Edefyn/Thread...

1. Count the ways in which this is just bizarre...

A change of direction for a better Wales https://gwydir.blog/2020/07/24/a-change-of-direction-for-a-better-wales/ via @wordpressdotcom

2.**The gratuitous decision to rubbish previous manifesto writers. It’s no surprise that @DavidMeldingMS is standing down, but after being so rudely told to sling his hook you wonder if he’ll now speak out more forcefully in his remaining time on the Tory benches?

3.**Given that @DarrenMillarMS is writing the manifesto you’d assume that he’s done his homework, so the decision to attack @WCfPP so specifically must have been done in full knowledge that what’s said about it is just plain wrong.

4. Not just wrong, but easily verifiably as such. In the process he's also implying that @UKRI_news and @cardiffuni are Welsh Labour stooges. I mean, how does this build credibility? It's genuinely baffling.

5.**And then there’s – inevitably – the Dom-angle. The message from Millar and @PaulDaviesPembs is that Wales needs to learn to love the UK’s unofficial PM. You might not like his methods, but at least he’ll make the trains run on time...

6. Yet among the few concrete pledges in here - the 'starting point' - is a plan to reduce the amount of external advice received by Ministers (abolish @WCfPP) while enhancing power of civil servants by reducing the number of SPADs. So, the opposite of the Dom playbook!

7.**There’s also the startling gap between rhetoric and reality. We’re told that there’s going to be a *revolution* Wow! Yet the total identified savings in here (WCfPP and SPADs) amount to 800K per annum.

8. The overall size of @WelshGovernment budget is a movable feast in these corona-days but let’s call it £15B p.a. for the sake of argument. So budget cuts of 0.005% that enhance power of civil service + reduce external advice. Revolution? Really? I clearly need a new dictionary.

9.**What is more radical, however, is the attack on local government planning powers. Until now a familiar Tory refrain is the need to devolve more within Wales, including by enhancing power of LG.

10. Not anymore, it seems. Rather it’s a case of allowing the centre to over-ride other sources of power – which, tbf, is very Dom-like. Interesting to see if this presages a wider attack on powers of Welsh LG in the manifesto, esp. around education. Watch this space.

11.**Final point is why now? Why are the Welsh Tories pushing this stuff mid-summer 2020 when the election is scheduled for May 2021?

Only us (very few) anoraks care about this stuff at the moment.

12. There’s probably a 2nd wave of CV-19 to come. Certainly a massive amount will change before the campaigning proper starts. Yet attention is being craved and credibility burned *now*?

You wonder what’s going on behind the scenes…

http://13.So  overall, very curious. I’ve written here about how unwise the @WelshConserv would be to position themselves as the tribunes of London in Wales (Cymraeg). It's not the way to do 'regional' electoral politics...

https://barn.cymru/erthygl/y-blaid-geidwadol-gymreig-neu-blaid-mae-popeth-yn-well-yn-lloegr

14.But (inevitably, perhaps it seems that that is the strategy.

Effectively, they’re betting the farm on the popularity levels of the UK PM and the perceived effectiveness of the UK Govt in comparison with the Welsh Govt in dealing with the current epidemic.

15. I'd call that bet risky...

FIN