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A thought I've had a few times recently: it's strange how UK-level-centric a lot of the debate around the horse race stuff for the next Senedd elections are.
Even amongst the better commentators, there's not a huge amount of debate around the different cleavages in Wales. You basically get as deep as the three Wales model and that's it.
For example, I've seen a bit of 'look at this new lockdown restriction: Corbynism is truly well and alive in Drakeford' stuff from the right to try and damage Drakeford.
And this is coming from someone who is very much not a Corbyn fan, and who knows he was unpopular in Wales by 2019 - but I think that assumption from the right that 'Drakeford + Corbyn = electoral profit' doesn't engage with the fact that Corbyn won twice in Wales.
In particular 2017 - we let the UK-level narrative obscure the fact that Corbyn won a huge landslide in Wales in 2017. He got 48.7% of the vote to Miliband's 36.9%, Brown's 36.2%, Blair's 42.7% in 2005. It was a landslide.
There's also the other side of things - the Tory vote keeps going up. Last 7 general elections: 19.6%, 21%, 21.4%, 26.1%, 27.2%, 33.6%, 36.1%.
However, that narrative ignores that you're starting from a decimated vote in 1997. Thatcher got 31% then 29.5%.
There's this narrative of slow Labour decline and slow Tory rise, but it's not quite as simple as that.
A counter-intepretation is that three years ago with a hard-left leader Labour won in a landslide. And the Tory vote has (admittedly with a completely different electorate) pretty much just reconstructed where it once was, rather than being some historical surge.
I'm not sure what is driving these trends - it's complex. The collective bonds of mining and trade unions are gone, and a new generation in Wales completely buy into the capitalist dream: privately owning a home, individually career-driven, no union membership.
But Labour under Corbyn in '17 got a vote share that nobody has received UK-wide since '59. If it was a Welsh media talking just about Wales, the narrative would be completely different. A leader from the far left of Labour won a landslide three years ago, then won again in 2019.
As I said: not sure what to think. But people attempting to transplant lazy UK narratives onto Wales are mistaken, and their resulting assumptions will be mistaken. That means that Wales will continue to throw up surprises, because its not the country it's being analysed as.
