Political Quarterly has now turned my article into a shorter blog-post.
The end of Nolan
In memoriam: Carl Sargeant
We lost Carl two years ago today. On the afternoon of his death I was asked by friends to undertake an interview with BBC’s Good Evening Wales programme. Felicity Evans undertook the interview with great sensitivity.
The recording can be heard here: and this is the transcript: gew leighton
Love to Bernie, Jack and Lucy.
Like many others, I miss Carl still.
About my Facebook book
My new book, Facebook, the Media and Democracy, was published on 12 September.
I have written a few articles about it: in the New Statesman, here and here. In Computer Weekly here.
Here is an article I wrote for the Western Mail. Here is another I wrote for Nation.Cymru.
Facebook, the Media and Democracy
My new book, Facebook, the Media and Democracy, is published tomorrow.
Here is an article I wrote for the Western Mail. Here is another I wrote for Nation.Cymru. More articles are in the system and I will post them up.
I’ve loaned my vote to the Greens.
My membership of the Labour Party lapsed in March. I’d decided months before that I wasn’t going to be caught out by an automatic renewal and cancelled my direct debit.I might still have voted Labour, and the choice not to would have been harder in Wales if Derek Vaughan had stood for re-election or one or two of the other Labour candidates like Mary Wimbury, whom I’ve known for years, had been top of the Labour list.
But ultimately I decided not to vote for the pro-Brexit anti-Semitic shambles that the Labour leadership has allowed the party to become. In 2017 I voted Labour, and my vote has been waved around with that of millions of others as an endorsement of the leadership’s plans for a better Brexit. Well, stuff that. We won’t get fooled again.
When my postal ballot arrived two weeks ago, I returned it immediately with a cross against the Greens. Caroline Lucas has been the outstanding Parliamentary leader for a People’s Vote that I’ve now marched for several times in London. Green MEP Molly Scott Cato has done great work on the regulation of Facebook in the European Parliament, and I’ve just finished writing a book on this subject.*
There’s a bigger reason for voting Green of course, and that’s to do with the ceaseless drive of capitalist consumption that threatens our planet and human and other life on it. I’m voting for my grand-daughters and their future.
I know others will have made different choices, and there are good people standing for a number of the other anti-Brexit parties. I’m not saying the Greens are perfect, but strategically I’d like to see them to do well in these elections and in 2021 see them sitting in our National Assembly.
I’d like to come home, Labour friends, but hey, have you got work to do. If Labour enables Brexit I won’t be back. If Brexit happens, and we end up in Ukania, then I’m not sure what future the unionist parties have in any case. The Leavers don’t care for the Union, after all. If we have to face life after Brexit, then other political choices may have to be made.
There’s no joy in this, by the way. Only sadness.
Ukania beckons, and the far-right is on the march. Labour leadership could have pointed the way to a progressive alternative. Instead, it ducks the key decision of our time.
*For Labour, both Jo Stevens and Ian Lucas have also done brilliant work on this subject in the U.K. Parliament, let me say, in the most exceptional Parliamentary Select Committee inquiry I have ever seen. But that’s another story.
Remembering Sarge, one year on
Algorithms and Big Data
My article in Public Administration has been published in ‘early view’ format.
You can find it here: or use the article Digital Object Identifier (DOI) – 10.1111/padm.12534 to search for and cite this article.
My evidence to the leak inquiry
I said yesterday I would publish my evidence to the leak inquiry. It’s quite short. I gave verbal evidence in December then followed up with the following email, from which I have redacted the name of a Labour MP:
I just wanted to place on record the key issues that I raised with you when we met last week:
– I was told directly on 10 November by a BBC journalist that they had received a text on November 3 from a Deryn employee well before the reshuffle announcement stating that Carl Sergeant was losing his job;
– that a Labour AM told the Assembly Labour Group on 9 November that he had received a text on 3 November in advance of the reshuffle stating the same but without specifying who sent this: you have other sources on this who can give direct evidence of what was said
– that NAME REDACTED MP would be willing to speak to you about what [they were] told on 3 November in advance of the reshuffle being announced about Carl losing his job.
Obviously since then, Lee Waters has confirmed that he was the AM who told the Labour Assembly Group about the text he received. He has said that he doesn’t want to reveal who sent him the text because he doesn’t ‘wish to contribute to a trail of breadcrumbs which can lead to the identification of any of the people who came forward’.
That in itself is a perfectly reasonable justification for not revealing who sent him the text – as long as it isn’t simply covering up another leak by another consultant from the public affairs company Deryn, on top of the previously confirmed leak by that company to the BBC.
This is getting boring now….
Last week I had a letter from the Welsh Government saying they had received an FoI request related to any complaints about me in my time as Minister for Education and Minister for Public Services. The FoI requests were detailed and precise in terms of my time in those roles, so they clearly came from a political insider. I reproduce the letter below.
Those of us who have spoken up for the family of Carl Sargeant over the last six months – and yes, it is six months yesterday since we lost Carl – have grown accustomed to being on the receiving end of these bullying tactics designed to undermine us. Letters and FoI requests sent to employers have become the norm. In other cases, these have affected public sector employees unable to speak out to defend themselves.
Most people in the small circle of Welsh Labour politics know who the likely source of the letter is. I won’t stoke his ego by naming him.
Let’s be clear. Since Carl’s death there has been an active cover-up. There has been a deliberate attempt to intimidate witnesses. Lawyers’ letters have been sent to independent media outlets to silence them. One of the sources of the leak of Carl Sargeant’s sacking was only named by the media after the Leader of the Opposition went on the record in the Assembly Chamber.
The personal attacks are getting boring now. No doubt they will get worse once the QC-led inquiry commences.
Tomorrow I think I will publish my evidence to the leak inquiry.
