We’re only mid-way through January and already the green election light has been lit across the UK. But who has jumped the gun and who’s keeping their powder dry? And what about all that governing and politicking we’ve got to get through in between?
Read all about it in Who's Top Who's Not
Top: Rhun ap Iorwerth – taking Wales by storm
And we’re off! This was the week that the major parties in Wales fired the starting gun for the Welsh election (May 2026) by squaring off against each other during First Minister’s Questions.
To up the ante, a YouGov MRP poll for ITV Wales showed Rhun ap Iorwerth’s Plaid Cymru bounding ahead on 37%, 14 points clear of Reform in second. This left the two “major” parties, Welsh Labour and the Conservatives, trailing in 4th and 5th respectively, both hovering around 10%. The poll translates to leaving Plaid just 4 seats short of a majority. Meanwhile, Welsh Labour and the Conservatives would be looking at just 14 seats between them.
This could mean a lot of change in how Wales works with Westminster, especially given Rhun ap Iorwerth is none too impressed with some of Starmer’s decisions and said he would spell out his demands to the Prime Minister, “day after day”. As we are still in the phony war stage of the election campaign, Plaid is inevitably having to differentiate itself from other partes as much as possible and that means criticising both the Labour party as a whole (to present a clear choice to Welsh voters) and criticising the UK government (to shore up their nationalist base). But with the polls showing Plaid still just shy of a majority, there may be some more conciliatory language in the future to aid any possible coalition talks.
The Senedd has 10 sitting weeks left before it dissolves in April ahead of the election so plenty time for a bit more political argy bargy if you haven’t found the time to get stuck in yet.
Middle: Liz Kendall – has big tech met its match?
Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology Liz Kendall went in hard this week, in response to X’s Grok AI’s image function allowing nudificaiton and deepfake sexual images.
Kendall confirmed that the Government would use the Crime and Policing Bill to criminalise nudification apps. Kendall added that Ofcom, who are investigating X, “can choose to act sooner to ensure this abhorrent and illegal material cannot be shared on their platform.”
So far, so strong. The problem for Kendall is that legislation to make such deepfake images illegal has been ready since the summer and campaigners – many of whom have shared their own personal experiences of having images made of them – have accused the Government of dragging its feet. The Online Safety Act, made sharing intimate images without someone’s consent, or threatening to share them, a criminal offence for individuals and for platforms. The Data Act, also passed in 2025, made it a criminal offence to create or request the creation of nonconsensual and intimate images.
By Thursday morning, X announced it will stop Grok making sexualised deepfake images. Which, whether it was Kendall’s strident stance, or through conversations that No. 10 must have been having with X, is surely a win. But victory has a thousand fathers and No.10 also had to respond to the large number of Labour MPs who have been publicly criticising X and campaigning for a change. With Downing Street still fragile and vulnerable to ongoing leadership speculation, this change was a political win as well as a policy one. Whether Government can keep ahead of big tech as new problems like this continue to emerge is anyone’s guess.
Not: Robert Jenrick – defection pre-empted
On Thursday Kemi Badenoch sacked Robert Jenrick, the Shadow Justice Secretary, claiming “irrefutable evidence” that Jenrick was planning to defect from the party. Later that afternoon, Jenrick just about managed to do that after seemingly getting lost on his way to the press conference
The story has all the makings of perfect political gossip. A potential resignation speech left out and about, unofficial aides and anonymous sources, unconfirmed dinners, and competing (and contradicting) claims from both sides.
The defection allowed Badenoch to display some decisive leadership by sacking her Shadow Justice Secretary first, but Jenrick’s future looks unclear. For a man with ambitions to be prime minister and who is good at attracting media attention, is he going to play well with Farage who doesn’t tend to like sharing the limelight? And does adding yet another Tory to Reform’s ranks help them look more mainstream and electable, or does it dilute Reform’s anti-establishment raison d'etre?