What the ruling class think of us

 On a PM broadcast last Thursday, Dominic Lawson, son of the former Chancellor, a Sunday Times columnist and a friend of the outgoing BBC chairman Richard Sharp, declared that the latter was brought down by "political pygmies" and that it was a good thing for the chairman of the national broadcaster to have a close personal relationship with the Prime Minister. Those MPs who endorsed the independent report into Sharp's appointment were, of course, elected by hundreds of thousands of British people, which Lawson was not.

 Then we learned that the current Prime Minister believes that we in Wales were no more than guinea-pigs in a socialist experiment. Speaking to the Newport rally of Welsh Conservatives, Sunak cited among other things the pause in approval of major road schemes and the failures of the NHS/GIG in Wales. Some of us believe that the major cause of long waiting-lists is the exodus of trained staff and professionals caused by Tory decisions in Westminster. (And how does one explain the initial decision to bar Sudanese doctors on NHS working permits from evacuation flights?) Be that as it may, there is surely less argument against the Welsh Government actually acting on the UK's commitment to combat climate change. Green, Liberal Democrat and even many nationalist voters will surely go along with the decision to set more stringent criteria for new road construction. So far from being puppets of Sir Keir, who is purging English Labour of socialists, Drakeford and his ministers are following his predecessors in being more radical than the party in Westminster. Often that means policies that are unsupportable, but in critical cases, like the settlement of disputes with transport and health unions, as well as more than paying lip-service to preventing environmental damage, Drakeford finds sympathy across the board. 

Sunak, Truss, Johnson, Lawson and their ilk no doubt find elections inconvenient, especially under voting systems that more closely represent the will of the people. Fortunately, there is little they can do about it. One trusts that one petty attempt, voter identification which discriminates against young people and the poor, will be thwarted in the English local authority elections next Thursday.