Many congratulations to Kirsty Williams, who has been named AM of the Year as part of the Welsh Political awards. The award, given to Kirsty last night at Cardiff City Hall, was “for exercising her political skills to enable the First Minister to achieve his budget, but also allow the Lib Dems to claim significant policy gains in the areas of health and education.”
Kirsty has had a great year with a great appearance on Question Time, her minimum nurse staffing levels bill, the first debate on transgender issues, the campaign for Severn Bridge tolls etc. Kirsty is one of our strongest speakers and many LibDems regard her as a great star of our party.
The awards are organised by the Welsh Yearbook Online and are celebrating their 10th aniversary this year.
* Paul Walter is a Liberal Democrat activist and member of the Liberal Democrat Voice team. He blogs at Liberal Burblings.
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15 Comments
It is worth noting that despite being the smallest group in the Assembly the Welsh Liberal Democrats AMs have now won AM of the year for three successive years. Four of the five AMs have won awards in the ten years this has been running. Kirsty herself has won three separate awards.
The ideal next leader for the national party? She ticks all my boxes but is not a member of the UK parliament yet.
Does anyone seriously take any notice of these fatuous awards? They appear to me to be a ‘political class’ holding a mirror up to themselves almost as a deliberate method of showing how separate they are from the governed.
She got an award for helping the Labour party. That’s what it says in the article.
Meanwhile, in my area, the NHS is in crisis, and the local council is cutting everything, including education and the rest of local government.
Moreover, it’s unlikely that the Lib Dems will hold onto Kirstys’ seat at Westminster come next May.
Tsar Nicolas – you clearly know more than last week’s poll from Lord Ashcroft that showed that the Lib Dems will keep hold of B&R.
tom 10th Dec ’14 – 4:03pm
“Tsar Nicolas – you clearly know more than last week’s poll from Lord Ashcroft that showed that the Lib Dems will keep hold of B&R.”
You clearly missed my lengthy post on the thread dealing with the Ashcroft poll, which explained why I am dubious about the Lib Dems hanging on there.
I would also like to point out – as additional proof of how detached from basic Liberal principles the party in Wales currently is – that the president of the Welsh Liberal Democrats, Baroness Humphries, also voted for the abolition of judicial review.
Last spring admiration for Kirsty soared when whilst surfing Twitter I stumbled across a post in which Kirsty boasted how her young daughter has assisted in lambing at the family farm for the first time. Now if anyone tells me that this had nothing to do with politics or that it was not Kirsty but her daughter who pulled the lamb, they miss an important point. The tweet proved that here in Wales we have a Leader with a life outside politics for whom the family farm has a place as well as a political career; in other words I can relate to her as woman of the people who is also a powerful political debater in contrast to how I struggle to relate to the college boys and city gents in the Westminster bubble with their peevish antics at PMQs.
Kirsty is great. Perhaps she and Nick Clegg could arrange a ‘job swap’?
By any metric you care to pick – membership, electoral achievement, council elections, grassroots activity, anything – the Liberal Democrats in Wales underperform as compared to England or Scotland, so in whats sense is Kirsty great?
As an individual perhaps, but not as leader.
Tsar Nicolas – for a man so clued up it’s strange you weren’t aware that Christine Humphreys isn’t party president.
Tsar Nicholas: The Liberals were once dominant in Wales but that was nearly 100 years ago since when it has been mostly dominated by the Labour Party although their position is weakening gradually. Liberals in such circumstances are not usually strong elsewhere in the UK. Their strength is normally in areas where Labour is weak. There is also competition from Plaid in Wales as well as the Conservatives but things are changing. In the Euro elections UKIP came close to beating Labour as the largest party in terms of vote share, being only 0.7 per cent behind them.
tom 11th Dec ’14 – 10:46am
“Tsar Nicolas – for a man so clued up it’s strange you weren’t aware that Christine Humphreys isn’t party president.”
Well, I thought that there had been a change but when I checked on the Welsh Lib Dems’ website, I found that she is, according to the website, still president.
http://welshlibdems.org.uk/en/page/christine-humphreys
Maybe this inaccuracy is just another metric of under performance by the Party in Wales.
Thanks for pointing out the inaccuracy, Tsar Nicolas – I’ve just updated the website. I’ll head off now to think up some more draconian, illiberal things to do now like our debate on trans awareness, securing investment in Wales’ poorest pupils and fighting to improve mental health services. They’re all terrible things, right?
Thanks, Cadan – I can now claim “A record of Action -a Promise or More!”