Owen Smith catches a Crabb

For a brief moment I thought my current illness  had led me to amnesia and I had missed Christmas and three months and it was April 1st

Both the BBC and Wasting Mule on line give space to the news that 

"Welsh Secretary Stephen Crabb has launched a strong personal attack on Labour leader Ed Miliband, claiming he “doesn’t give a toss about Wales”.In a wide-ranging interview with WalesOnline, the Preseli Pembrokeshire Tory MP accused Mr Miliband of having a “blind spot” about Wales, and of turning Labour into an “elitist metropolitan party” that was increasingly out of touch with ordinary voters.Mr Crabb contrasted Mr Miliband’s supposed indifference with what he described as David Cameron’s “fantastic record of being pro-Wales”.

He said

 People in Wales particularly businesses say to me all the time – we hear this from the business community all the time – we don’t want to see the two administrations at loggerheads.“Hopefully one of my contributions has been in the last five months getting my colleagues to understand that and the Welsh Government to understand that, getting to a place where we don’t shy away from the political arguments – those are going to loom large in the next few months as we get towards the election.
“But, meanwhile, we roll up our sleeves behind closed doors and we do deals where we can.
“We negotiate and we try to secure good outcomes for the people of Wales, and that’s what I’ve been focusing on.

Maybe Mr Crabb was making a late bis for most ridiculous statement of the year

His Labour Owen Smith MP for Pontypridd counterpart made a valiant attempt to win the prize back

But Mr Smith defended his leader.

He said:

said:  

"Coming from a man who has the loneliest job in politics - a Tory secretary of state for Labour-voting Wales - these comments are particularly amusing. Perhaps this is the pressures of the new job beginning to show, so I hope he enjoys his much-needed Christmas break."The truth is Ed Miliband is absolutely focused on the most important issue affecting Wales and the rest of the UK, which is the cost-of-living crisis - caused by this cut-price Tory government."That's why Labour is committed to scrapping the bedroom tax, increasing the minimum wage, freezing energy prices and banning exploitative zero-hour contracts."By contrast, what is Stephen Crabb offering Wales: a £1.7 billion cut to the Welsh budget and now the prospect of reduced Welsh influence at Westminster. That is his legacy to Wales, as the Welsh people will remind him in May."

The Trouble with Mr Smiths approach is that he gives the impression   that there is nothing specific for  Wales being offerd from Labour at Westminster .

He could if he wanted to or was allowed have said that Ed Milliband was committed to give the Welsh Assembly gaining  parity with Scotland.

But no. what we get is  "We will not be as bad as the Tories". guff.

We do not need a Blue- Labour government that maybe just maybe are not as viscious as the last .


We need one that abandons the whole Austerity Agenda  and gives the Welsh Government the powers to address this. 

The tragedy is that for most of the Welsh Electorate its a choice between Tweedledum and Tweedledee . Neither of which gives a dam about us as long as we vote for either and give them seats in Westminster where the MPs will be loyal and abandon any Idea that they might just represent the interests of their constituents let alone their Nation.