With just 20 days to go until the fifth National Assembly elections, readers will be unsurprised that it continues to dominate the news agenda here in Wales. This week brought us the latest Wales Political Barometer conducted by Cardiff University, ITV Wales and YouGov. The long standing poll – masterminded by our national statistical sage Prof. Roger Scully - was the first of its type to be conducted since the Steel Crisis and Panama Papers hit the headlines.
Before it was published armchair analysts such as myself were curious to see whether the Steel Crisis in particular would be sufficient to cause a substantive movement in the national polls which would significantly strengthen the Welsh Labour position in the next Assembly. A quick glance suggests that this has indeed been the case with the Welsh Conservatives’ rating dropping three percentage points – enough to put them down into third place overall. Combine this with a small rise in Welsh Labour support, and notably no movement from Plaid Cymru, and suddenly Welsh Labour’s chances of continuing to govern alone have received a significant boost.
As a footnote to this poll it is worth mentioning that while Welsh Labour’s seat numbers in the Assembly are likely to only marginally decrease (30 down to 28ish), they do so in a climate where their poll numbers are 14% down on where they were at this point before the last election in 2011. That means that if you are the largest party by the margin Welsh Labour enjoy, losing 14% of your support (more than the Welsh Liberal Democrats got in total in 2011) will only result in a two seats reduction to your Assembly representation. If anyone is reflecting on whether the Assembly’s electoral system is the best it can be then this statistic should give pause for thought.
Speaking of climate, this week saw close to 30 organisations – led by Cynnal Cymru / Sustain Wales – get together to hold the very first Future Generations Hustings. Attended by five of Wales’ six largest political parties (UKIP apparently did not respond to the invitation); the event saw prospective Assembly Members respond to questions on how Welsh public bodies should implement the new Well-being of Future Generations Act in terms of public policy areas such as energy, the environment and the economy. The subsequent debate touched on key ‘hot-potato’ issues including the M4 relief road, wind farms and Tata Steel. To find out more about what was said simply search for #WFGHustings on your generic fruit based portable Twitter device.
Finally, manifesto fever is in full swing as both the Wales Green Party and the Welsh Liberal Democrats made their pitches to the electorate. With both struggling to make much headway with the public it will be interesting to see whether either contained enough to turn heads. These publications followed Plaid Cymru’s trendy launch last week in Cardiff and Vale College’s ‘The Classroom Restaurant’, and are ahead of Welsh Labour and the Welsh Conservatives next week. It remains unclear whether the nation will be able to contain itself in the face of such excitement.