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Watching, and waiting

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“I see this as a last chance to change, for the Labour Party and politics more generally. People are giving up on it and that has got to be addressed by a new way of thinking about things, a freshness to what we do” - Andy Burnham   So the stakes are high. Our incoming Prime Minister recognises that, and frames his challenge not just in changing policies to meet the mood of the times, but in meeting the existential threat faced by both his party and the democratic fabric we have come to take for granted. He is right in his analysis. On current polling not a single Labour MP in Wales would be elected in a fresh General Election. Just two years after winning 27 of the 32 seats in Wales the Party would be wiped out. But without the challenge of a leadership election, where he would be forced to flesh out in greater detail how he intends to head off these threats, we don't know much about what Andy Burhham would do differently. We are left wondering if the ‘hopey, changey stuff’ (to u...
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Now comes the hard part

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Published in Nation.Cymru on May 9th 2026 So, the campaign is over but now comes the hard part. If you think forming a Government is tricky, try running one in the age of the Polycrisis! There are multiple crises all happening at the same time, and the Welsh Government has neither the levers, capacity, nor financial firepower to make more than a dent in any of them. But don’t worry, this is not a counsel of despair. It’s a case for focus. I am neither religious, nor an addict, but during my decade in politics I turned more than once to Reinhold Niebuhr’s ‘Serenity Prayer’: ‘God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference’. So, what can be changed, and what is out of the control of an incoming Welsh Government Minister? First off, we need to acknowledge the stark reality - times are hard and aren’t going to get better anytime soon. The extra funding the Welsh Government can expect over the n...
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A national plan to improve Tourette syndrome services

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Speech in Senedd on 21st January 2026 Tourette's is a complex and misunderstood condition.   And yet it’s a common one. It is a brain disorder that affects 1 in 100 people.  That’s a similar prevalence as autism, or childhood epilepsy, but it doesn’t get the same recognition - either from the general public or from the health service. If most people know anything about Tourette's at all, it's that it makes people swear and shout in public. And the excellent new Bafta nominated film, I Swear, which I would recommend to all, to some degree reinforces that stereotype. In fact the vast majority of people with Tourette’s do not have a compulsion to swear.  But as the film also captures they do suffer pain, anxiety and isolation. And yet people think Tourettes is funny. It's not. It causes great distress, and pain. Tourettes is not in itself a psychological condition, nor a behavioural one, nor is it caused by poor parenting.  It’s a complex neurodevelopmental conditi...
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The Devolution Generation - the birth and bedding in of the Senedd

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Centre of Welsh Politics and Society's and WISERD's 2025 Annual Lecture November 27th - Main Hall, Department of International Politics, Aberystwyth University Diolch am y croeso, ac y cyfle i dod nol. I don’t come back to Aber very often, so when I do I get the strange sensation of both continuity and change. The prom, the grind of Penglais Hill, and the smell of the books in the Huw Owen Library, are just the same as I remember them. They are fixed points. They have barely changed. What has changed in 30 years is the context. 30 years ago this just wouldn’t be happening. There were no annual lectures on Welsh politics, there were no conversations about Welsh politics. In fact, in the mid 90’s, whilst there was undoubtedly plenty of politics in Wales, there was not what we can properly describe as ‘Welsh politics’. What we had instead was neatly captured by the title of the HTV Wales weekly political programme of the time: Wales in Westminster. A programme that didn’t even ...
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