The Judge
RAVES!
Date: 02/06/11
Leadership - Why We Need It, And Who Can Give It To Us
One of the most dispiriting things about politics in Wales today is the total absence of anything which could be called leadership, of anyone who could be said to have the foresight, the talent, even just the charisma of standing above the rest.
Take the parties in the National Assembly, for example. The LibDems are led by a woman who might have made a good cookery mistress in a thin year at a very minor girls' school. Plaid is headed up by a man who should never have been allowed to progress from the status of a county council clerk. The Conservatives don't even have a leader at the moment. And the government itself is led by a man of such startlingly nondescript demeanour that his personality has been deemed Missing, Presumed Never There.
One of the very few figures in Welsh politics in recent years who could be said to have the necessary qualities of intellectual, political and rhetorical eminence is Adam Price. Adam was the Member of the Imperial Parliament for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr from 2001 to 2010. He stood down in the latter year in order to spend a year on a Fulbright Scholarship, after which - so it was thought - he would return home to stand in this year's Assembly elections.
However, a few months later it emerged that he would not return at that time. This is our tragedy as a nation: that our best politician and political thinker is not available to us at a time when we need him most.
Last week, Adam Price gave the Graduate Address at Yale, which is in the clip below. In it, he shows that clarity, grasp of principle, gravitas and humour which would place him head and shoulders above any currently mis-leading our benighted colony.
Dere adre', Adam bach. Rŷn ni dy angen di nawr!
