And here comes the Plaid surge, as Leanne Wood's party overtakes UKIP in Wales

A rare rift between the national movements in Scotland and Wales occurred just after the devolution referendums in 1997, when the future SNP MSP Dorothy Grace-Elder provoked irritation by snidely suggesting that Wales would never have been brave enough to vote Yes by the narrowest of margins if Scotland hadn't shown the way a week earlier.  There was never the slightest evidence to support that claim - in fact, it was striking how little effect the enormous Yes-Yes vote in Scotland had on the latter stages of the campaign in Wales.

However, in the case of the current general election campaign, I think it's probably fair to say that the SNP surge has had an important indirect effect on Wales.  The assumption is that Leanne Wood was only invited to the UK-wide leaders' debates because it was impossible to exclude the SNP in the current circumstances, and if the SNP were there, logically Plaid Cymru had to be there as well.  We're now seeing clear signs that a fairer level of coverage has weaved its magic for Plaid, which has overtaken UKIP in the latest Wales-wide YouGov poll -

Welsh voting intentions for the May 2015 UK general election (YouGov, 28th-30th April) :

Labour 39% (-1)
Conservatives 26% (n/c)
Plaid Cymru 13% (+1)
UKIP 12% (-1)
Liberal Democrats 6% (n/c)
Greens 3% (-1)

Although the changes may look like meaningless margin of error stuff, it has to be borne in mind that Plaid are up from 9% in the last-but-one poll, and that 13% is a higher than usual figure.  It seems likely that Wood's involvement in the debates and her relentless focus on Wales while she was there is a big part of the explanation for this mini-surge, because a supplementary question finds that 29% identify her as the leader that best stands up for Wales, a full 17% ahead of her nearest challenger (Carwyn Jones, the Labour First Minister).

Unlike the SNP, Plaid's support is particularly concentrated in certain areas, which makes the result of the following question highly significant -

Thinking specifically about your own constituency and the candidates who are likely to stand there, which party’s candidate do you think you will vote for in your own constituency at the next general election?

Labour 37%
Conservatives 25%
Plaid Cymru 15%
UKIP 12%
Liberal Democrats 7%
Greens 2%

It looks as if Plaid are only shedding 3% of their potential voters due to tactical/local considerations, which is being more than offset by the much larger number of tactical votes in their favour from supporters of other parties.  These votes will presumably be, for the most part, in the handful of constituencies Plaid have a serious chance in. There's a maximum of six they could win - Arfon (Plaid-held), Carmarthen East & Dinefwr (Plaid-held), Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Plaid-held), Ynys Môn (Labour-held), Llanelli (Labour-held), and Ceredigion (Lib Dem-held). If they were to win five or all six, they could make up more than 10% of the informal 'progressive bloc' in the new House of Commons.

Compare and contrast

Scenario A - The SNP First Minister of devolved Scotland expresses a mere opinion on the likelihood that the London government would agree to sharing a common currency with an independent Scotland.

Reaction of the anti-independence campaign : "Jumped up parish councillor! Embarrassing his country by getting ideas above his station! It would almost be funny if it wasn't so tragic..."

* * *

Scenario B - The Labour First Minister of devolved Wales makes the patently ludicrous suggestion that he would somehow "veto" the sharing of a common currency between the UK and an independent Scotland - a power that he simply does not possess.

Reaction of the anti-independence campaign : "THE LORD HAS SPOKEN."

Yeah, Blair, what have the nationalists ever done for Wales?

Those ever-delightful anti-independence chaps on Twitter seem to be terribly excited about events in Wales today.

Better Together : Devolution of key powers to Wales is more proof that further devolution is being delivered within the UK.

Which raises a couple of obvious questions - a) how exactly would it be possible to deliver devolution outside the UK, and b) if it's possible to deliver extra devolution to Wales right now, why is it necessary for Scotland to wait until some unspecified date in the future, which will conveniently be long after we've surrendered the bargaining power of an impending independence referendum?

Blair McDougall : By the way, support for leaving UK = 7% in Wales (ICM). So today also blows away idea that it's nationalism that delivers powers.

Yes, Blair, you don't need nationalism to deliver extra powers - well, just so long as nationalists win an election in another part of the UK and hold a referendum on independence, thus making the UK government realise that there is potential short-term tactical gain in making a small "demonstration" concession to the decentralisers. After all, as Mr McDougall so helpfully reminded us just two days ago, the UK government will only be seen to act against the Celtic Fringe after the independence referendum is safely out of the way.

Oh, and it probably also helps if you had a nationalist party - Plaid Cymru - in government between 2007 and 2011, and thus in a position to build some momentum for new powers in the face of total boneheaded intransigence from a Labour Secretary of State for Wales.

But apart from those two minor details, yeah, this is incontrovertible proof that you can trust the Tory/Labour "people's choice" alliance to deliver all the extra powers that you could ever dream of.

Jeremy Purvis reaches the light at the end of the tunnel

One of the constant refrains from Neanderthal opponents of electoral reform in the London parties is that it is simply unconscionable to have a system that enables a "loser to win".  We heard it endlessly during the AV referendum campaign, but it's also often been raised as an objection to the AMS system used for the Scottish Parliament, which makes it possible for a candidate who has been defeated in a constituency to still be elected on the regional list.

Curiously, though, there seems to be considerable overlap between complaints about the so-called "losers winning" vagaries of PR, and enthusiastic support for the House of Lords as an anachronism that supposedly "works".  Chiefly, of course, the anachronism works by allowing "sound chaps" like Jeremy Purvis to carry on legislating for us in spite of having been roundly rejected by the errant electorate of Midlothian South, Tweeddale and Lauderdale.

Altogether now...

Every loser wins
Once the dream begins
In time you'll see, fate holds the key
And every loser knows
The light the tunnel shows
Will shine on you

Jeremy was so right to keep the faith. Why would a Liberal Democrat need democracy?

* * *

Plaid Cymru seem to be storming to victory in the Ynys Môn by-election - a huge relief, given that it will deprive Labour of an outright majority in the Welsh Assembly. Although it may have looked like a safe seat for Plaid on paper, that was highly deceptive because Labour have held the equivalent Westminster seat since 2001 (a situation eerily reminiscent of the Aberdeen Donside by-election, where of course the incumbent government's parliamentary majority was also hanging in the balance).

Plaid were helped along by some stardust from their TV personality candidate Rhun ap Iorwerth, a man so famous that even I recognised him straight away. He's already being spoken of as a potential long-term successor to Leanne Wood as party leader, although I was slightly shocked to read this reaction from a Labour source -

"Plaid are getting rather ahead of themselves. Rhun is likely to win the by-election, but talk of him as a future leader is very premature...

Most people in Wales won’t even be able to pronounce his name, and it’s difficult to imagine someone called Rhun ap Iorwerth going down well in Islwyn."

Can you even begin to imagine the outrage if Labour had made that comment about a candidate with a Pakistani or Chinese name? And yet what exactly is the difference?

* * *

UPDATE : The sensational Ynys Môn result in full -

Plaid Cymru 58.2% (+16.8)
Labour 15.9% (-10.3)
UKIP 14.3% (+14.3)
Conservatives 8.5% (-20.7)
Socialist Labour 1.6% (+1.6)
Liberal Democrats 1.4% (-1.8)

Will Carwyn Jones be required to 'clarify' his remarks?

Carwyn Jones, the Labour First Minister of Wales, has very wisely suggested that it would be a good thing if Scots had a wider constitutional choice than just the status quo and independence. After all, the purpose of an authentic exercise in self-determination is to ascertain what the people actually want, not to dream up ever more bizarre excuses for not giving them a say on the option you suspect they want the most. The latter course is, however, the one that Jones' Labour colleagues in London and Scotland are hellbent on pursuing alongside their Tory allies, so if by any chance we see a hurried 'clarification' of the First Minister's views over the next few hours, we'll know that Welsh Labour autonomy isn't quite what it's sometimes cracked up to be.

On a related theme, I see that Johann Lamont has tried her luck taken another principled stand -

"We believe that the process of setting a single question should be taken out of the hands of elected politicians and given to relevant experts the public can have faith in."

I'd like to suggest a very, very minor adjustment to that proposal -

"We believe that the process of deciding whether there should be more than one question should be taken out of the hands of elected politicians and given to relevant experts the public can have faith in."

Can I assume Ms Lamont's new-found enthusiasm for technocratic decision-making is undimmed by this small enhancement?

* * *

This is the composition of the panel at a forthcoming 'explaining the mysteries of Jock chippiness to metropolitan sophisticates' event in London -

Henry McLeish (Unionist)
Danny Alexander (Unionist)
Margaret Curran (Unionist)
Fraser Nelson (Unionist)
Jim Mather (Nationalist)
John Curtice (Neutral Expert)
Mandy Rhodes (Neutral Expert)
Jon Craig (Non-Neutral Non-Expert)

You might be a tad concerned that this isn't the most balanced panel in history, but fear not - in true Question Time fashion, it's nothing that the last-minute addition of Melanie Phillips can't solve.

YouGov poll : All to play for in Wales

Still no sign of a new Holyrood poll, although for good or bad it sounds like we're twenty-four hours at most away from the next one. In the meantime, what we have instead is a YouGov poll for the Welsh Assembly election, which suggests that (contrary to what some would have you believe) Labour are by no means guaranteed an overall majority. Here are the full figures -

Constituency vote :

Labour 49% (+2)
Conservatives 20% (-1)
Plaid Cymru 17% (-)
Liberal Democrats 8% (-)

Regional list vote :

Labour 44% (-1)
Conservatives 20% (-)
Plaid Cymru 18% (+2)
Liberal Democrats 8% (-)

Although Wales uses the same Additional Member voting system as Scotland (or Mixed-Member Proportional as it's called in New Zealand), Labour rigged the ratio of constituency to list seats to give themselves a much better chance of winning an outright majority. Even so, on the numbers in this poll they'd only be past the post by one or two seats, so there must still be a fighting chance that Plaid Cymru will remain part of a coalition government after the election.

Since the assembly was founded in 1999, Labour have tried minority government, coalition with the Lib Dems and coalition with Plaid, so it would be interesting to know which will be their preferred option this time round if they don't creep past the winning line. By all accounts, the Labour/Plaid coalition has been surprisingly harmonious over the last four years, although that's probably partly because Welsh Labour is led by a small 'n' nationalist, and not a big 'G' Gray.

Which was less likely - Governor George W Bush of Texas granting clemency to a death row prisoner in 1999, or the unionist parties giving the people a say on their constitutional future in 2007 or 2010?

You have to hand it to the more mindless critics of the SNP and Plaid Cymru - if nothing else, they have their tedious little repertoire well-drilled. I popped over to Political Betting yesterday afternoon simply to express the unwelcome view that the Welsh referendum result was a "fantastic day for Wales", and yet another four-hour marathon ensued. First of all I was asked if I was even being serious - surely my comment could only be intended as sarcasm? No, I explained, it was indeed a fantastic day for Wales, as it was hard to think of a single good reason why the Welsh people weren't capable of running their own affairs on exactly the same basis as people in Scotland or Northern Ireland. Aha, came the predictable retort, it was absolutely fine if those countries governed themselves, just so long as they paid for it themselves. "As an English taxpayer," one commenter added, "I'm sick of subsidising the Scots". I told him in that case he should rejoice - because he doesn't. I pointed him in the direction of Professor Andrew Hughes Hallet's analysis -

"“The usual perception is that Scotland spends about 20% on public services more per head than the UK average...

“Those numbers are very misleading mainly because the spending in that part is what’s spent on behalf of Scotland but not necessarily in Scotland.

“The estimate for Scotland’s share, that’s contributions to defence, is 2.8 billion but it’s roughly 2.0 billion are actually paid out in Scotland

“So there’s an implicit subsidy going south in that sense and you can think of lots of other examples ...”

Hughes Hallett added:
“At the moment, on the current account, there’s a subsidy going to London, which is helping London.

“When you get down to it, on the current account for the last five years at least, maybe longer, Scotland has had a current account surplus, which is currently according to the national accounts in Scotland £1.3 billion.”

Asked whether Scotland would definitely be better off, Prof Hallett replied: “You can definitely say that it [Scotland] would be better off in terms of the revenue.”

Prof Hughes Hallett pointed to ‘missing’ income that is generated in Scotland but is actually attributed to London, giving the Crown Estate as an example saying: “The Crown agents who take fees for electricity generation and give it to the Treasury...”

Professor Hughes Hallett also destroyed one of the myths surrounding the bail out of HBOS and RBS claiming that their dealings in England would have meant that England would have shouldered a significant part of their liabilities."

Well, naturally the Nat-bashing hordes weren't best pleased about having one of their most cherished articles of faith totally demolished by a renowned economist, so after a series of fairly pathetic attempts to dismiss Hughes Hallett as a "no-name economist from a second-rate US university", we then moved on to the next phase of the standard repertoire - random (and rather desperate) muck-flinging. Yep, you've guessed it, it was the familiar heady blend of wild and long-since-disproved assertions that the SNP 'did a deal' over freeing Megrahi, and suggestions that they had bottled it on the independence referendum (or "acted dishonourably", as one commenter sniffed airily) by not bothering to spend an afternoon going through the motions of putting something to the vote in the Scottish Parliament that everyone knew was going to be defeated by 78 votes to 50, because the three unionist parties were hell-bent on voting it down.

It really is quite comical. If the SNP had taken the opposite course, we all know what the mantra would be by now - Alex Salmond would have "wasted parliamentary time and money on something no-one gives two hoots about" (the last bit is © Tavish "Two Hoots" Scott). As it is, they synthetically claim to be outraged that the SNP "weren't even trying to deliver independence". What are the SNP for, they plaintively cry.

That line of argument is, I'd suggest, the rough equivalent of claiming that a death row prisoner in Texas in 1999 wasn't really "trying to stay alive" because he dispensed with that all-important last-minute plea for clemency to Governor George W Bush.

An exotic variant on the traditional line came from PB's deputy editor David Herdson, who insisted that the SNP had 'squandered their golden chance' to call a referendum immediately after being elected in 2007. If they had tabled a parliamentary vote at that stage, he earnestly claimed, they would have got it through on the basis that the opposition parties would have recognised that the SNP had "won the election" and thus had the moral right to do it.

I believe the phrase "aye, right" was invented for moments like this...

A few thoughts on liberty and stealing

I got into an unexpected exchange at Political Betting a few hours ago with someone who feels that a wealthy person who suffers as a result of a progressive income tax system is no longer working for himself, but is instead a servant of the state - although, curiously, this only seems to apply when he is handing over "the majority" of his income.  I pointed out that such a person is simply being expected to make a fair contribution in exchange for the services that we all receive from the state, based on his greater ability to pay.  If he feels that he's not receiving as much 'bang for his buck' as the poorer people who pay less in absolute terms, he's clearly losing sight of just how much he actually gets back from the state - most notably the enforced adherence of the rest of the society to a system that legitimises his wealth and private property rights, and by extension the advantages he enjoys over most others.  Looked at that way, he's plainly getting the better side of the bargain in this social contract.

Fairly predictably, I was then told that the contract I was describing was nothing short of blackmail or a kind of protection racket - pay up, or your property will be stolen by the mob.  But this begs the obvious question - what actually is "private property" or "theft" if you don't have the state, and consent from the rest of society, to define and enforce it for you?  It all began to remind me of the arguments I used to regularly hear from the American "libertarians".  The punitive enforcement of the rights that happen to be most important to them - ie. the right to life, free speech and property as defined simply by being left alone to defend themselves with a gun, and to retain what they already own untouched - is regarded as an absolute moral imperative, because these are all 'natural rights'.  And yet the rights that are important to so many others - the right to life, free speech and property as defined by the right to health care and shelter that will actually keep them alive and healthy, and the right to education and a financial safety net that will give them the slightest chance of actually having a voice and owning a modest amount of property - are not only deemed illegitimate, but their realisation is actually regarded as an outrageous application of "force".  It never seems to occur to these "libertarians" that the advantages that afford them the luxury of meaningfully exercising the right to life and liberty without ever having to look beyond their 'natural rights', while others have no choice but to rely on the "force" of the state, is actually directly derived from something the state has conferred on them in the first place.

Who says massive inherited wealth is 'natural', for example?  Or the advantage of a superior education that others are denied?  You only have to look around Britain today - or just around the Cabinet table, for that matter - to see that the idea that wealth inequalities can simply be explained by how hard people work or how innately talented they are is utterly laughable.  The immense advantages that some enjoy on very dubious merit are not legitimised by nature, but by the state - and by force.  If others try to nip in and grab a small share of that wealth, or of those opportunities, they'll be stopped.  That's OK because that force has democratic legitimacy (ie. the consent of society) behind it, but it's force against the individual nonetheless, in precisely the same way that the compulsory payment of taxes required to realise other democratically legitimised rights like free health care and education is force against the individual.  The American libertarians seem to fondly imagine that the force needed to protect their property rights is trivial or non-existent in comparison to the type of force they complain of, ie. that it costs others nothing to simply respect their natural rights.  Well, that's fine until the 'natural rights' of a few consume such a fantastic portion of a society's wealth that others are squeezed out to the point of destitution, with no legal access to the minimal share of the wealth they require for a merely decent standard of living.  That strikes me as being quite a significant cost.

I've said before that in many ways I consider myself to be a libertarian, which naturally the American right-wingers are either bemused by or regard as an affectation, because liberty "can't be conditional".  But of course the truth (as they occasionally acknowledge when forced into a corner) is that liberty must by definition be conditional, otherwise it can never work - if you don't curb your own liberty by respecting the liberty of others, why should they do the same for you?  So the real principle of libertarianism is that the conditions applied ought to be the minimum necessary to preserve and further liberty.  A system that offers a theoretical right to life, free speech and private property, while all the time robbing some people - by force - of the slightest chance of ever utilising those freedoms falls well below that minimum threshold.

*

Also at PB this evening, a fascinating (and ultimately encouraging) article by Penddu on the forthcoming referendum in Wales on enhanced devolution.  He characterises the breadth of the No campaign in the following stark terms -

"backed by UKIP, BNP and a campaign group of disaffected Labour activists called True Wales which seems to consist of two spokesmen from Gwent and an inflatable pig" 

Not to worry, though, because Fraser Nelson manfully entered the fray on their behalf during this evening's Question Time, branding the referendum the most "boring" ever, and noting that he tended to take the view that "if you give politicians more power, you only encourage them".  Now, is it just me, or do people who call a proposed change boring, unimportant, or best of all "a distraction" usually mean that they can't actually think of a persuasive argument against it on its own terms?  (The debate on the fox-hunting ban springs to mind.)  And when they talk about not wanting "politicians" to have more power, don't they usually mean that they'd much rather if power wasn't transferred away from politicians in Westminster?

Welsh Labour leader wants perpetual Labour rule in Wales - who'd have thunk it?

Well, I've seen some cynical political manoeuvres, but this one takes the biscuit. Welsh Labour leader and First Minister Carwyn Jones has declared his support for a Yes vote in the forthcoming AV referendum, and has also innocently suggested that AV would be a rather good electoral system for the Welsh Assembly. Which is just about the only way a Labour politician could possibly hope to call for the scrapping of proportional representation and its replacement with a permanent artificial Labour majority without looking breathtakingly power-crazed. Mr Jones poses what he describes as an "important" question (presumably while struggling manfully to stifle his guffaws) -

"if this change is good enough to elect Members of the House of Commons, then surely it’s good enough to elect Members of the Welsh Assembly too?"

On the million-to-one chance that was a serious question, I'll spell out the bleedin' obvious for Carwyn - the bulk of Yes supporters categorically do not think AV is "good enough" to elect MPs. If they were offered a system like the one which elects the Welsh Assembly, they'd bite your hand off. In the meantime, they're simply making a rational choice for the better of the two rubbish majoritarian systems on offer in this referendum.

McLetchie favours tyranny of the linguistic majority

In a predictably sneering report (not to mention the outrageously misleading headline) on proposals to boost the Scots language, the Telegraph quotes Tory MSP David McLetchie as saying -

"I find these ideas absolutely extraordinary, a complete and utter waste of money. Personally, I favour the Queen’s English, as do the overwhelming majority of people in Scotland."

Which, in the literal sense, is absolutely true. From my vague recollection of the figures, approximately two-thirds of the population do not really speak Scots at all. Does that mean the one-third who do speak the language count for nothing? In Wales, two-thirds of the population speak only English, and just 12% are native Welsh speakers. Does McLetchie think that this linguistic minority should obediently bow to the 'preference of the majority', and forget all about their culture, literature and Welsh-medium broadcasting in the interests of saving public money? Apparently so.

Ryder Cup : In Europe, not run by Europe

I happened to catch Colin Montgomerie's speech at the (tremendously earnest, but that's golf) opening ceremony of the Ryder Cup, and I was bit startled when he began his address to the dignitaries with the words "First Minister, Mr President". Of course, it turned out he was referring to the President of the European Commission - Carwyn Jones must have been gutted, as he surely can't expect that many chances to enjoy the top billing in a pairing with Barack Obama.

It's perhaps not so surprising that José Manuel Barroso made time to put in an appearance at Celtic Manor, given that the Ryder Cup must be just about the only major sporting event in which Europe puts forward a unified team. What makes it even more of a phenomenon - truly an exception that proves the rule - is the fact that British people, and I suppose I'm particularly talking about English people here, never seem to have any difficulty whatever supporting the European team in full-blooded partisan fashion. Probably the main reason they feel able to do so is that golf's version of "Europe" is such a peculiarly British (and Irish) flavoured entity. Only once has the European home venue for the tournament been on the continent, and on only two occasions have there been continental captains. It's like a consoling biennial manifestation of a hubristic old fantasy that was never, ever going to be a runner in the arena where it really counted - "Britain leading in Europe".

Could the greatest challenge to Calman's timidity come from Wales?

Interesting to read in yesterday's Herald the suggestion that, if the Holtham Report is implemented in full, the Welsh Assembly would all of a sudden hold more extensive fiscal powers than the Scottish Parliament is set to receive under Calman. On the face of it, this is excellent news - the detailed economic arguments over Calman would be more than superceded by any perception that we are for the first time being left behind by our Celtic cousins. The pressure to beef up the proposals would become irresistible.

However, I'm more inclined to fear that the end result of this divergence may instead be that the Welsh proposals are watered down. As we all know, the default setting in both Whitehall and the Tory party is to relinquish as little power as they can possibly justify.

Give me just a little bit more

Something for almost everyone in the latest full-scale Welsh YouGov poll - except for Lib Dems. Labour still lead (just), the Tories make dramatic progress from their 2005 position (bringing into even sharper relief the dismal performance of the Scottish Tories), and while Plaid Cymru seem to suffer even more than the SNP from the Westminster 'away fixture' effect, the seat projections nevertheless place them on an all-time high of five. But the best news of all is that there is solid backing for the principle of the National Assembly gaining full law-making powers. This should not lead to complacency - single-issue polling is typically far more volatile than voting intention figures, and for the evidence of that we need look no further than the referendum on an assembly for the northeast of England. However, I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that these figures show that an early referendum on the issue can be won, and Peter Hain's excuses for kicking it into the long grass are looking thinner by the day.

Amusing to witness on the blogosphere the effortless way the usual suspects cherry-pick the bits of this poll they like and discard the bits they don't. The evidence for a Tory surge in Wales is naturally cast-iron to them, but the support for greater devolution can apparently be easily explained away thus - "I think you should be careful about polls asking people if they 'want more' of something, as the answer is almost always yes." Ah, so that would neatly explain why what the Tories regarded as their 'golden bullet' argument against aspirations for Scottish and Welsh devolution in the 1980s and 90s - ie. endlessly pointing out to people that it would entail "more politicians" - fell so spectacularly flat on its face.

Wales warms to self-government

I (slightly wearily) had a look at the ICM website tonight on the off-chance that the detailed breakdown of their latest poll might have been made available a bit earlier than usual. No luck, needless to say. But I'm glad I looked, because what I did find instead was the details of a survey that was carried out a couple of weeks ago for BBC Wales on the subject of the future of the devolution settlement. Remarkably - and it has to be said, somewhat misguidedly - there are twice as many people in Wales who feel that the Welsh Assembly has the most influence over their country as those who (more realistically) think that Westminster still calls the most important shots. But perhaps more to the point, when asked which tier of government should hold the most influence, 64% said the Assembly and only 19% opted for Westminster. So much for the Welsh being more reluctant devolutionists than the Scots.

And when questioned about specifically how much power the Assembly should hold, 58% wanted more powers than there are at present - including no fewer than 15% who favoured outright independence.

Shadow Cabinet gains another junior part-time observer member

I get the impression that the BBC's Betsan Powys has, to some extent, interpreted Annabel Goldie's elevation to part-time "Shadow First Minister" in David Cameron's Shadow Cabinet in the same way I did. Having probed whether the same 'honour' would be conferred on Welsh Tory leader Nick Bourne, she poses the question - "is it better to be Shadow First Minister or real life Leader of the Opposition?"

(For the uninitiated, the Tories are the Official Opposition in the Welsh Assembly despite being only the third largest party. This came about after the two largest parties - Labour and Plaid Cymru - formed an improbable governing coalition.)

No wonder Jade thought she'd be singing for 'England'

Alwyn ap Huw has a piece lamenting Mark's failure to win Your Country Needs You, and wishing that S4C was able to put him forward as a separate Welsh entry. Naturally, I agree wholeheartedly (on the latter point, I mean!). But at least Wales can say they've had the likes of Jessica Garlick and James Fox compete under the UK flag over the last few years.

But Scotland? Our last Eurovision entrant was the legendarily luckless Scott Fitzgerald (runner-up to Celine Dion by one point) way back in 1988. Even more strikingly, as far as I can see since 1997 just one Scottish act has even got as far as competing in the UK national selection - City Chix in 2006. With Scotland having a full 9% of the population, that can't be put down to mere chance. Don't want to cry discrimination, but sometimes statistics speak for themselves...