When the trust vanishes, you're finished, whether you're Labour in Caerphilly or a celebrity in BBC's The Traitors.
Alex and Kenny pore over three examples of democracy in action from a hectic week – Plaid Cymru's historic victory in Wales, a new Deputy Leader for Labour in Westminster and ... a bizarre litany of bad voting decisions in The Traitors.
All three have involved some measure of chaos but only one of them had both Alex and Kenny fighting for the remote control. Guess which.
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“Caerphilly is where two trends met. The first is ‘I hate Labour’ and the second is a trend for smart, strategic, tactical voting. So, the reason people were looking for a tactical option other than Labour to defeat Reform was unhappiness with the gov’t, but the magnitude of the swing implies to me something tactical at work.”
“There’s a stickiness to politics and my question here would be, how many of the people who lent their vote to Plaid or decided to give another party a try, will stick with that next time - especially, given we are close enough to the Senedd election for it to make a difference.”
“The media treat Reform as an entirely new party that had no presence in Wales. I would point to the last European election where the Brexit Party came top with 33% and suggest that Reform are merely the latest iteration of The Farage Party and very much had a presence in Wales.”
“One thing we can say from the Caerphilly result is that the next Senedd election will be a realignment, rather than a usual hold-the-line election. Plaid is very well placed to become the largest party - or, if not, a key player.”
“The message from Caerphilly is very clear to me: One-third of the vote is not enough to get Reform elected, if the other two-thirds get their act together.”
“Intelligent people frequently act stupidly - and, in my experience, the more intelligent the people, the more stupidly they are capable of acting. Because intelligent people have confidence in their views. In a game like The Traitors, confidence can give you a really bum steer.”
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With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou and Kenny Campbell.
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