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cartref > Transactions > Volume 32 - 2026 > RENEWING WALES: CITIZENS, CONTRACTS AND SELF-CONFIDENCE

RENEWING WALES: CITIZENS, CONTRACTS AND SELF-CONFIDENCE

The first elections to a larger, revamped Senedd now behind us, what does Wales look like? For all the changes it is much like the proverbial curate’s egg: there’s good and bad, world-beating and shoddy, ambitious and innovative, and lazy and exclusive. Despite twenty-seven years of devolution, the dial hasn’t shifted on the most critical indices that impact people’s lives most. GVA is 74% of the UK average, the Welsh economy languishes in the company of the poorest regions of Romania, Bulgaria and Italy. PISA educational attainment rankings saw Wales register the greatest drops in maths, science and reading of the nations of the UK.

Existential risks – not least political ignorance and lack of interest – threaten. A new social contract is needed urgently as a remedy and a critique of leadership, with the caveat that these issues are not peculiar or exclusive to Wales. Are there practical learnings, therefore, about how the situation might improve and how a different Wales might look in the future?

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