“IT’S BEEN a disastrous year for Welsh Democracy.”

Those were the eye-catching words with which controversial Cardiff AM Neil McEvoy spoke about the need for a new campaign group within Plaid Cymru.

Suspended from membership of his party and expelled from the Party of Wales’ Assembly group after demanding access to information held about him under the Data Protection Act after Plaid made a complete hash of an investigation into allegations made against him by a firm of lobbyists, Mr McEvoy was not talking about his own experiences.

Fed up of what he regards as nepotism and systemic corruption within the Welsh body-politic, Mr McEvoy offered a series of trenchant analyses of Wales’ political and social problems.

And he started by referring to the dismissal of the late Cabinet Secretary for Communities, Carl Sargeant.

Neil McEvoy writes: It took just three anonymous complaints about a Welsh Government Cabinet Secretary – which were not investigated, not proven, not deemed serious enough to go to the police or even written down. They led to him being sacked and judged guilty by the mob, without the opportunity to defend himself. We know the rest.

The Permanent Secretary of the Civil Service is refusing to release documents that the democratically elected National Assembly has demanded. I’ve had to invoke a clause in the Government of Wales Act used for the first time, to force the publication of the report into the Carl Sargeant leak, because I am not going to sit in our Senedd and let Wales be disrespected.

My motion is supported by the Conservatives and even UKIP, but we have to wait until after recess for Plaid Cymru to confirm if they will or will not back my motion. For the sake of the Welsh National Interest, I hope they do.

Investigations into the First Minister’s involvement into the shoddy sacking affair are being whitewashed. We’ve been hearing about a toxic culture at the heart of Welsh Government. When we campaigned for the Welsh Assembly is this where anyone thought it would end up?

Plaid Cymru – the Party of Wales – has to rise above this kind of politics and lead the way.

FREE SPEECH UNDER THREAT

Neil McEvoy had strong words about the threat posed to free speech in Wales.

Nowadays, being offended is almost a hobby for some people. They’re dismissed as virtue signallers in many parts of the world. But they don’t get dismissed in Wales. They actually make it onto the news. Too many of them have made it into our Assembly. Mock outrage everywhere on Twitter from politicians who joke about the same things in private.

The reality is that we have imported America’s culture war into Welsh politics. Instead of uniting people we’re dividing people up. Some people are said to be oppressors, simply because of their gender or race. People talk about male white privilege. Are white men in the valleys privileged? Really?

In Wales, we should know where the oppressor is, because it’s been the same for a thousand years. It’s the elite in London who have taken the wealth from our country to make themselves rich while keeping us poor.

It’s the new elite in the Bay Bubble, copying their London masters.

I’m not interested in turning people against each other because of their gender, or their race, or their sexual orientation. I know what my political purpose is. It’s addressing the injustice of our country being exploited for centuries.

WE MUST DEFEAT THE ELITE

We have to defeat the elites, they are very powerful people. They’re the political elites that don’t represent us. The London media elite that doesn’t talk about us, unless they have something condescending or negative to say. The financial elite that keeps their money off shore, so we can’t benefit from it.

But where are we now? I was thrown out of the Plaid group for questioning why we can’t sell council houses so long as the money is used to buy new ones. That’s a really popular policy that has helped tens of thousands of working class people own their own home and become independent. That’s real sovereignty as far as I’m concerned, because how can you ever be sovereign when someone else owns the house you live in?

The establishment here has had warnings. The huge rise in the UKIP vote. It didn’t matter how incompetent they were. The less competent the better in order to send a message to the establishment. And they beat us in so many elections as a result.

The Brexit referendum. The establishment didn’t see it coming. They couldn’t understand that faced with voting for the status quo or voting for the unknown, then people would pick the unknown, because that risk was better than keeping things the way they are. I voted remain but I can tell you, I understand why so many people didn’t and I’m not judging anybody for that.

A lot of people voted leave because of immigration, and there is a migration problem in Wales. Our political Leaders choose not to talk about it. Because our economy is bad, our young, talented and economically active people have to leave. And they’re replaced by older, economically inactive people because Wales is a cheaper, more beautiful place to retire.

The best thing we can do about this is become wealthy. That way the young people stay and it will be the talented, economically active people coming to our country because of the opportunities we’ll have here.

DANGER FOR THE ASSEMBLY

People are crying out for change, but nobody is providing it. The establishment in Wales don’t want change. The status quo is working great for them so they’ll fight to keep it.

What we need is equality of opportunity, which means ending nepotism and ending corruption, because nothing hurts equal opportunity more than nepotism and corruption. You can see that in Cardiff Bay. Millions dished out to the third sector, who often seem to spend a lot but deliver little. Those organisations are packed with Labour members.

We’ve got lobbyists running rampant in Cardiff Bay, selling access and information to the highest bidder. Anyone who gets in their way is smeared in the most personal and damaging way. These people are poisoning our democracy and must be dealt with.

But how can we when we’ve had the same Labour party in charge in Wales for 20 years? That’s not healthy for any democracy.

I can tell you where this is heading. People will not be voting for a sovereign Wales in future. They’ll be voting to abolish the Assembly. Because they’re looking at what’s going on and they’re thinking the Assembly is too broke to fix. But too many of us worked too hard to get a national parliament to see it fail like this.

So what are we going to do about it? We are going to get organised and we are going to change the direction of this party, change the direction of its politics and change people’s minds about voting for us. We’re going to propel Wales forward.