%, the Welsh Lib Dems winning a regional seat is a pipe dream. I hope that those running the Welsh campaign realise this.
@gwyn Williams
can you give a link to the Poll you quoted ?
I can find no evidence about the Abolition Party on 9%, the 2 latest Polls I can find both put all the Others combined on 2%, thats after Reform on 5%, Greens on 4% & Us on 3%.
Paul Barker 5th Mar ’21 – 4:56pm:
can you give a link to the Poll you quoted ?
YouGov for WalesOnline…
âMark Drakeford faces major problem as exclusive WalesOnline political poll puts Abolish the Assembly on course for several Senedd seatsâ [1st.March 2021]:
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/politics/senedd-election-poll-seats-predictor-19906017
Why is Lib Dem polling in Wales so dire? The prospects for May look worse than 2016 and 2011.
By all accounts (on LibDemVoice anyway!), Kirsty Williams has been a good Minister for Education and her position weakens the excuse used elsewhere that voters have simply forgotten the party, so why aren’t Lib Dems seeing a benefit?
@Peter Watson – The Welsh media being as it is and the party’s lack of resources has made it even harder for the party to cut through in Wales than the rest of the UK. But in my honest opinion, we’ve done so badly in the polls and in elections for the last 10 years because quite frankly we’re absolutely crap at strategy, communications and campaigning – and we seem unwilling to learn. We just let the same people do the same things over and over again to ever worse results. It’s also the case that if it isn’t clear what the party stands for across the whole of the UK anymore, it’s even less clear in Wales – if we didn’t exist I don’t think many people would notice.
Kirsty Williams has been a pretty good Education Secretary. However, arguably she hasn’t done anything that the Labour Party wouldn’t have done on their own anyway. Being a cabinet member, she’s not really been able to advocate Liberal Democrat policy positions much outside her own constituency. I don’t think the party really gave much thought as to how her being in Government would benefit us electorally before agreeing to it – and hasn’t done so since.
I make the same point for Wales as I make for Britain as a whole, Politics has been in lockdown for more than a Year & current Polling tells us essentially nothing about what will happen after Covid. What it tells us about what will happen in May is equally unclear but its reasonable to suppose that the broad picture is Right – Labour, Tories & Plaid in that order with Reform, Libdems & Greens all getting one Seat or none.
Covid has pretty much abolished Politics in any normal sense & bodies Elected solely in May are going to be left looking quite odd & unrepresentative in a Year or two, after the Covid effect has worn off. I realise that is no comfort & all I can suggest is trying to think in the Long Term.
There’s been some good coverage of Welsh Lib Dem conference on BBC website, fair play. Though none of it appears to have been shared by the party on social media.