COLUMN: “I’ll go to Senedd to represent you, not my party”

The local Labour party use their monthly column for their candidate for May’s Senedd elections, Ian Parry who is from Welshpool, to make a strong case.

“I joined the Labour Party because I believe in social and economic justice. Because I believe in progress and forward-thinking economic principles. I know life is harder today in Britain than it has been for a very long time.

I know that after 26 years, Welsh Labour cannot hand off responsibility for our problems here in Wales. As your candidate, I certainly won’t.

But, I think it is still important to highlight the good Welsh Labour has achieved. And to highlight what we are at risk of losing should Reform or Plaid win in May.

In Welshpool alone, we have seen investment in two brand new school buildings via the 21^st Century Schools Building Programme, Active Travel investment upgrades across the town, improvements to Welshpool train station, a reduction in ticket prices compared to Arriva, £1.98 million in the Offa’s Dyke Industrial Park and funding for the livestock market.

In the coming months, Welshpool will be a beneficiary of the £1.3million transforming towns project and the Welsh Government has increased funding to Powys as a whole by 4.5%.

This is not to mention that in Wales we receive free prescriptions, free hospital parking, free school meals and lunches, the continuation of Education Maintenance Allowance - £40 a week for students, £16 billion worth of investment secured by First Minister Eluned Morgan just before Christmas, 100,000 apprenticeships delivered, and £1 bus fares for young people. To name but a few.

Across Wales, over 150 million free school breakfasts and lunches have been served to pupils in the last decade.

And Welsh Labour protected our public services, kept prescriptions free, and continued to support the most vulnerable during the brutal 14 years of Tory austerity.

Again, I am not going to pretend Welsh Labour have created a utopia here in Wales. Our NHS is still under way too much pressure and waiting times across Powys are cruel and excessive.

This is why your local Labour candidates are calling for more transparency and accountability for Powys Teaching Health Board and a larger role for local healthcare practitioners in local healthcare decisions. This would prevent things like the proposed closure of Llanrhaeadr GP surgery.

I am also not going to pretend there isn’t a cost-of-living crisis and a decline in Welshpool town centre. There is. It’s why your local Labour candidates are calling for the delivery of a Rural Development Fund for direct investment into towns like Welshpool.

It’s why we’re calling for an end to the failed Thatcherite consensus and a return to the socialist Keynesian economics that rebuilt Britain at the end of the Second World War.

We cannot risk Reform governing Wales. A party that operates to the whims of one man. One man who recently attended Davos, on the payroll of an Iranian billionaire – because nothing screams “Britain first” more than rubbing shoulders with billionaires from Iran.

And we cannot risk a Plaid government in Wales. Look at Gwynedd Council and the scandal engulfing things there. Plaid in power will go down worse than a Liz Truss budget.

Labour have delivered in Wales. But we must do better. I am not a party ideologue looking to climb the greasy ladder of party politics. I am a working-class kid who stayed in the Welshpool area because it’s my home. 

I’ll go to the Senedd to represent you, not my party.

I am not sure any of the other candidates can say that.”