Welsh wails

I'm sorry, I'm still going on about the election. It only happens every 5 years though (except that a hung parliament makes another one likely much sooner).

In particular, my conception of Wales has been radically altered by the result. I have this delightful idea that the Celtic nations are somehow cleverer, ideologically more sound and less predisposed to capitalist exploitation through their shared histories of colonial oppression and in particular, their suffering at the hands of the Conservative Party. Leaving aside the travails of Ireland, Wales and Scotland have seen their languages basically killed off (though Welsh is now doing well), their industries destroyed (coal and steel in Wales, these plus shipbuilding in Scotland) and replaced with colonialist tourism and second-homes thus destabilising local communities, their economies skewed towards low-paid services and suffering the contempt of a metropolitan elite.

Scotland hasn't forgotten - only one Conservative MP has been elected, on the English border. But poor Wales, abandoning the radical traditions of nonconformist Cymru Cymraeg and the vibrant mass proletarian socialism of the Anglophone mining valleys, has allowed the Tories to sneak over the border to claim 8 seats. Not just in the holiday areas where English rich people have retired, but in bustling towns like Conwy and the rural Vale of Clwyd. The Lib Dems did appallingly, as did Plaid Cymru, a great socialist nationalist party. No longer can the inscrutable Welsh quietly congratulate themselves on being wiser, more longsighted and more moral than their English neighbours. No longer can I speak and write of a country devoid of the selfishness and greed of perfidious Albion.

Ach y fi, indeed.