This article was published in the County Times, 2 August 2026, and can be found here.
A little over a week has passed since the beginning of Andy Burnham’s tenure.
Cautious optimism seems to be the phrase. Immediate action on the cost of living, through cutting business rates for pubs, taking Value Added Tax off of energy bills, and announcing a £2 bus fare cap in England (equivalent to £25m of extra money for the Senedd) are all solid first steps.
We all know that it will take a lot more than that to solve Montgomeryshire and Glyndŵr’s problems.
Cross-border health delays continue to blight us, and it remains to be seen whether Plaid will do what is needed to prevent access to healthcare from continuing to hollow out in Mid Wales. Housebuilding is not at the level it needs to be to bring down housing costs for young people, rural schools continue to close, ALN funding is insufficient.
Meanwhile, wildfires have broken out across the Welsh countryside, with the constituency officially in drought after the driest summer for 190 years. While this has taken a huge toll on wildlife and agriculture alike, thankfully we have not seen anything like the infernal scenes in France and Spain, which have forced hundreds of thousands of people to evacuate their homes.
This is all gloomy stuff, but it is important not to lose hope. What we have been missing from our politicians, for a long time, is a positive vision of what the future should look like. At the end of the day, this is what politics is about.
I do mean a literal vision. Picture it. Affordable housing in safe communities. Plentiful, cheap, homegrown clean energy. Thriving towns and well-connected villages. Resilient infrastructure future-proofed for a changing climate. A sustainable relationship with the natural world that is based on respect.
First steps, as I say, from the new Prime Minister last week. There is so, so much more to be done.
But such policies are evidence that he certainly does share in that positive vision. Burnham has announced that his government will fix the broken social care system, end rough sleeping once and for all, and put decision-making back into the hands of local people, where it should be.
Big promises. But the alternative to ambition is continued decline. We can no longer tolerate a politics that sets the bar too low. It was clear to me that neither Starmer’s meek managerialism nor Farage’s depressing, divisive rhetoric held the answers.
We must stop looking backwards into the past, but forwards into the future. Let us pull together and bet on hope.