Look You

Three cheers for Rhys Williams, the Welsh-speaking Labour candidate for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (where, of course, he would have to be a Welsh-speaker), but himself from South Wales originally. He has rightly denounced the use of Welsh to keep down the working class in Wales, and of course his Plaid Cymru opponents have rushed to attack him for having a go at the people of Carmarthenshire whom he seeks to represent.

But they know perfectly well that these attacks are totally false. The working class in Carmarthenshire speaks Welsh. That is why the militantly Welsh-speaking haute bourgeoisie of South Wales does not move there, or indeed to anywhere else where their Welsh conversations could be understood by any taxi driver, bartender or shop assistant who may be present.

That haute bourgeoisie, which is largely maintained at public expense and which perpetuates itself by means of super-exclusive but nominally state schools, is now seeking the devolution of Welsh language matters from Westminster, to which they are very rightly and necessarily reserved. MPs must give no quarter. Absolutely none.

And Labour MPs, in particular, would be mad to do so. Ex-Labour Independents and small parties, by no stretch of the imagination Hard Left, are on the rise in Old Labour Wales. One such has already captured and retained the seat from which Aneurin Bevan rose to ridicule the first ever Parliamentary Welsh Day on the grounds that “Welsh coal is the same as English coal and Welsh sheep are the same as English sheep”.

Siding with the South Welsh language-supremacist lobby against the general population of Wales, North and South, Welsh-speaking and English-speaking, would split Labour organically in two as these new formations both federated with each other and incorporated huge numbers of traditional Labour voters, members, activists, and indeed MPs.