Articles by Chas Newkey-Burden

Technology

Five takeaways from Plaid Cymru’s historic Caerphilly by-election win

Plaid Cymru’s triumph in the Caerphilly Senedd by-election is a “reset for Welsh politics”, said the party’s leader, Rhun ap Iorwerth. The Welsh nationalists got 47% of the vote in a record turnout of 50%. Reform UK came second on 36% and Labour a distant third with 11%. Here are five things we learned from a historic night in south Wales. UK politics is evolving The result was terrible for the “two big beasts of Westminster politics”, said political editor Chris Mason on the BBC. Labour was “humbled, pummelled, crushed”, while the Tories got just 2%. “Yes, you read that right,” – they “managed just 13% of the vote between them”. So the “key lesson” from Caerphilly for “every political leader” is that UK politics is “moving at speed, with voter loyalties shifting and atomising in unprecedented ways”, said The Guardian. “Those who cannot adapt will be crushed.” Bad headlines ‘hampered’ Reform Reform UK “threw everything at the campaign”, said Sky News. Nigel Farage “visited three times” and his party was expected to win, but when the result was declared at 2.10am, the party leader was “nowhere to be seen”. The outcome “represents a clear disappointment for Reform”, said The Guardian, and it’s “possible the party’s chances were hampered” by reports that its former leader in Wales, Nathan Gill, had admitted to taking bribes to make pro-Russia comments in the European Parliament. In-fighting harmed Labour Labour “had a horror of a start to this campaign”, said Wales Online. Its council leader “quit”, explaining that he “couldn’t support” either Keir Starmer or the "Johnny-come-lately" by-election candidate, Richard Tunnicliffe. The Caerphilly “drubbing” could reinforce the “ongoing narrative” that Labour is going to do badly in the full Senedd elections next May. Canvassers “might now think twice” about "whether it is worth their effort” to go door-knocking over the winter. Reform’s regional obstacles Reform coming second with 36% of the vote is a “solid performance for an upstart”, said Mason, but “insurgencies remain insurgent by winning – and they were easily beaten”. It’s “clearly not easy for them to be the first choice ‘none of the above’” alternative to Labour and the Tories when there’s “another party also claiming that mantle”. So this could continue to be "a challenge for them in Wales, as it is in Scotland with the SNP, in a way that it isn’t in England”. Labour faces threat from left Much has been made of the threat to Labour from the right, but “the road to a Labour recovery does not simply lie in winning back voters from Reform”, said polling expert John Curtice in The Times. “The party is losing ground to its left as well as its right.” In Caerphilly it was Plaid who “were able to do most of the damage”. Welsh Labour is clear where the blame lies for its poor performance. It “remains supportive of and loyal to first minister Eluned Morgan”, said Tom Harris in The Telegraph, but there is “simmering resentment towards Keir Starmer” for the “party’s unpopularity”.

Technology

Will latest Russian sanctions finally break Putin’s resolve?

Donald Trump has targeted the “economic equivalent of Russia’s crown jewels” with a new wave of sanctions, said Sky News. The president has slapped fresh restrictions on Russia’s two largest oil companies, in response to what he calls Vladimir Putin’s “lack of serious commitment to a peace process to end the war in Ukraine”. What did the commentators say? The new measures, which target Russian giants Rosneft and Lukoil, as well as more than 30 subsidiaries, “aren’t just any sanctions”, said Sky News, they’re a “punch to the gut of Moscow’s war economy”. They’re “no slap on the wrist” because oil is “Russia’s bloodstream”, and Trump “just cut off the blood flow”, said the broadcaster. The timing is significant too, said the BBC, because the new measures were announced “just days after the UK sanctioned the same two Russian oil companies”, and European Union countries have issued new measures that ban the import of Russian liquefied natural gas from 2027. Putin’s “tactical triumph didn’t last long”, said The New York Times – last week “it looked as if the Russian president had outmanoeuvred his adversaries yet again” by making a “deftly placed call” to Trump that “scuttled any expansion in American support for Ukraine”. But yesterday “Russians awoke to new American sanctions against their oil industry”.The sale of oil and gas accounts for about a quarter of the Russian budget, and Moscow’s oil industry is already under pressure from increasingly long-range strikes by Kyiv. So the measures “take aim at the heart of the Russian economy” and deal a major blow to Putin’s “effort to cajole” Trump into “forcing Ukraine to capitulate to Russia’s main demands”. Actually, the sanctions are “not a maximal blow,” Daniel Fried, a former US assistant secretary of state for Europe, told Atlantic Council, and there may need to be tougher US actions, such as “joining Europe in lowering the price cap on Russian oil, enforcing the oil price cap by putting sanctions on the Russian shadow fleet of tankers, and sanctioning ports that service them”. But the measures are still a “strong move” and they could “put even more downward pressure on Russian oil revenues” by pushing Moscow to further discount its oil and “forcing purchasers to consider alternative sources of oil”. Some experts in Russia said that the new measures would have a “muted impact”, said The New York Times. Moscow has “become adept at evading restrictions” by using “hundreds of old vessels uninsured by Western companies” and by processing transactions “through buffer companies in third countries”. So although oil prices “rose sharply” yesterday, the sanctions’ “potential potency” may “ultimately depend on how the penalties are enforced and how energy buyers react to them”. In response to the move, four Chinese state oil companies have suspended purchases of Russian seaborne oil. Indian refineries have also announced that they will slash imports of Russian crude to comply with the new sanctions. If these cancellations “prove permanent”, Russia “faces a serious economic hit”, said The Telegraph.