Monday 7 April 2014

La Pasionaria rightly blasts Labour, but what about the UK government?

 As you may have gathered from this Blog. I'm not a great fan pf the Welsh Liberal Democrat Kirsty Williams, leader finding her often claims of outage against the governing party to be rather over the top and theatrical .  to the extent I often refer to her as La Parisian.

But I must admit I have to reproduce this part of her speech to the her spring conference, because I concur with every word.
For years the Welsh Labour Government has enjoyed minimal UK media coverage, but Conference, things have changed. The chickens have come home to roost, and Welsh Labour doesn’t like it. Barely a day goes by when we don’t see another exposé on Wales’ public services.
For me, it feels really quite strange. I have an immediate reflex to jump to the defence of my country, no matter what.
It’s just so sad. We are such a great nation and we are so much better than those headlines. This isn’t what I want people to read about us.
Yet it’s not just sadness that I feel: it’s anger too. I know that some of these stories maybe motivated by a political agenda, but many are accurate and too often based on truth.
Our health service struggles like never before, our schools remain underfunded and underperforming, our economy lags behind the rest of the UK.
I am furious that we as nation are being portrayed in this manner.
Last week Carwyn Jones said these criticisms weren’t a war on Welsh Labour, or the Welsh Government, but a war on Wales as an entire nation.
How dare he take cover behind the people he is meant to lead. What kind of leader does that?
These headlines might hurt our sense of national pride, but we must not forget, it is Labour that is Wales’ weak link. Labour is holding us back, Labour – the weight around our nation’s neck.

What I  disagree with is that she is speaking from the position of a party that is in coalition that is starting to demolish the welfare state and privatising the NHS .

They have joined  in the cuts in benefits including the Bedroom tax and the demonising of those on benefits to the extent that they appear to be blaming  the poorest and weakest members of our society for the financial crisis.

If Labour are at fault in the running of the Welsh NHS whose responsible for the crisis in England?

La Pasionaria and the Welsh Liberal Democrats can't  have the luxury of opposition when criticising the Welsh Government in the Assembly and hop this diverts them from their collaboration with the Tories at Westminster .

It is time we looked for solutions from the opposition in the assembly and not just (though they should continue) attacks on the record of Labour there.

But with two parties offering by their record elsewhere  only a right wing agenda . It may fall to Plaid to offer a vision for a Welsh future so far we have only a glimpse and we can only hope they can raise to to the huge challenge ahead,



 

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I don't often agree with you, but today you have the rights of it.

John.