Senedd

It’s not just in Westminster that Labour is having difficulties with transgender issues. Over in Wales, Mark Drakeford’s barmy army has been wrestling with the same debate, amid claims from Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi that LGBT charity Stonewall has ‘dictated policy’ to her colleagues at Cardiff Bay. And the Welsh Tories have clearly spotted an opportunity here for some clear blue water between the two parties. For last Tuesday, Tory Laura Anne Jones popped up in the Senedd to lob a grenade at Drakeford at First Ministers’ Questions. The blonde bombshell probed her opponent about just how the Welsh government intends to protect women’s rights in sports as ‘we have a

Away from Ukraine, it was all kicking off elsewhere in London yesterday. As the England rugby team was labouring to a 23-19 win against their Welsh rivals over at Twickenham, a similar fixture was taking place a few miles down the road at the nearby Richmond RFC ground. For, as per Six Nations tradition, a Westminster parliamentary team ran out to to take on their counterparts from the Senedd who had made the trip from Cardiff Bay. The London team was compromised of staff and members from both chambers in Parliament and was coming off the back of a successful 12-5 defeat of the Holyrood team in Edinburgh. But the Welsh team are

Wales doesn’t get much love from the national press these days. Among the three devolved assemblies, Cardiff Bay is very much the odd man out, not sharing the historic tensions of Stormont or the modern ones of Holyrood. The Labour government there has been in power since the Senedd’s creation; Plaid Cymru’s big push for independence fell flat in May, with the nationalists gaining just one seat despite excited expectations. But while Mark Drakeford was praised for his handling of the Covid pandemic – being comfortably re-elected off the back of it – in recent months his administration’s authoritarian measures have begun to grate somewhat. The controversial introduction of vaccine passports