“…what this sort of reporting ultimately means is that if you have enough money to get somebody, anybody, to produce a white paper for you, which you can then put on some think-tank stationery? Then, my friend, you are ready to enter into the rushing current of elite reportage.” Sublime.

erthygl newydd gan @richardwynjones.bsky.social yn @cylchgrawn-barn.bsky.social mis Tachwedd barn.cymru/cy/dathlur-c...

BBC really burying the lede there

Y diwrnod mawr! Cyfarfod y pwyllgor ymgynghorol, y ddarlith gyda @richardwynjones.bsky.social ac arddangosfa. -- The big day! The advisory committee meets, @richardwynjones.bsky.social lecture and we have a small exhibition. #PlaidCymru100 @plaidcymru.bsky.social @librarywales.bsky.social

📚Lansiad Llyfr! Ymunwch â ni i ddathlu cyhoeddi cyfrol newydd Llion Wigley (@wigs24.bsky.social), 'Ynysoedd Gobaith: Mentrau a Syniadau Iwtopaidd yng Nghymru'r Ugeinfed Ganrif', nos Iau'r 27ain o Dachwedd! 🕢7:00yh 📅27 Tachwedd 📍 Kings Road Yard, Pontcanna, Caerdydd Dewch yn llu!

"Gwyn Alf Williams wrote “Labour’s old majorities stand like Aneurin Bevan’s memorial stones”, looking like the “Stonehenge of Welsh politics.” In Caerphilly, one of those stones has cracked; shifting political weather now threatens more monuments to Welsh Labour’s historic majorities." #Senedd26

Braint cael cyhoeddi yn Fortnight. Llyfr Philip Stephens yn werth chweil hefyd. Real pleasure/privilege to get the opportunity to contribute to Fortnight, one of the other island’s best publications. And ‘These Divided Isles’ is well worth your time.

Braint cael cyhoeddi yn Fortnight. Llyfr Philip Stephens yn werth chweil hefyd. Real pleasure/privilege to get the opportunity to contribute to Fortnight, one of the other island’s best publications. And ‘These Divided Isles’ is well worth your time.

If parties want credit for telling hard truths, they need to tell them when they're genuinely hard. If Labour had told the truth about taxes & the costs of Brexit before the election, its majority would be smaller. But it would have more real power & the public would put more faith in its judgment

Sharkbait: Nigel Farage needs the threat of an election to keep Reform moving forwards. My SKETCH.

Mick Antoniw: ‘Is Caerphilly a turning point for Welsh Labour?’ labourlist.org/2025/11/wels... – via LabourList

NEWYDD - @jaclarner.bsky.social a minnau ar Etholiad 2024 yng Nghymru NEW - Jac Larner and myself on the 2024 UK GE in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 2024 UK General Election in Wales url: academic.oup.com/pa/article-a...

Wele hanas fi a Billy. Dal i gofio - bob diwedd Hydref a diwedd Ebrill. Bu farw 28 Hydref 1952. yrhenddeurodiwr.wordpress.com/2025/04/24/a...

Another Labour post mortem in which the by-election result only serves to confirm *all* of the author's priors. Who knew Afon Denial ran through Caerphilly? labourlist.org/2025/10/labo...

PENNOD NEWYDD Gwleidyddiaeth y Gymru gyfoes a'r Bedyddwyr Albanaidd... Be' gewch chi well? Wrth fy modd hefo'r holl lythyrau. Diolch! Mae'n rhaid mae fel hyn mae Rhys Meirion yn teimlo?! bbc.com/audio/play/p...

Superb piece by Ben Tonra in today’s Irish Tines, on Ireland’s strategic choices in a predatory world, with the necessity of a strategic pivot towards Europe increasingly apparent. Everyone interested in foreign policy making should read this.

"We'd have won if not for those pesky polls" Claiming Lab > Plaid switching is just about Reform is really unhelpful to Labour. Unhappy Labour voters have switched to Plaid in elections long before Reform (or UKIP) were on the scene. And the rubbish about YouGov 🤯 labourhub.org.uk/2025/10/28/c...

This is shockingly uninformed about how polling works

Blaming the polls for Caerphilly is now 'a thing', it seems! But this is just embarrassingly ignorant: "YouGov...is based on a panel of volunteers which allows any party that is organised to improve its poll rating by getting members and supporters to sign up." labourhub.org.uk/2025/10/28/c...

Byelection announced 3 Sept. YouGov poll published 17 Sept. Byelection held 23 Oct. So it was neck and neck for a fortnight and then it all fell apart with Labour ending up with 11% of the vote (but they could have won!) Really not sure this is what really happened...

Exclusive: A member of the Welsh Government’s expert literacy panel has resigned, warning the new £8.2m national programme to improve reading is “flawed” and “not fit for purpose”. Full story below 🧵 1/

"Labour has dominated Welsh politics since 1922, it's won every UK General Election, it's won every devolved election and currently it's trailing in a very poor third place. And it could fall even lower as the remaining Labour vote votes tactically to keep Reform out" - @richardwynjones.bsky.social

If you're able to overlook the ignorance about 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 politics on display - I guess there's going to be a lot of this ahead of next May, isn't there - there are some interesting insights here into the problems of Labour groundgame and what Reform were trying to do with theirs

Os allwch chi oddef yr awybodaeth am wleidyddiaeth 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 - da ni’n mynd i gael llawer o hynny cyn Mai nesaf! - mae na bethau diddorol yma am broblemau ymgyrch leol Llafur a be oedd Reform yn ceisio ei wneud ar lawr gwlad yng Nghaerffili podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/t...

Ymateb @richardwynjones.bsky.social i canlyniad is-etholiad #Caerffili ar @bbc5live.bsky.social / Prof Richard Wyn Jones responds to the #Caerphilly by-election result on BBC Radio 5:

Podlediad BBC Radio Cymru #Gwleidydda nawr ar gael gyda @richardwynjones.bsky.social a Vaughan Roderick yn trafod canlyniad syfrdanol #Caerffili neithiwr 👇#Senedd26 www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

Tickets for Reform's UK's Welsh victory event are still available to buy online with Caerphilly by-election candidate Llŷr Powell booked as a guest speaker along with Lee Anderson who was active throughout the party's failed campaign ✍️ Emily Price

Ymateb cyntaf i ganlyniad Caerffili… www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

Facts for the by-election fans staying up tonight: No seat has ever flipped at a Senedd by-election: Bl Gwent in 2006 while notionally a Lab loss was won by the widow (& party) of previous incumbent who left Labour in 2005 Labour has held Caerphilly at Westminster since 1918 & Senedd since 1999

Hadn’t, in truth, really absorbed the scale of what the Conservatives are proposing on ILR and immigration more broadly until this week’s Sunday Times interviews. Some thoughts on that in today’s note:

Fel hyn y mae yng nghyfundrefn Cyfiawnder Droseddol Cymru - cyfundrefn sy'n methu ym mhob ffordd bosib gan gynnwys hyn... The reality of the Welsh Criminal Justice system - a system that fails on every possible metric and not just this... 1/2 www.bbc.com/news/article...

Ar gyfer yr anoracs go iawn yn ein plith, podlediad diweddaraf @richardwynjones.bsky.social a Vaughan Roderick. Yn drist iawn, dwi di bod yn edrych ymlaen at bennod ar d'Hondt www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

The collapse of Labour in Wales seems like a classic case of breaching @garius.bsky.social' Trust Thermocline - a slow then rapid collapse after years in power.

A policy this expansive would certainly mean mass stripping of permanent residence status from people with ILR (including pensioners and parents of British children) on a scale far beyond anything any democracy has ever done before. There is no public support for such an extreme policy.

Ac wele... www.newstatesman.com/politics/wal...

Dau o’n colofnwyr ar #DrosGinio wythnos yma yn trafod eu herthyglau: @richardwynjones.bsky.social heddiw ar drothwy is-etholiad Caerffili, a @maredgwyn.bsky.social ddydd Mawrth ar yr argyfwng gwleidyddol cyfredol yn Ffrainc. Mynnwch gopi o BARN i ddarllen colofn y ddau, neu ewch i 🔗 barn.cymru

If you want to understand how we got here, I highly recommend listening to this in your podcast apps or watching on YouTube. (6/6) #Wales #Cymru #Senedd26 youtu.be/91MyTLRa0iE?...

Cardiff will be the first UK city to introduce a surcharge for oversized SUVs and trucks, "while very large vehicles – those over 3,500kg – will be excluded from residential permits entirely."

✍️ Darllenwch erthygl ein colofnydd gwleidyddol Richard Wyn Jones yn rhifyn Hydref. Am ddim ar ein gwefan newydd! 🔗 barn.cymru

Jyst i egluro, mae’r teitl yn cyfeirio at y cynnwys, nid y cyflwynwyr 😉

Identity findings in the SSA very much tally with what we saw in the census. Sharply declining British identity, growing Scottish identity. The SSA also finds that these correlate with constitutional preference...

Pennod 72: Y Ffŵl a’r Pregethwr: Yr Anterliwt (rhan 4) Gwyliwch a gwrandewch ar bennod newydd Yr Hen Iaith @yrheniaith.bsky.social gyda @richardwynjones.bsky.social a @jerryhunter.bsky.social ar Am nawr: Listen and watch now: www.ambobdim.cymru/profile-cont...

David Lloyd George *in 1890* on the devolution of the crown estate: ‘I fail to understand why questions affecting...the Mineral resources of the Crown in Wales, which are far better apprehended on the spot, should be administered by government clerks in London.’

Asking people to pay for goods would kill the shoplifting industry ...

One Small Step: my SKETCH of Kemi Badenoch, a leader unconstrained by reality.

Today is a day when arts degrees are worthless, but the product of those degrees is so valuable it would kill an entire industry if they were made to pay for it.

This x100. Business degrees are cheap to run, easy to run badly, and face seemingly inexhaustible demand

David Lloyd George *in 1890* on the devolution of the crown estate: ‘I fail to understand why questions affecting...the Mineral resources of the Crown in Wales, which are far better apprehended on the spot, should be administered by government clerks in London.’

Remember that pic of the Caerphilly Reform candidate which looked edited? Well I asked Reform UK about it. Apparently it wasn't edited. The party indicated that the camera "glitched" which happened to "glitch out" of the photo the former UKIP politician and Reform supporter Mark Reckless... 1/2

'nid pobol normal sy'n gwrando ar Gwleidydda' yn ol @richardwynjones.bsky.social - trafodwch! www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...