[Killer Whale]

Could be an outlier, but I've felt for some time that Reform had reached their peak. There's only a certain percentage of nasty bastards out there, and even amongst them a good number want something a bit more than 'kick it all down'.

The work continues - there will be a large number of streets to trudge down before May - but it looks like there is less and less chance of a Reform breakthrough as voters lose the 'feels' and face the reality.

[Tubby Isaacs]

I'll settle for that. Interesting that the Tories haven't benefited from Reform doing worse in that poll.

[Killer Whale]

The Cardiff University analysis seems to suggest that Plaid and the Greens are hoovering up all the Don't Knows.

[Tubby Isaacs]

It is possible that there comes a time when, despite what we're always told, Labour torching their own support on immigration does actually "work" in terms of undercutting Reform. There's very little else Reform can talk about with the same (bogus) authority. Even woke doesn't really cut it, because more than a few Reform-types will feel a sense of deja vu. With good reason, it's exactly the same as political correctness, before and after it went mad.

Now, perhaps Labour could manage to undercut Reform without chucking away easy growth from university students...

[Killer Whale]

Didn't know whether this was a Tory or Reform story, so it's going here.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0erdwrp972o

A prominent Welsh Tory is being kicked out of his party for telling his party leader he was thinking about defecting to Reform UK.

James Evans has been removed from the shadow cabinet and had the whip withdrawn making him an independent, Tory Senedd leader Darren Millar has said.

Millar said he did so on Tuesday morning "after being informed by James that he was continuing to engage with Reform representatives about the possibility of defecting to the party in spite of his personal assurances on Friday that he had rejected an approach they initiated last week".

In a statement, Evans confirmed he was being ousted from the party which he said no longer represents his values.

[Tubby Isaacs]

The Tories have become much more like Reform now than in 2021 when he won his seat. I suggest that Mr Evans' values are mainly about having the best chance of being elected.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Quite the observation here, on funding for Wales and Scotland.

Unfortunately, there are no official, up-to-date estimates of the relative spending needs of the Scottish and Welsh Governments to undertake this comparison. But we can compare them using estimates produced by the Holtham Commission (2010) which, while set up by the Welsh Government, is widely recognised as being an objective and comprehensive assessment of relative needs (Royal Society of Edinburgh, 2025). It estimated relative spending needs for the different nations of the UK using the relationship between spending and a set of geographic and socio-economic characteristics for 159 local areas (local authorities or groups of local authorities) across England, Scotland and Wales.17
Doing so, it estimated that the Welsh Government’s relative spending needs per person as of the late 2000s were 14–17% higher than England’s. For Scotland, the estimate was 5% higher – far below the 26% in additional funding that we estimate Scotland received in 2024–25.

The source data is out of date, obviously, but I don't think anyone could argue that the Barnett Formula is remotely fair on Wales. Who do I vote for to get money transferred from Scotland to Wales?

https://ifs.org.uk/publications/recent- ... nt-funding

[Tubby Isaacs]

Plaid Cymru drops its 2035 net zero target for Wales
Plaid Cymru has announced that it is dropping its target to achieve net zero carbon emissions in Wales by 2035. As the BBC reports, Plaid backed this target in 2021 and reaffirmed it in its manifesto at the last general election.

This would have been quite the target for an independent and very well off Wales. For a not very well off devolved government, that was never happening. 10 years before Sweden?!

Screeching U-TURN or pragmatic, as the leader calls it? From a purely electoral point of view, I think it's a good idea to revisit this now, and I hope it helps them beat Reform.