Welsh FM Mark Drakeford says talks are underway about removing Welsh party from ‘centralised control’
Welsh First Minister Mark Drakeford has said that Welsh Labour has begun ‘talks to remove centralised party control of Welsh members’, a move toward full autonomy that to many represents a first step on the road to a divorce from the toxic London party under Keir Starmer, David Evans and the Labour right.
Drakeford, who was heavily targeted by right-wingers for participating in the left-wing ‘The World Transformed’ event that takes place alongside Labour’s annual conference, has every justification in wanting the Welsh party as separate as possible from the gangsterism of ‘Southside’. As Labour’s most successful current leader, with left policies but facing an entrenched right just as Jeremy Corbyn did, and having seen Starmer interfere directly to remove left-wing Scottish leader Richard Leonard to please potential super-rich donors, he knows that the danger of Wales becoming a Labour wasteland like Scotland and large parts of northern England and the Midlands grow stronger with every day that passes under Starmer’s so-called ‘leadership’.
And Drakeford knows that the Westminster machine won’t hesitate to conduct its purge of the left in Wales if it is allowed to, hollowing out a great party to a lifeless husk – just as it has in England and Scotland.
Drakeford can also see the writing on the wall for the left politics for which his country hungers, if Starmer and co extend their influence or even tarnish the left in Welsh Labour by their mere association with it – as Starmer has been clearly identified as a major turn-off for voters.
And the arrogance of Starmer and the Labour right towards Wales has recently been evidenced in sloppy election materials that talked not about Wales, but about Scotland – and named Keir Starmer as Welsh Labour leader.
Anyone who wants to see a stand for real change and a real improvement in the lives of the many in Wales will welcome any steps to put Welsh Labour as far from Starmer and his gang in the minds of voters as possible.
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Mark Drakeford is looking more and more like the Leader UK Later needs.
*Labour
Jack T UK needs…you got it first time around!
Maybe breaking up the union is what some in the establishment want.
I’m not part of the establishment and I would love to see britain broken up with Scotland, Wales and england all independent countries, along with a united Ireland.
I believe there will be an in-depth interview with Mark Drakeford, about this, in Monday’s (11/10) Morning Star and I am looking forward to reading it.
I really do hope Welsh labour completely divorces from westminster labour, Wales will be an even better country when it does do so.
Cymru am byth!
I really do hope Welsh labour completely divorces from westminster labour, Wales will be an even better country when it does do so.
Indeed. Distancing themselves from the likes of kincock jr and bryant…what’s not to like?
Absolutely with you on that Toffee!
It’s not the ‘centralisation’ per se that harms Welsh Labour, it is the combination of it with “top-down” fabianism
Organisational ‘Centralisation’ is as harmful to Labour as it is to education, the NHS and much else where democracy and bottom-up democracy would improve performance and efficiency.
I’d argue that it wouldn’t only be Welsh Labour that benefits from Drakeford’s initiative. Westminster Labour would too. It’s the direction of travel that the Corbyn Project promised.
Who knows, maybe even Labour Scotland would recover from its blair-imposed coma and start breathing again?
Go for UDI nobody can exist in the disunited Labour party.Just look North to see an apocolyptic vision of what the right wing have done to them and Scottish Labour and be very worried.
RED ALERT – As Starmer & Johnson’s interference in Scotland and so potentially in Wales, has undermined the Unions: Northern Ireland next?
Starmer has already “interfeared” in Ulsters six gerrymandered Counties of Ireland and has agreed with the continued anexing of the other 3counties of Ulster that are Part of the commitment the knight has given to the continuation of the Partition of Ireland and British Colonial rule on the island of Ireland.No doubt the Knight will be attending with the Queen and the other knight of the realm Sir Donaldson the leader of the DUP flat earth society to celebrate the failed statelet and economic black hole N.Ireland.
br*xit’s sorting that one for them.
Good luck to him but never forget there are a lot of very right wing people in Wales.
Frightened people become RW everywhere lundiel. (Why do you think TPTB have misrepresented a not-very virulent virus as the cause of a covid pandemic ?). It worked with 9/11 and the banking crisis!
Drakeford has always denied being a welsh nationalist but his actions speak louder. He is a hypocrite snake in the grass, like Sturgeon, who wants to break up the UK into smaller fiefdoms.
Doesn’t every anti-Thtcherism democrat? Snake in the grass is maybe not not the appropriate metaphor SR.
Steve Richards, Drakeford is both a patriot and a socialist. He realises that the best interest of Wales is in separating the Welsh Labour Party from the main Labour Party.
The UK stand for: imperialism, racism and class oppression. What is it there to be proud about?
Steve Richards, Sturgeon and Drakeford are both Remainers. As a Leaver, could that be the reason you’re not keen on them?
I don’t think many people are that obsessed.
Unfortunately Welsh Labour have many officers in their number, who sook to frustrate JC being elected PM. Their lack of support to the campaign especially to those on the streets was baffling at the time
Drakeford’s not even all that impressive, it’s just that Starmer’s so hideously bad, almost anyone looks majorly better by contrast!
Considering the system he’s working within, Andy, and that the UKs political system(s) are a petri dish for crony-capitalsim-neoliberalsim, Mark D is sufficiently attractive as a mainstream democratic-socialist to be an operational unit’s FM. All power to him.
What should never be forgotten is that capitalism and fascism aren’t fundamentally different. As Starmer is a wholehearted defender of capitalism, he pulls towards fascism, as right-of-centre social democratic parties always do in the long run, even in Sweden. Properly defined, what is capitalism? Just as a slave-owning society is defined by the relationship of slave-owner to slave and feudal society by the relationship of feudal lord to peasant, so capitalism is defined by the relationship of employer to employee. Employment is the moral disgrace of capitalism, including the State capitalism of the USSR, China or Cuba. To be opposed to capitalism is to be in favour of the elimination of the employer-employee relationship. The co-operative, egalitarian relations which can replace it (think of Spain after the 1936 revolution before the Communists did their vile work) have no need of central control, no need to deny people the right to freely choose how to live their lives. Capitalism does. How often have you heard the CBI, the Institute of Directors, the Tory Party the Daily Telegraph, say “business needs certainty”. What they mean is control. How does control sit with democracy and freedom? Capitalism is always driving towards fascism, towards centralised control, surveillance, supervision, greater police powers, suspicion of foreigners, fear of refugees, militarism. Thousands of people have been expelled from Labour on specious grounds, without due process, and the Party has broken its own rules and the law in the process. That is fascistic in its essence. And remember, a fair number of those people are Jews, of course, the wrong kind of Jews. Democracy and capitalism can’t live together, which is why, since the franchise was granted, the capitalists have worked night and day to undermine democracy. They have been very successful. The billionaires have more control over government policy than the voters. What we are fighting for is the survival of democracy. Drakeford believes in it. Starmer doesn’t.
Genuine Communism is a good thing, not vile! The USSR wasn’t genuine Communist, China isn’t genuine Communist. Cuba comes closest but isn’t genuine Communist either.
When the ‘communists’ cock it up they are never the ‘genuine’ ones, but always failures who have let down the workers aspirations. What you have to realise is that communism by its very nature deprives individuals of agency and legitimate choice so must naturally result in corruption and inefficiency. The end product is always poverty and lack of freedom apart of course from the ruling class, the self serving elite, who know better than anyone else what is good for the rest of the population to suffer but make certain they live in comparative luxury themselves.
I was referring specifically to the Communists in Spain after the 1936 revolution. What was “genuine” about that? They sided with the fascists. It was thanks to the Communist destruction of the revolution that Franco came to power. In practice, Communism has been nothing but State capitalism and totalitarianism. Karl Marx would laugh his head off. But he too made fatal mistakes. It was Bakunin who saw where the idea of “dictatorship of the proletariat” would lead. He was right. The anarchists in Spain were right: kick out both the capitalists and the State and let people run their own lives.
Thank you Mr Dallas, an incisive and accurate analysis.