Category: English

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Anwen Elias, Reader in Politics, Aberystwyth University

After emerging as the largest party in the Senedd (Welsh Parliament) election, Plaid Cymru is now establishing itself as the next Welsh government. It’s the first administration not led by Welsh Labour since devolution began 27 years ago.

For UK Labour, Plaid’s breakthrough could become one of the most significant constitutional and political challenges of the coming years.

The clearest guide to Plaid’s immediate priorities is its “first 100 days” programme for government. This was published during its February 2026 conference. It includes calls for a new devolution bill to be passed in the UK parliament giving Wales the same devolved powers as Scotland and new funding arrangements for Wales.

The party’s manifesto provides more detail on its package of constitutional demands. These include further powers over taxation, policing and justice, welfare, broadcasting, renewable energy, migration and the Crown Estate.

During the election campaign, Plaid deliberately played down its longer-term goal of Welsh independence in an effort to broaden its appeal beyond pro-independence voters. But now in government, the party will want to begin laying the groundwork for a longer-term constitutional change.

Its manifesto proposes a new national commission for Wales to prepare for a document exploring the challenges and opportunities that independence could bring for Wales. For Westminster, this may evoke comparisons with the SNP government’s Scotland’s Future which was published ahead of the 2014 independence referendum.

Another reset in UK-devolved relations

In the aftermath of the election, Plaid leader Rhun ap Iorwerth said he intended to “take the fight” to the UK government as first minister. It reflects the party’s campaign promise to “always stand up for Wales”.

Plaid has also pledged to “reset” relations with Westminster. The UK Labour 2024 manifesto also committed to a “reset” of the UK government’s relationship with the devolved governments.

Structures intended to improve co-ordination between the UK and devolved governments were introduced in 2022 under the then Conservative UK government. These included a council bringing together the prime minister and devolved leaders, alongside policy-focused inter-ministerial groups.

The outgoing Welsh Labour government argued that relations had improved since Labour entered power in Westminster in 2024. But it also pointed to examples of “limited or uneven engagement” across some policy areas.

Read more:
After a complete collapse, where does Welsh Labour go from here?

Our research has raised questions about the UK government’s willingness to make full use of the intergovernmental arrangements.

Plaid now wants those arrangements strengthened and placed on a firmer legal footing. In particular, it supports recommendations made by the Independent Constitutional Commission on the Future of Wales in 2024 to give intergovernmental structures a statutory basis, rather than relying largely on political convention.

The party also wants stronger protections for the Sewel convention. This is the principle that Westminster should seek consent before legislating in areas of policy that have been devolved.

A new alignment among devolved governments

Plaid’s victory could also reshape relationships between the three devolved governments. Co-operation between Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland has often been limited. This reflected their different political leaderships and constitutional settlements. But following the 2026 elections, parties supportive of greater national self-determination now lead all three governments.

That raises the prospect of more co-ordinated pressure on Westminster. Rhun ap Iorwerth has already signalled he wants to pursue greater cooperation.

One probable area of shared interest is the UK’s relationship with the EU. As debates over trade, regulation and economic alignment continue, devolved governments may seek a stronger voice in shaping UK-EU policy. Plaid’s manifesto argues Wales should have a “seat at the table” in discussions directly affecting Welsh interests.

Plaid was able to use Labour’s years of partnership with the previous Welsh government to argue that the UK government had become increasingly indifferent towards Wales.

Read more:
The Welsh Conservatives survived the Senedd election – now they must decide what they stand for

For Keir Starmer’s government, demands for deeper devolution and constitutional reform may struggle to compete with mounting political and economic pressures elsewhere. Some of Plaid’s proposals may remain low on the list of priorities. But there are risks in dismissing them entirely.

A perception that Wales is being ignored by Westminster could deepen political frustration. It could also simultaneously strengthen support for further constitutional change. In the longer term, that may create more fertile ground for Plaid Cymru’s case that a journey to independence is the only option for Wales to achieve its own interests.

Anwen Elias receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council.

Elin Royles received funding from the James Madison Charitable
Trust.

– ref. Why a new Plaid Cymru government in Cardiff may pose a fresh challenge for Westminster – https://theconversation.com/why-a-new-plaid-cymru-government-in-cardiff-may-pose-a-fresh-challenge-for-westminster-282436

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Pat Collins, Associate Professor in Geography, University of Galway

We were all flying without wings back in the heyday of Irish boy band Westlife. The group were formed in Dublin in 1998 and rose to international popularity during the early 2000s. The new release of their anniversary album, 25: The Ultimate Collection, affords an opportunity to reflect on the band’s story. They emerge as bold and brash, but also as airbrushed as an advertisement for a new housing development in Dublin.

Irish music manager Louis Walsh took five young men and handed them to British music mogul Simon Cowell. Some of the band members were from the west of Ireland, from a generation whose older brothers had left for London and Boston in the 1980s with a bag and a prayer.

The songs were almost aggressively un-Irish. Free from political statement or critical reflections on the place they came from. Instead, they put out American soft rock from the 1970s and 80s, which they delivered in close harmony and in matching knitwear, sitting on stools, off which one of them would occasionally rise for the key change.

It was, in the most literal sense, a performance of aspiration. And Ireland in 2001 understood aspiration.

The Irish comedian Tommy Tiernan once described a trad music (Irish traditional music) session as a frenetic spinning and spiralling whirl where kids fuelled on Fanta were thrown around and everyone felt like the spiral might get so strong as to free everyone from the pull of Earth’s gravity. Much of the way we were in Ireland in the 2000s was similar to that whirl.

The country had been experiencing rising economic statistics for long enough that we started believing that we were actually rich. It was dubbed the Celtic Tiger economic boom.

Ireland had emerged from the poor man of Europe moniker to become something shinier and less complicated. Westlife were simply doing the same thing, at volume, on Top of the Pops.

All this growth came under the guidance of that Taoiseach in the anorak, Bertie Ahern. He was a leader so confident in the fiscal strength of the country that he thought any economists who thought any different should do away with themselves – the same man who didn’t feel the need to have a bank account.

As Westlife was topping the music charts in 2001, Ireland was dubbed the “world’s most globalised country” – top of a list of the countries most integrated into the global network of trade, capital, information and people. More than the US, more than Singapore, little Ireland was considered the most open of them all.

Consider all of this growth for a country which five decades earlier was a place where nearly one in every two people made their living off the land, the grip of the Catholic church was strong and faith in local industry was unquestioned. It was an Ireland that considered itself an island on its own.

By the start of 2001, however, Ireland had gone so far down the road of liberalisation that it would be difficult to find its way back. What wealth had been accumulated from the start of the Celtic Tiger was finally starting to be spent. We were building major motorway networks to connect the country and we even went as far as building a light rail system in the capital city.

The nation turned to housing as the “spatial articulation of wealth”. For many, one home was not enough. For a country tied to the fiscal and monetary unions of much larger countries, which were faring much worse in terms of economic metrics, low interest rates and easy access to money acted as the propellant to fuel a bubble that would take a full seven years to burst.

The Flood Tribunal (established in 1997 and later called the Mahon Tribunal) exposed how corrupt the new developments could be. Land zoning, planning applications and suburban sprawl were leaving permanent scars on the countryside. The wealth the country had accumulated became manifest in hotels, shoddy apartments and three-bed semi-detached houses built too far away from where everyone wanted to be.

Amid all this, Westlife were gaining international popularity, which came to its apex in 2001 when the group set off on their first world tour and released their third album, World of Our Own.

There was something almost too neat about the whole arrangement of the band. Boys from the west of Ireland – historically the part of the country most associated with emigration and with the Famine in the mid-1800s – were now being exported not as labour, but as a product. They weren’t going to England to build roads, as boys like them traditionally had; they were going to conquer the charts. The geography was the same. The power dynamic had, apparently, reversed entirely.

Except, of course, it hadn’t really reversed at all. The money, the decisions, the creative control – all of that remained firmly in London, in the hands of Cowell, a man who had identified that pop music could be industrialised like any other product. Find the ingredients, test the recipe, remove anything interesting, repeat.

What Cowell understood, better than anyone, was that the audience didn’t want to be surprised or challenged or moved in any direction they hadn’t already been moved before. They wanted the familiar, delivered with a cheeky smile.

And Westlife, to their credit, delivered the familiar with lovely smiles. They were professionally polished and almost completely without edges. Every rough corner that might have connected them to an actual place or an actual feeling had been sanded back to a smooth, radio-friendly finish.

Ireland, with all its bounty of beautiful complexity – its landscape, its history, its complicated relationship with leaving and returning – was not something that fit in a Cowell product. So it was removed.

What remained were five young men who could hold a note, sing Billy Joel’s songs, and look sincere on cue. International financial capital fuelled by Fanta did the rest, flying as it does, without wings.

Pat Collins does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Westlife at 25: how the boyband emerged during Ireland’s economic boom – https://theconversation.com/westlife-at-25-how-the-boyband-emerged-during-irelands-economic-boom-281656

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Netalie Shloim, Lecturer in Counselling & Psychotherapy, School of Healthcare, University of Leeds

Pregnancy is often regarded as a time to prepare the nursery, but it is also a useful moment to get the kitchen ready.

For many expectant parents, the months before a baby arrives are filled with practical jobs: buying clothes, assembling a cot, choosing a pram, packing a hospital bag. Yet one of the most important forms of preparation happens somewhere less photogenic: in the cupboards, the fridge and the daily routines of the home.

Research Peles and colleagues conducted suggests that pregnancy can be a powerful moment for change. During pregnancy, food becomes about more than personal preference. It is bound up with the health of the developing baby, the wellbeing of the mother, and the kind of family life parents hope to create.

The idea of nutritional nesting is useful here. It describes how first-time parents begin shaping the home food environment during pregnancy. It means the food world a baby will eventually be born into: what is bought, what is visible, what is easy to reach, what gets cooked, what is eaten together, and what becomes normal.

Healthy habits begin before a baby first tastes puree or sits in a high chair. They begin in the rhythms and environment parents establish before birth. Vegetables in the fridge may technically be available, but they are unlikely to be chosen by exhausted parents looking for something quick. Fruit on the counter, chopped vegetables ready to use, batch-cooked meals in the freezer and simple ingredients within reach make healthier eating easier when energy is low.

The distinction between availability and accessibility matters. Availability means the food is present in the home. Accessibility means it is easy to see, easy to reach and easy to eat. Research on the home food environment suggests that what is available at home, what parents eat themselves, and family eating routines all play a role in the overall healthiness and variety of children’s diets. Shloim describes this as healthy mealtime interactions, accounting for what and how the family eats.

Kitchens are shaped by more than mothers alone. Pregnancy can be an especially useful time to think about food because many parents, including fathers and partners, are already imagining the family they want to become. Peles’ work with first-time expectant fathers suggests that men often see pregnancy as a turning point: a chance to take more responsibility, support their partner, and help create a healthier home. Good intentions, though, do not chop vegetables, plan meals or fill a freezer. Fathers and partners may need practical support to turn motivation into everyday action.

Nutrition support during pregnancy should involve the household, not only the pregnant mother. The home food environment is usually shaped by more than one person. Partners influence shopping, cooking, budgeting, snacking and the emotional tone around food. Treating food preparation as a shared parental responsibility, rather than another task added to the mother’s mental load, makes it more realistic and fair.

The point is to make nutrition advice more useful, rather than more judgmental. Lists of foods to eat or avoid have their place, but they rarely solve the daily problem of what tired people can afford, cook and face eating. Families also need help with the basics: planning meals, preparing quick options, shopping on a budget and making nutritious food convenient before the sleep deprivation of early parenthood begins.

For many parents, the second trimester may be a useful period for this kind of preparation. For some women, though not all, the nausea and exhaustion of early pregnancy may have eased, while the physical demands of late pregnancy have not yet fully arrived. That can make it a more realistic time to ask: what will make daily eating easier when life gets harder?

The answer does not have to be complicated. Parents might reorganise the fridge so healthier foods are visible, learn a few reliable recipes that can be cooked quickly, prepare snacks that do not depend on willpower at 3pm, or decide together how meals will work when the baby arrives. These small changes are not glamorous, but they reduce the number of decisions tired parents have to make.

Early family food culture is about nutrients, but it is also about relationships. Children learn from what is served and from how meals feel.

Shloim suggests that a calm, responsive feeding relationship means paying attention to a child’s hunger and fullness cues, offering food without pressure, and making mealtimes feel safe rather than stressful. Evidence suggests that these early interactions can support children’s ability to regulate their own eating. They also support overall positive interactions.

Early-life conditions, including the period before birth, can influence health later in life. A child’s future is not fixed before birth, but early environments matter, and supporting families before and during pregnancy can be a practical way to improve long-term health.

Expectant parents do not need a perfect diet or a perfect kitchen. Nutritional nesting is about making ordinary healthy choices more visible, more convenient and more shared. Its value is practical: reducing friction before the exhausting early months begin.

The nursery matters. But the kitchen may be where some of the most important family interactions begins.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Pregnancy is a chance to reshape family eating habits before the baby arrives – https://theconversation.com/pregnancy-is-a-chance-to-reshape-family-eating-habits-before-the-baby-arrives-278058

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Emilie Rutledge, Senior Lecturer in Economics, The Open University

The US and Israel’s war on Iran has cast a long shadow over the Gulf. It has placed many of the economies that make up the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) regional grouping – Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia – under substantial strain.

Since the war began in February, the World Bank has downgraded its 2026 GDP growth forecast for the region from 4.4% to just 1.3%. Some thinktanks, including Oxford Economics, even predict that some GCC economies will enter recession in the second half of the year.

However, the effects of the war have differed across the region. While the Gulf states are often viewed as a unified economic bloc bound by a shared dependence on hydrocarbons, the conflict has revealed significant differences in their economic vulnerability and resilience.

Countries like Qatar and Kuwait have seen their oil and gas exports seriously disrupted by the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz. But Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which have access to bypass infrastructure, have been partly able to circumvent this limitation.

Saudi Arabia has diverted 7 million barrels of crude per day through its east-west pipeline, allowing it to export oil from Yanbu on the Red Sea. The UAE, meanwhile, has utilised a pipeline from Habshan to Fujairah to export up to 1.8 million barrels of oil each day from the Gulf of Oman.

This infrastructure has enabled both countries to capitalise on soaring global oil prices. Saudi Aramco, Saudi Arabia’s state oil company, reported a 26% jump in profits in the first quarter of 2026.

Disruption to energy exports is one part of the story. The war has also caused substantial physical damage to energy infrastructure across the region. Around 80 energy facilities, ranging from production plants to refineries and pipelines, have been targeted by Iranian missile and drone attacks so far.

It will take months – and in some cases years – to repair the damage (which stands at an estimated US$58 billion) once the war ends. Qatar’s liquified natural gas industry, in particular, has suffered serious damage. QatarEnergy, the state-owned energy company, says it will take up to five years to repair its Ras Laffan industrial hub alone.

Gulf diversification

The GCC states have adopted strategies to diversify their economies away from a dependency on hydrocarbons. Tourism and aviation are two central pillars of this, with GCC countries investing heavily in these sectors. The Gulf is now home to some of the busiest international airport hubs in the world.

But these industries, too, have been damaged by the war. Financial analysis firm, Moody’s, suggested recently that hotel occupancy in Dubai is set to plummet to 10% in the second quarter of 2026 from 80% before the war. Some Iranian attacks have targeted civilian areas, including hotels and residential buildings, prompting tourists to stay away.

The Iran war has also placed Gulf airlines such as Emirates, Etihad and Qatar Airways under increasing financial pressure. More than 30,000 flights to the Middle East were cancelled in the first month of the war and jet fuel prices – the biggest variable cost to airlines – are up 90% on the annual average.

The logistics sector is another area of Gulf diversification. It has grown rapidly since the early 2000s thanks to the region’s strategic position between east-west trade routes. The UAE’s Jebel Ali Port, for instance, is now one of the world’s largest container ports and the base of Dubai’s multinational logistics firm, DP World.

However, Jebel Ali has seen a 40% drop in vessels due to the war, with container carriers rerouting to alternatives such as Salalah in Oman and Colombo in Sri Lanka. And while DP World has opened emergency land corridors to ports outside the Gulf to keep cargo moving, these routes are costly and have limited capacity.

The UAE and Qatar also both serve as major air freight hubs, acting as bridges for cargo travelling between Asia and Europe. But this has been affected by the war too. Freight rates have increased following attacks on both Dubai and Doha that led to grounded flights and air space closures.

In the long-term, the economic impact of the war on the Gulf economies will hinge on its duration and political outcome. But the risks are firmly tilted to the downside. The fiscal outlook for some GCC states is deteriorating, with several facing scenarios where government spending exceeds revenue. Public sector debt in some GCC states is rising too.

Moody’s has downgraded its outlook on Bahrain, which was already facing longstanding financial issues prior to the war, from “stable” to “negative”. This will make it harder for Bahrain to access much-needed capital and increase future borrowing costs.

GCC economies invest their surplus oil and gas revenues through sovereign wealth funds, which collectively manage between US$4 trillion and US$6 trillion in global assets. Governments are likely to draw on these funds to support domestic spending on reconstruction and bolstering their defences after the war.

This could undermine their future potential to fund large long-term diversification mega-projects such as Saudi Arabia’s Neom City. Plans for Neom, which was initially proposed as a linear city to home 9 million people, have already been scaled down in recent years due to issues including funding pressures.

The Gulf’s loss of “safe-haven” status due to the war, and the resulting reputational damage, cannot easily be reversed. Even after the conflict ends, higher risk premiums will persist for those doing business in the Gulf. Shipping disruptions could take months to unwind, and a prolonged closure of the Strait of Hormuz would be likely to trigger permanent rerouting.

If the conflict drags on, structural shifts in global supply chains may deepen, with lasting costs for the Gulf economies.

Emilie Rutledge does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. How severe has the economic impact of the Iran war been for the Gulf states? – https://theconversation.com/how-severe-has-the-economic-impact-of-the-iran-war-been-for-the-gulf-states-282629

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jasper Verschuur, Assistant Professor in Engineering Systems and Climate, Delft University of Technology

Millions more people will face hunger in the coming months if the conflict in the Middle East is not resolved soon, the UN has warned. The price of energy, which instantly affects the cost of producing and transporting food, has risen sharply due to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

The price of fertiliser, much of it made in the Gulf states and exported via the same stretch of water, has also soared. So it seems inevitable that the cost of food around the world will increase, just as it did after Russia’s full scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 (both countries were big exporters of food and fertiliser).

Back then, some governments responded with expensive taxpayer funded subsidies for producers and consumers. But the situation in the Middle East highlights how consumers everywhere remain vulnerable to such geographically concentrated production of energy and fertiliser.

Here are four ways that the world could attempt to build a food system that would be far more resilient to future shocks.

1. Grow greener

The current situation is surely a sign that the time has now come for agriculture to make the transition to “green ammonia” – ammonia produced using renewable energy sources instead of fossil fuels. (Ammonia is a key ingredient in nitrogen-based fertiliser.)

Instead of depending on certain countries or regions for fertiliser production, it would be possible to produce home grown fertiliser when the sun shines and the wind blows.

The first green ammonia plants are now being constructed in sunny places such as Chile, Morocco and Australia. It’s an expensive switch, but the declining cost of renewables combined with wildly fluctuating gas prices could soon make it a more competitive and secure alternative.

A successful transition will depend on sustained commitment (and investment) from governments – especially when the Strait of Hormuz eventually opens again.

2. Stockpile

Governments should also rethink the way they stock food. Modern logistics and slick supply chains mean that many countries store certain products to last a few days or weeks, with the assumption that those stocks can be swiftly replenished.

Some places (Sweden, China and India for example) take a longer term approach, seemingly driven by a stronger sense of the importance of self-sufficiency. Other countries should follow their lead, and think beyond stockpiling things like grains, to other essential farm supplies like fertiliser and pesticides. But they need to do so gradually to not distort already tight markets in the short term.

This kind of change would also align with broader national security ambitions that are emerging across Europe and elsewhere. Food stocks to cope with periods of uncertainty and disruption would be an essential part of that.

3. Grow more plants

A demand change towards reducing waste and healthier diets – specifically by eating more plant proteins – could swiftly improve food security and resilience.

Animal farming requires large amounts of fertiliser for the crops providing their feed. Plant proteins such as legumes (beans, lentils, peas) require much less fertiliser (they can even “create” their own fertiliser in their roots through nitrogen fixation).

They also have other advantages including improved nutrition, and much reduced carbon emmissions.

4. Electrify transport

Biofuels, such as ethanol and bio-diesel, are often portrayed as sustainable fuel alternatives. But the crops used to produce these fuels (such as corn and rapeseed) now occupy an area at least the size of Italy.

That’s a lot of land being used to deliver not very much fuel (in the UK, biofuel powers less than 7% of the country’s transport needs).

Instead, building solar or wind farms to provide energy for electric vehicles is a much more efficient use of land when it comes to fuelling transport needs.

Accelerating the electrification of transport and rapidly phase out crop-based fuel would release tens of millions of hectares globally for things like food production, rewilding and carbon storage.

Towards resilience

Building a more resilient food system will not happen overnight. Changing diets and switching fuels and fertiliser dependencies takes time. It will involve trade-offs as well as considerable political and commercial will.

None of that is easy to achieve, and previous global spikes in food prices (in 2007, 2010 and 2022) did not led to significant changes.

Yet the alternative is to remain exposed to repeated shocks. Climate change and geopolitical tensions will continue to disrupt global supply chains.

The current crisis is not only yet another warning about the fragility of today’s food system, but also an opportunity to accelerate the transition towards one that is much better able to withstand future disruption.

Paul Behrens receives funding from The British Academy and the REAPRA Foundation.

Jasper Verschuur does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. How the world can avoid millions going hungry when supply chains collapse – https://theconversation.com/how-the-world-can-avoid-millions-going-hungry-when-supply-chains-collapse-282441