Wales

Britain goes to the polls this week, as electoral contests take place in London, Scotland, Wales and across England. They’re the elections which James Forsyth described in the Spectator last week as the ones ‘no one has even heard of’. So what will happen on Thursday night and when will the results be announced? Here’s The Spectator’s run-through of the May 2016 elections: London Mayoral election: Zac Goldsmith and Sadiq Khan go head-to-head in the London Mayoral contest. In 2012, Boris and Ken ran a close-fought race, with Boris getting 971,000 first-round votes to Ken’s 889,918. The relatively small margin between the two meant the result didn’t filter through until

Oh dear. Gareth Bennett may soon regret his decision to appear on today’s Daily Politics. Bennett, who leads Ukip’s regional list in South Wales Central, agreed to be interviewed on the show after he came under fire this week for blaming increased litter in Cardiff on East European migrants. During his appearance on the BBC show, Bennett was grilled by Andrew Neil on whether he had any evidence to back up his claims. Despite a lack of proof, Bennett showed no sign of backing down: AN: You said you think there’s a hygiene problem, what is that hygiene problem? GB: Well it’s caused by lots of black bags being left

Household incomes have finally topped the levels they were at just after the financial crash. The average household in Britain now earns £24,300 a year, above the last peak in 2009. The picture looks rosy, with rising employment and low inflation helping income growth rise. But is there more to it than meets the eye?  It certainly seems that way if you live in London. Although those in the capital have enjoyed a healthy rise of nearly three per cent in their household incomes since the downturn, when you factor in housing costs, most Londoners are actually still losing out, according to the figures put out today by the Resolution

Ukip has been especially quiet over the last few months. Following the party’s disappointing result in the general election, Nigel Farage’s ‘unresignation’ and the briefing wars, the party has purposefully kept its head down. With Farage’s return to the spotlight last week, Kippers are gearing up for the fight of their lifetime. This is what has been going on inside Ukip in recent weeks and what you can expect to see from the so-called ‘people’s army’ over the next few months. Give peace a chance Since the internal turmoil and the ‘break’ Farage was urged to take by his colleagues, much of the party’s tensions have calmed down. Some attribute this to the pressure cooker atmosphere

Blue collars are all the rage in the Tory party these days, which makes Stephen Crabb a very fashionable cabinet minister. He was brought up in a Welsh council house by his mother, a single parent. His political views were shaped by seeing the way in which Thatcher’s reforms transformed his neighbourhood. He still believes Conservative values give the best hope for working-class and Welsh voters. As George Osborne leads an ever-deeper raid on Labour territory, we can expect to see and hear a lot more from people like Stephen Crabb. For the last year this confident 42-year-old has been Secretary of State for his native Wales, and his approach

I’ve just seen a poster from the NASUWT teaching union at a stall they have taken at this year’s Welsh Tory conference in Cardiff (where I am today). It suggests that the poor have it easier getting to university in Wales than in England because of the wicked ‘Westminster Coalition Government.’ This is an utterly dishonest poster. The poor, in Wales, have it worse – precisely because they rejected the redistributive policy of tuition fees. The poster espouses the facile logic that Ed Miliband has regurgitated today – that tuition fees somehow make the poor less likely to apply. The experience of another Celtic nation, Ireland, disproves that – they abolished fees in 1996 and a

It is interesting that neither Scotland nor Wales have been much bitten by the Ukip bug. The supposedly sensible view is that both of these countries are more kindly disposed towards the European Union than are the English — and that Ukip’s contempt for the European Parliament and its politicians is seen as another example of that rather too familiar English jingoism and xenophobia, commodities which are not terribly popular either north of Berwick or west of Monmouth. It is also sometimes mentioned that immigration is far less of an issue in Wales and Scotland — unless we are talking about English immigration, which does indeed tend to make the

In order to promote the Dylan Thomas in Fitzrovia festival, I am trying to persuade Jason Morell, the director, that he must help me come up with stunts. ‘It’s stunts that will get us into the meeja,’ I tell him. So we launch the ‘Dylan Thomas Fitzrovia Breakfast Challenge’. Gary Kemp, Tom Hollander, Owen Teale and myself swallow a glass of beer with a raw egg in it — the great Celtic bard’s preferred nutritional morning kick-off. We are supposed to film it and challenge three others to do the same in aid of inner-city charities, and thus news of our festival will spread like a west African disease. Nobody