Chris

The difference is that Welsh Labour are a lot of unreconstructed dinosaurs who have been in power ever since devolution. They’ve never had to change because there are still too many people in the Valleys who’ll vote for a monkey as long as it’s wearing a red rosette. You can add to that the fact that your average Plaido still looks like they’ve escaped from a badly organised twmpath and hasn’t yet worked out why nobody else thinks an independent nation state called Wales is a good idea. I.e. they’re not a credible alternative government in the way the SNP has been here in Scotland. There is no serious challenge to Labour, and therefore no need for them to critically appraise themselves and work to do better.

When enough working class voters in Scotland allowed themselves to believe that their priorities were best served by the SNP, not Labour, then the tide turned and Labour lost power. The SNP did this by presenting itself as a pragmatic, centre-left party that believed in independence for Scotland but wasn’t obsessed with it.

There are natural ceilings on the Tory and Liberal votes in Scotland and the SNP’s reign will end as and when Scottish Labour gets its act together and starts effectively pointing out that the SNP is no longer centre-left and is no longer pragmatic about its campaign for independence. It has lurched to extremes, thanks to its ill-advised coalition with the Greens, and it is now becoming clear that its obsession with viewing everything through an independence campaign prism has contributed to a lot of what is now going speciatularly wrong for them.

At the next Holyrood election we are likely to be rid of the SNP, most likely to get a minority Labour administration in power instead. Hopefully, with the knowledge that their vote is earned, and not an entitlement, we will get a little less of the pettifogging county hall-type antics you are subjected to in Wales.