Who will form the next Welsh Government?

Time to make a bold prediction

Hello and welcome to another newsletter.

A few things to mention before we get into it.

• Special reports. Over the last few months I have been working on a few special reports on topics such as poverty and education in addition to the usual newsletter. I am really excited to share them with you through the spring.

• Questions for Plaid Cymru. Next week I will be in Llandudno for the Plaid Cymru spring conference and will be interviewing the leader as well as other members of the party. If you have any questions or areas you would particularly like me to look at, either leave a comment or email me.

• Award winning. Last week I won Scoop of the year at the Regional Press Awards for my coverage while at WalesOnline of former First Minister Vaughan Gething’s donations. Given that at the time Mr Gething called the story “unserious” I won’t pretend it wasn’t a little vindicating.

A quick word about our sponsor:

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Differences between X and Bluesky

Last month I did a little experiment. I wanted to see how the exact same post would perform on both X (Twitter) and Bluesky.

All things being equal you would expect X to be viewed more. I have 5k more followers there and regularly have posts which are viewed over 100k times.

It has been obvious for some time that X is suppressing moderate political views as well as anything complimentary about Ukraine or Volodymyr Zelensky. I therefore posted a picture of Zelensky with the words “I have never been more convinced that Volodymyr Zelensky is the actual leader of the free world”.

Not really something I would normally post (though I do believe it) but I was curious to see the result.

For the first couple of hours the response on Bluesky massively outperformed X. I quickly got to 150 likes which is pretty standard and 21 retweets.

X was really interesting. For about 12 hours almost no person even saw the post. It was only seen by about 70 people in total. Given that I have almost 30k followers this seemed bizarre. Then suddenly there was a huge influx of comments in a very short space of time. Then the amount of views soared to 12.5k

It is pretty clear what happened. When the X algorithm picks up something that is likely positive about Ukraine, it barely shows it to anyone. Meanwhile bots pick it up and are directed to discredit and undermine the post. Only then can anyone view it. This both discredits the post itself and discourages other people from sharing similar views.

Clearly this is not a scientific study. But I share it to make clear that X is no longer a social network that can be used as any kind of barometer for public opinion. It is nothing more than an emotion-stoking hate machine aimed to forward the narrow political agenda and world view of its owner. If you are still using it, be aware that you are deliberately exposing yourself to this.

The tension between UK and Welsh Labour builds…

Last week I covered the decision by Labour MPs not to back the devolution of the Crown Estate to Wales. The lack of support from their comrades led to much frustration from Welsh Labour Senedd Members for whom it has been the policy for many years.

I also wrote about the growing feeling in some corners of Welsh Labour that they needed to pick a constitutional fight with their UK counterparts to give them something to hang their hats on in 2026. Well it looks like that is going to be around HS2.

Last week Plaid brought forward a motion in the Welsh Parliament calling on the Welsh Gov to write to the UK Labour Government asking for Wales’ missing HS2 billions. All Labour MSs voted against this but some have publicly criticised the UK Government’s stance.

Labour’s Mick Antoniw said that he “does not accept the UK government's response to HS2 funding” adding that “the response from the UK government has been unacceptable, it's been inaccurate, it's been flawed, and I don't believe it is credible."

I approached Labour MS Alun Davies who also voted against Plaid’s motion but expressed support for Wales getting the HS2 money. He said:

“My view is that we need to set out a route to the full devolution of rail infrastructure. Neither yesterday’s motion nor the amendment was clear on that.

“The Welsh and UK governments need to sit down, agree on devolution and then set out the investment and (short) timescale required to deliver it. The issue over HS2 funding is both an historic one and a current/future issue. It is appalling that the UK government treats Wales and Welsh needs in such a cavalier fashion. We deserve the same deal as Scotland and N Ireland.”

Alun Davies (Senedd Cymru)

There are two strands of Welsh Labour that are increasingly frustrated with the UK Government. The first are those who understand that the constitutional/funding settlement doesn’t work for Wales. For years they were able to blame the Tories for denying Wales a fair share. But now that their own party is completely refusing to remedy a self evident injustice, they are very angry.

The second are those who are not that fussed either way on constitutional arguments but are simply scared they are about to lose their jobs and position after 2026. They look at the polls, listen to people on the doorstep and realise they need a big old carrot to offer the electorate. They are angry because the only people that can provide them with said carrot are not even interested in discussing it.

Under the NHS stats

Next week we will have the latest waiting list stats for Wales to see how the Welsh Gov are progressing with hitting their target. However in the meantime I wanted to quickly show you a couple of charts that go into a bit more detail. I source the data to make these charts from the StatsWales website. You can look for yourself here.

The first one looks at the number of people who are waiting for an appointment broken down by health board:

The first thing to say is, don’t worry too much about the order of the health boards in terms of the total amount waiting. The order roughly corresponds to the size of the health boards. The thing to notice are the directions of travel. In the last year Betsi has seen the steepest growth. Yet again the North Wales health board is shown to be an outlier for all the wrong reasons (despite being put into special measures a decade ago).

The next chart shows the longest waiting lists but only for children (under 18):

This is one of the most depressing charts I have put together. The number of kids waiting over a year for their 1st appointment has gone up 50% in a year. It’s a truly terrible state of affairs and is all the worse when you consider what a big percentage of their young lives will be spent on waiting lists. For context, 10 years ago the number for all the categories was zero.

I think it is worth bearing in mind these deeper stats when the Welsh Government starts looking for praise for reducing the longest NHS waits. There is a lot of misery beneath the headline figures.

Prediction: Who will form the next Welsh Government?