Ben Wildsmith

Reform UK fanatics, with their laughing emojis, ‘legitimate concerns about immigration’, and belief that the 2.2% of our population intend to turn Wales into a Muslim state, are unreachable via reasoned debate ✍️Ben Wildsmith wp.me/p8Mk4U-17rH

As our politics sinks into toxic rancour, essentially reduced to a choice between scapegoats, we are facing monumental change that is proceeding with little or no democratic input ✍️Ben Wildsmith wp.me/p8Mk4U-17ie

As information becomes concentrated in the possession of a handful of billionaires and sold to us as a utility, it is vital that we produce human beings who can think contrary to those interests✍️ Ben Wildsmith wp.me/p8Mk4U-1762

Reform-friendly influencers are actively calling for the Senedd’s abolition now, even as the party is contesting a seat in it. The Brit-Nat, racist fanatics who shout loudest on social media, however, do not win elections as yet✍️Ben Wildsmith wp.me/p8Mk4U-16WK

Time to Change Tracks Ben Wildsmith The last legitimately elected and stable government we had was David Cameron’s ministry in 2015. Once that was undone by Brexit a year later, the country has been effectively…

We have reached the point where Labour and Reform are riding the same train. It’s time to change tracks ✍️Ben Wildsmith

As Reform peddles its lies against a background of Putinism and personal disgrace, our governing party misleads electors in the service of a Westminster leadership that impoverishes us as a matter of reflex ✍️Ben Wildsmith wp.me/p8Mk4U-16L6

Labour is now unable to change course credibly because nobody trusts the man at the wheel. If he stays, the coming rout in May’s elections will be UK-wide and quite possibly final ✍️Ben Wildsmith wp.me/p8Mk4U-16Ct

In Search of the Jazz Cockerel Ben Wildsmith First off, they don’t go ‘cock-a-doodle-do’, do they? The world over, regardless of geography or culture, the male Galliforme announces his terrifying, sexually-obsessed entry into the d...

From the doof, doof, doof of AI-written dance music, to the blue and orange tyranny of Greggs on every High Street, life is battered into familiar shapes through which our primal needs – sex and sausage rolls – are marketed to us ✍️Ben Wildsmith

If the Green Party’s vanity is responsible for Reform UK winning in Caerphilly, much of the left in Wales will never forgive it ✍️Ben Wildsmith wp.me/p8Mk4U-16hD

Plaid’s job is to reveal the Reform UK project as Brexit MKII- another deregulatory con trick intended to line the pockets of the wealthy. Nigel Farage’s Wat Tyler meets Arthur Daley act has been allowed to run unchallenged for too long ✍️Ben Wildsmith wp.me/p8Mk4U-15Xa

From QUANGO-sitting apparatchiks to green energy millionaires to £800k seaside flats and rental empires, Labour represents everything it was founded to upend ✍️Ben Wildsmith wp.me/p8Mk4U-15Kb

Watch this space.

The higher ground of politics is prone to give way suddenly when your time is up, and this week’s events suggest that serious slippage is starting beneath the Prime Minister’s feet ✍️Ben Wildsmith wp.me/p8Mk4U-15C6

This week’s conference has revealed how extreme, undisciplined, and downright weird Farage’s party is ✍️Ben Wildsmith wp.me/p8Mk4U-15p7

From subscription libraries, union scholarships, and the NHS, to the miners’ buyout of Tower Colliery, Cymru can point to a culture of cooperative action that has often led the world in social innovation ✍️Ben Wildsmith nation.cymru/opinion/cymu...

Whilst flying a national flag is, of itself, a neutral act, the loud support for this movement from anti-immigration politicians suggests motives beyond benign love of country ✍️Ben Wildsmith wp.me/p8Mk4U-153j

Now is the time to condemn, to shun, and to ostracise. If that seems harsh, particularly if you are related to them, well sorry, but decent people have legitimate concerns ✍️Ben Wildsmith wp.me/p8Mk4U-14VK

Reform UK plan on capturing our politics for flags that don’t represent us, with a leader who neither lives here nor intends to participate in our governance ✍️Ben Wildsmith wp.me/p8Mk4U-14Jt

As Yaxley-Lennon promotes his ‘festival of free speech’ in September, and the provinces of England are illegally plastered in flags, we shall see where the strange, sinister journey that Lucy Connolly has taken to infamy will lead her next✍️ Ben Wildsmith wp.me/p8Mk4U-14Bk

The politicians & influencers driving division in our societies are riding two horses at once. They ‘love’ a United Kingdom of flags, & beer, & bacon but hold its population, languages, institutions, environment, & even laws in contempt ✍️Ben Wildsmith wp.me/p8Mk4U-14p0

Silence in the face of naked authoritarianism has legitimised it for politicians who are increasingly reaching for its tools to remedy their inability to persuade the public ✍️Ben Wildsmith wp.me/p8Mk4U-14eM

Fringe parties are almost always the authors of their own destruction. Formed to be anti-establishment, they are forced to choose between ideological purity or electoral appeal and end up fighting like rats in a shoe ✍️Ben Wildsmith wp.me/p8Mk4U-144p

Voting for Labour nowadays is like driving one of those Chinese-made MGs. The only item left from the original is the badge, and on closer inspection, it’s plastic ✍️Ben Wildsmith wp.me/p8Mk4U-13We

Devoid of anything hopeful to sell us, our politicians evoke fears and then offer us solutions to them. If those solutions seem to have leapt from the pages of a science fiction novel, then all the better ✍️Ben Wildsmith wp.me/p8Mk4U-13I6

I imagine that Starmer will be jettisoned at some point. Watching him cringe and acquiesce at the Court of King Donald suggested that even he must realise he’s not cut out for this ✍️Ben Wildsmith wp.me/p8Mk4U-13Ad

It's hasn't announced any policies yet. Also, reheating Thatcherism isn't exactly complex, is it?

The shameful state of affairs in which the stockbroker reactionaries of Reform UK have somehow posited themselves as the sole conduit for radicalism in England is being challenged. That must be a good thing ✍️Ben Wildsmith wp.me/p8Mk4U-13n9

What Israel is doing is a barbarous offence against humanity and anybody who claims not to see that now is either a fool or a liar ✍️Ben Wildsmith wp.me/p8Mk4U-13fM

Try reading the actual article rather than gobbing off without bothering.

If an independent Wales were to be ‘extremely poor’, and I don’t believe it would be, then it would, I hope, reflect the values of the people here.

We would organise our resources according to those values and make it work ✍️Ben Wildsmith wp.me/p8Mk4U-1343