Labour’s damaging control freakery

THE determination, presumably of the Labour NEC in London, to impose its preferred candidate as First Minister of Wales is now beginning to blow up in its face.

This was never a genuine contest and is yet another example of the Labour Party’s almost Stalinist determination to purge anyone who is not on message.

This has moved it rapidly to the right as it attempts under Starmer to ingratiate itself with persuadable English middle-class Tories.

No-one is allowed to rock the boat or question party policy. Anyone who does is frowned upon or, as in the case of Beth Winter, removed.

Any person espousing the tradition values of the Labour Party or who calls themselves a socialist seems to be swiftly silenced.

Starmer has now positioned the party to the right of the MacMillan government of the 1950s with his acceptance of much of the credo of the current Tory Party.

The public eulogising of Margret Thatcher is really unconscionable for anyone who remembers the critical damage done to the Welsh economy, and indeed Welsh society, during her bleak reign.

Labour’s increasing control freakery is now doing a lot of damage to the perception of the Welsh Government and to the whole concept of devolution itself as seen with the imposition of the “Party

List” voting system.

This is profoundly undemocratic but is very much of a piece with the party’s increasing desire to centrally control everything.

Why Plaid went along with this is beyond comprehension.

Plaid should now remove itself from any association with Labour.

The idea that a Starmer government would have a much different relationship with Wales from the current shambolically corrupt Westminster administration is absurd.

Wales does not figure on any English politician’s radar. The begging bowls deferentially proffered by the Labour Government in Cardiff will be regarded as an unwanted nuisance.

The ruthless exploitation of Wales’ natural resources is not a feature of the industrial past.

It continues with the Crown Estate revenues and the destruction of swathes of rural Wales with the construction of ineffective on-shore wind farms for the profit of outside interests such as Bute Energy.

This suits London now and there will be no change in this colonialist