Broken promises and the lust for power

Plaid may not have increased our number of MPs at this election, but it was good to see significant gains made in the Rhondda and next door in Cynon. The two constituencies saw significant swings to Plaid and cuts to the Labour majority. We saw our vote improve in many other valleys seats too.

The results show that in Wales people did not embrace the Tories, despite the instructions from the London papers. UK-wide, they failed to secure the majority they needed to form a government. Despite this lack of public confidence, we have ended up with an old Etonian at number 10 due, in part, to the opportunism of the Liberal Democrats who ditched their principles in their lust for power.

All this will make for interesting Assembly elections next year. In the first post-election debate at the Senedd, Kirsty Williams and her party colleagues were noticeably squirming about the policies they’ve had to ditch for this deal. Despite warning of the dangers of Tory public sector cuts before May 6, Liberal Democrat AMs will now have to remain silent while we take slash and burn cuts which they will no doubt try to spin as 'efficiency savings'.

Plaid Cymru has calculated that cuts of £220 million will be made to the Assembly budget this year alone, despite previous assurances from Tories that the Welsh budget would be protected for 12 months under their government. If we don’t see those cuts this year, we expect them to be doubled next year.

Grass roots Liberal Democrats must be left wondering if selling out on cuts and PR for a handful of cabinet seats is worth it. Disgruntled left-leaning Liberal Democrats have been invited to switch their allegiance to Plaid.

As for Labour, their scaremongering tactics which aimed to get people to vote for Labour in order to keep the Tories out, turned out to be rubbish. When they had an opportunity to stop Cameron and his cronies by forming a 'progressive alliance', they blew it. They must therefore take a share of the blame for what happens over the next five years.

I only hope that people remember that the election promises of Labour and Liberal Democrats were broken so, so quickly.

Best of a bad bunch

In last night's leadership debate the consensus is that Nick Clegg outperformed Brown and Cameron. If you want to judge a potential Prime Minister on their body language and presentation, then Clegg probably emerged as the winner. Being the party with the least to lose, it was predictable that the Lib Dems would gain from these debates, but I was not impressed by what Clegg had to say.

He implied that the Lib Dems would do away with Trident. Yet their manifesto says they will

'rule out the like-for-like replacement of the Trident nuclear weapons system. At a cost of £100 billion over a lifetime it's unaffordable and Britain's security would be better served by alternatives. We support multilateral nuclear disarmament and will ensure the UK plays a proactive role in the arms reduction talks starting later this year.'

Which means that they will continue with nuclear arms, and so won't save £100 billion. Clegg was playing the part of honest broker, yet their line on Trident is not honest.

Plaid says money should be spent on protecting the vulnerable and those on low incomes, rather than on weapons of mass destruction.

Furthermore, Clegg's views on monitoring immigration were, at best, complete nonsense and, at worst, sinister. Limiting immigrants to a certain region is not only impractical and impossible to administer but also abhorrent. He said it happens in other countries. Where? South Africa under apartheid?

Then we have the omission of any mention of Wales, Scotland or Ireland during the debate, let alone recognition of the changed political landscape outside Westminster. Brown, Cameron and Clegg had nothing to say about Wales and nothing to say to the people of Wales about devolved matters like health and education. We are of no concern to the Big Three. In Plaid we saw this coming and that's why we campaigned so hard, along with the SNP, to be included in these debates. The publicly-funded and publicly-obligated BBC chose to ignore our legitimate complaint, stifling the discussion and thereby potentially misleading voters.

So apart from Cameron showing himself to be lacking not only in substance, but also style without his baying Commons mob behind him, the other losers were all of the people living outside of England. Policies like health and education were discussed with the 'this doesn't apply in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland' disclaimer, but these three British politicians were answering to the people in the three and a half countries that make up Britan, without acknowledging that they were only talking about England.

In recent weeks, too many people have said of politicians 'they're all the same'. They all looked the same last night. I hope on May 6th people will 'think different'.