Wales Decides 2011: Face to Face

No Sharp End tonight or for the duration of the election campaign, but in its place is the first of four special programmes. The idea behind Wales Decides 2011: Face to Face is simple: to get to know the four party leaders who will spend the next month trying to win your vote. What motivates [...]

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Former Plaid chair no longer a party member

Plaid Cymru’s former chair, John Dixon, has left the party after four decades as a leading activist. It’s no secret that Mr Dixon has had his concerns about Plaid’s direction for some time. He quit as chair  last July, citing ’a number of reasons for this decision, mostly political, and some personal.’ Even so, his was a [...]

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What does Plaid want?

It’s Plaid Cymru’s spring conference at the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff Bay this weekend and all the focus in on the Assembly election on May 5th. The party is in a very different position to that which it found itself in before the last election in 2007, in that then it was eyeing up [...]

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Sharp End 24th March

Tonight’s Sharp End is the last one until after May’s Assembly Election. Next week we start a series of in-depth interviews with the party leaders called Wales Decides 2011: Face to Face.  First up is Kirsty Williams, the leader of the Welsh Liberal Democrats. In subsequent weeks, she’ll be followed by the Conservatives’ Nick Bourne, [...]

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Budget live blog

I think most of you who follow this blog also follow the ITV Wales blog and our twitter feeds, but I still should have mentioned earlier that updates from me and from my colleagues have been appearing here throughout the day and are continuing to appear. Follow my twitter feed   or the ITV Wales feed for [...]

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Budget preview

When he stands up to deliver his budget tomorrow (Wednesday), the Chancellor George Osborne will do so in very bleak circumstances. The military is engaged in a new conflict which will have to be paid for whilst at home, the latest figures show inflation is rising and borrowing higher than anticipated. All of which gives [...]

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Assembly negotiations…

Politics is all about behind-the-scenes negotiations but when I arrived at the Assembly this morning, I wondered if I’d stumbled across the secret room where these negotiations take place? Perhaps the parties are already holding talks about possible coalition formations after the May 5th Assembly election? Perhaps it’s a new room designed to be somewhere [...]

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Inflatable No forced to move

The No to AV launch which I mentioned earlier hit a spot of bother earlier. The campaigners had set up their inflatable yellow No outside one of Cardiff’s most famous buildings, the Wales Millennium Centre. But they hadn’t asked the WMC for permission. Conscious of not being seen to endorse one side or another in [...]

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No to AV campaign launches in Wales

The  No to AV campaign launched here in Wales today (Monday) with a couple of low-profile events and an inflatable No. Although the campaign is a cross-party one, the Cardiff event and a similar launch at Swansea were attended only by Conservative politicians, staff and supporters. In Cardiff, the Conservative AM Andrew RT Davies was [...]

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Sharp End 17/03/11

For tonight’s Sharp End, I’ve interviewed the Shadow Welsh Secretary Peter Hain about Labour’s Assembly election hopes. First though I wanted to know about his relationship with the First Minister, Carwyn Jones. You may remember from last week the behind-the-scenes row over Mr Hain’s criticism of the Deputy First Minister, Plaid Cymru’s Ieuan Wyn Jones. [...]

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