Time for Kirsty to give way to Jenny over the Valley aeroplane

I REALLY must question the strategy being used by the Liberal Democrats in their weekly press briefing, writes Clive Betts from the Assembly press gallery.

Whether she likes it or not, it’s time for party leader Kirsty Williams to give way on occasion to the person she beat in the contest for the leadership, Jenny Randerson.

This week was one of those occasions – and not perhaps the first. Mrs Randerson had a superb point to make about the costliness of the North-South air link, which would have made headlines.

While all that Mrs Williams could present was a very vague press release which I’m sure no-one was really interested in. And, to make matters worse, the AM for Brecon and Radnor regaled us with a mother-in-law joke which was really not in the best marital taste.

In other words, as has been said before, Kirsty Williams isn’t starting well in her new post as leader of the Welsh Lib Dems.

Indeed, some wonder whether Mrs Williams is slowly going nuts.

She will not like the comment, but the press gallery is slowly getting the impression that she is a very poor replacement for Mike German as leader of the Lib Dem group.

This week’s press release was a demand that new First Minister Carwyn Jones “matches rhetoric with action” over his commitments to education.

Mrs Williams demanded that he reverse the higher education spending cuts which his government had implemented last autumn. She wanted a supplementary budget passed.

Now, precious few politicians are going to do an about-turn that quickly, particularly when it so obviously a financial issue.

So, that story wasn’t much of a runner.

Then Kirsty had some good points about the failure of child-poverty to be reduced in Wales in accord with the Assembly’s written policies.

Her solution ? Carwyn should have a chat with Gordon in London about changes to taxes and benefits.

Somehow, I don’t think that would be worth it.

But what makes me think that Kirsty is going nuts is what passed for her mother-in-law joke. She asked the press gallery to guess what he mother-in-law had given her for Christmas.

Some of them even tried. But Kirsty put them out of their agony.

The present was a roll of cling-film and a cling-film dispenser. What for ? So that Kirsty could better prepare her sandwiches for her daily trip down to Cardiff Bay.

If I were Kirsty’s mother-in-law I would take hold of that cling-film and slowly wrap it around Kirsty’s neck, before pulling it tight.  Not too tight, mind you; we don’t want a by-election.

Not for the first time, the following days revealed that other Lib Dems AMs had material prepared which more than justified an airing at the Lib Dem briefing.

Mrs Randerson, the heavy-weight AM for Cardiff Central, demanded of Carwyn Jones, “The continued subsidy of air-travel by the Welsh Government shows just how out of touch they are with the economic and environmental reality Wales faces. In year one, Welsh taxpayers subsidised each plane passenger using the service by £84, whilst the subsidy for rail travel between North and South Wales was just £6.30 per passenger.

“It cannot be right that Welsh taxpayers continue to subsidise costly and heavily polluting air-travel, while our railways and public transport remains desperately underfunded. The Welsh Liberal Democrats would switch the air-link subsidy to be spent on improving the vital and more heavily used North-South train service.”

Under the regulations which govern FM questions, I believe that Mr Jones was given notice that he was going to be quizzed on the Valley link.

The link was proving much more popular than expected. It had “exeeded expectations”.

But, due to the way the Assembly is now run, that is all we got. The old-style transport committee could have demanded – and would indeed have received, without any need to demand – full reports from civil servants on what was happening, on the rules, and so on.

But now, next to nothing.

Quite clearly, Mrs Randerson had a far better tale to tell than had Mrs Williams. For once, Kirsty should have given way.