Cymru am Byth

When I travel to the office that I work at, usually once or twice a week, I rise at a quarter to six and I aim to be on the road before half past six in the morning.  Invariably, no matter how sensible I have been, no matter whether or not I have slept well, there is a gentle lethargy to the morning.  I am more than awake enough to drive, and I reinforce that with strong black coffee in a thermos cup in the cup holder, but nonetheless I am always aware that it is early. I am not really a morning person, no matter how much I want to be one.

It is my other ritual on this drive, from my hideaway in the hills of Strathard to the sleepy, middle class suburbia of Milngavie (pr. Mull-guy), to embrace my own middle-class, quasi metro-elite, liberal intellectual nature and listen to the Today Programme on what my Dad still tends to refer to as “The Home Service”.  I like to be informed, well I am frustrated and upset by being informed but it is less brain laceratingly awful than ignorance, and while I am not unaware of the imperfections of dear old Aunty Beeb, there is no more professional and editorially ethical channel to the news of the day than Today on BBC Radio 4¹

A little over a week ago I was making this morning odyssey on a Monday morning, which is unusual, and I was feeling more than a little jaded.  It was the seventeenth of June 2024, roughly halfway through the 2024 General Election campaign, and I was already thoroughly done with the empty discourse, question dodging and crowd pleasing.  I did not expect to have a truly surprising moment listening to the radio. Nothing prepared me for Delyth Jewell.

I am going to leave it to you, dear Reader, to look into Delyth Jewell - there is merit in leaving some things “on the table” - but suffice it to say the Deputy Leader of Plaid Cymru in the Senned is a fascinating and compelling woman, politician and a Monday morning delight.

I heard this incredible woman hold her own, speak from a place of articulating a position, espousing a received truth and there in my car, speeding² between Balfron Station and Gartness my eyes filled with tears and I felt a tiny glimmer of hope in the slim shaft of sunlight cast by a moment of political bravery and tenacity and authenticity.  It has taken me over a week to even think about putting into words how important that moment was to me, what Delyth Jewell gave to me on a beautiful Scottish summer’s morning.

I went back on the BBC Sounds website and grabbed the audio from her appearance and used Whisper to transcribe it so that I can share with you these moments that lit my soul back on fire and made me scream “YES!” from behind the wheel as I cleared my eyes of tears with the heel of my hand and did my best not to leave the road on a well known but slightly tricky corner.

I just need to set the scene a little, Ms Jewell has been challenged by Justin Webb that her party, Plaid Cymru, is at odds with the Labour Party on the subject of Britain’s membership of the European Union, and here is her response:

“Certainly, because I think we're probably one of the only parties in this instance that's willing to recognise reality, which is that Brexit has been an unbelievable harm to our communities. We are suffering in terms of red tape on businesses. We are suffering in terms of the rising costs for families, anyone who's going to the supermarket, all of these different ways in which our ports are suffering, and I am deeply dismayed with the Labour Party that they can see the same figures, they can see what the reality is, but because they are forever worried about chasing what they think public opinion might be, or fighting the battles of yesterday, that they're not willing to recognise what needs to happen now, to show that courage and conviction, like Plaid Cymru is, to say we need to rejoin the single market.”

No equivocation, no weasel words, no fear - here’s our position, as experts, as politicians and leaders.

I swear to you that I wept.

I wept to hear a working, sitting UK politician simply state a case for the healing that our country needs, on a national radio station, possibly the most listened to morning news programme in the country, certainly the most respected.

So there I was with tears of joy flooding my eyes in a spontaneous expression of elation, when she closed the brief segment with the words that would lead to my actual, audible outburst of delight:

”Well, I believe firmly that the rest of the UK as well will rejoin the single market and customs union. I think that that is an inevitability, but I don't quite understand why the Labour party are willing to say that they're going to put us through this economic harm in the short term because they're not willing to... Well, they're too frightened of what they think voters might think rather than leading from the front. I am put in mind of the story of the 19th century Parisian politician who said, 'well, I must leave you to my hostess because I see that there's a crowd advancing outside. Those are my people. I am their leader and I must follow them.' They should be leading. They should not be chasing what they think public opinion might be.”

There it was, the truth I had been feeling since the Parliamentary Labour Party had broken faith with the grassroots and ousted our leader, the one that spoke to us as the electorate and installed an empty shirt in his place.

No leadership, no vision, no understanding of what it SHOULD mean to be the Party of the workers, to stand in opposition to the Disaster Capitalism and blatant corruption of the Conservatives, to be everyone’s last hope for a political will waiting to be transformed through the ascension to government into the reshaping of our broken and battered society into a place where there is truth in the idea of ‘no one left behind’.  A political force that could, should and surely would have been the very realisation of the promised rising tide that would raise ALL boats.

In five perfect sentences the Deputy Leader of Plaid Cymru in the Senned absolutely nailed Sir Keir Starmer to the bare, cold wall of truth and dropped the mic.

What a moment!

Eyes streaming with tears, trying to keep the car on the road and beating the steering wheel with the heel of my right hand shouting “YES! YES! YES!”.

Never have I been more proud of my Welsh Granny³, of Wales and my lifelong love for Her!

Cymru am Byth!

Delyth am Byth!

Truth am Byth!

July 4th is coming, and for all my disappointments I am clinging to the idea that the polls are right and Labour will walk away with a tidy majority⁴, but I fear that little will change under this other Conservative Party despite its red rosette…

The UK Labour Party is offering no meaningful difference for the foreseeable future.  They have made the same spending pledges, they refuse to move on the two child cap, they are as anti-immigration as Reform UK, at least on paper.  They offer you and I and everyone else a brief respite from the horror of the NeoCon, NeoLiberal nightmare we have all been living in, but it is akin to being trapped in the desert and finding a small, shallow, dirty puddle and having to be happy that for today at least we will not die of thirst quite yet, and let us be honest we are quietly hoping that the dysentery gets us before thirst comes back around again.

I want to leave the final word to Jimmy Carr⁵ - I know, an odd choice:

”…you’ve got Keir Starmer, who seems nice enough, but somewhere in the Midlands, there’s an ASDA, missing its manager…”

Good night my friends, and good luck.

Footnotes

1. I realise that this is a wildly subjective opinion, I don’t care.
2. I use the term “speeding” here not to mean exceeding the speed limit, but to give a sense that I am travelling at speed - the road is National Speed Limit (60mph) and I am doing THAT.
3. OK, so I spent the vast majority of my life believing that my mother’s mother, Granny or Gran as she was to me, to have been as Welsh as the Eisteddfod, Bara Brith, Lava Bread and Welsh Cakes, but the truth is that she was only half Welsh and luckily for me as a Sassenach transplant to Scotland, half Scottish.
4. I live in Scotland and I DON’T want to see Scottish Labour take seats from the SNP, but I understand electoral maths and I know that they might have to do so to beat the Tories and I am conflicted because despite all of my disappointment with the lack of a real Progressive movement at the UK National level I don’t want the Tories to win…. Dilemma!
5. Jimmy Carr is not everyone’s cup of tea, I don’t want to get into a lot of arguments about his ethics on or off stage, but I am going to say that I’ve seen a very different side to him of late, and if you are prepared to keep an open mind he has appeared on the Secret Diary of a CEO podcast twice now and both times have been revelatory.  It would surprise me a great deal if anyone who might read this blog would actually be unwilling to concede that there is a side to him that has wisdom and compassion and intellect and that there is a point to the way he writes and tells jokes.  You don’t have to like his comedy, but I don’t think it can be written off in the way a lot of people across the political and social spectra are wont to do, as I dolefully admit I did.  Here’s the link to his joke I have quoted.