
Crown Estate: Westminster holds the power claims campaign group
One from Welsh secretary Jo Stevens on behalf of prime minister Keir Starmer, confirming Westminster's refusal to transfer the Crown Estate to Wales.
The other, from first minister Eluned Morgan confirming the Welsh Government's commitment to securing control of the Crown Estate.
YesCymru chairman Phyl Griffiths said: 'These letters reveal exactly where decisions about Wales are really being made – and it's not in Wales.
"The Welsh Government understands that control over our natural resources is key to our economic future, but Westminster's answer is simply 'no'. This is why our campaign will only intensify until the Crown Estate is transferred to Wales.'
YesCymru has led a national campaign for transferring the Crown Estate to Wales, which is backed by all 22 Welsh councils.
YesCymru director Rob Hughes said: 'It's a farce that YesCymru has to act as a go-between to get clarity on the Crown Estate.
"Why are the Welsh and UK Governments not talking directly to each other about Wales' resources? This back-and-forth through us only highlights how little say Wales has in decisions that should be made here at home.
"Until we have independence, we will remain at the mercy of a system where Westminster holds the power and Wales gets the leftovers.'

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The Independent
21 minutes ago
- The Independent
Unless he can fix things at home, Keir Starmer will get no credit for his diplomatic skill
All prime ministers end up being their own foreign secretary. Keir Starmer started off as one. He has been moderately successful in foreign affairs, but has gained no credit for it from the British electorate. He has played a role in rallying Europe to the defence of Ukraine. This bore fruit at what we might call the half-baked Alaska summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. The meeting failed to end the war in Ukraine, but that also means that President Trump did not sell out the Ukrainian people, which he has threatened to do. We cannot be sure how important European voices, including the British one, were in holding the line, but it seemed as if the conference call Trump held with European leaders on Wednesday was a significant moment. The briefing from the Europeans was almost ecstatic: that the US president seemed to recognise that a peace on Putin's terms was unacceptable, and that it was Putin who was the obstacle to a fair settlement. 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We have thrown open our doors to 200,000 refugees, but higher taxes to pay for the Ukrainian war effort? Ni, dyakuyu. Luckily, Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, found an electorally painless way of increasing defence spending by simply switching money from the most unpopular Budget heading, namely foreign aid. The almost total silence since that announcement in March has been instructive: the great enlightened achievement of Tony Blair and David Cameron in meeting the UN target for foreign aid spending is something that, it turned out, almost nobody cared about. The other sticking point in support for Ukraine is the idea of sending troops to help repel Putin's aggression. That has been out of the question for all of Ukraine's allies: we are happy to supply arms and money, but Ukrainians must do the fighting. Yet British public opinion is sufficiently supportive that Starmer has been able to talk about deploying British forces to help deter further Russian aggression if there is a peace deal. It is unclear how or whether this would work, but it has helped focus attention on the difficult question of who would guarantee a settlement and how that would work. What was most surprising about Trump's statements after the Alaska summit – apart from referring to Mark Rutte as the 'highly respected secretary general of Nato' – was his promise that the US would provide 'robust security guarantees' to support Ukraine. All in all, then, and considering how badly the summit could have gone, given Trump's belief that the Ukrainians brought their troubles on themselves, his disdain for Nato and his desperation for a Nobel Peace Prize at any cost, the Alaska meeting went well. Starmer can take some credit as the leader of a nation that is an important ally of Ukraine and an enemy of aggression. 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I remember the European Parliament election in 1999, when Tony Blair had saved the Muslim population of Kosovo from expulsion by Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian dictator. It was a moment of shining moral leadership, by which Blair persuaded a divided Nato and a reluctant Bill Clinton to stand up to ethnic persecution, and which was a triumphant success. It was a success that brought him 15 minutes of adulation from the tabloid press, followed almost immediately by sullen complaints about traffic jams and trains not running on time. In the European election, held on the day that the Serbs withdrew, Labour did extremely badly. What reminded me of that election was a 'government source' quoted in The Times: 'World War Three is breaking out internationally; it's unreasonable for people to expect Keir to be caring about potholes.' Wrong, wrong, wrong. International leadership is well and good, but unless Keir can fix the potholes and stop the boats, it counts for nothing with the voters.


Telegraph
22 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Public think Labour will use new online laws for censorship
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Sky News
32 minutes ago
- Sky News
Sir Keir Starmer and his allies have no choice but to keep their Trump criticisms implict
Sir Keir Starmer is straining his diplomatic sinews to simultaneously praise Donald Trump's efforts to end the war in Ukraine, while repeating calls for a completely different approach - one which ends the cosy bonhomie with Vladimir Putin, threatens the Russians with sanctions, and puts the Ukrainians back centre stage. If that's a message which feels like quite a stretch in writing, in person, during this morning's call of international leaders, it must have been even more awkward. Donald Trump 's public dismissal of the Europeans' previous calls for a ceasefire - after his tete-a-tete with Putin - has only highlighted divisions. Of course, the prime minister and his European allies have no choice but to keep their criticism of the Alaskan summit implicit, not explicit. Even as they attempt to ramp up their own military preparedness to help reinforce any future peace deal, they need President Trump to lead the way in trying to force President Putin to the negotiating table - and to back up any agreement with the threat of American firepower. For Downing Street, President Trump's new willingness to contribute to any future security guarantee is a significant step, which Starmer claims "will be crucial in deterring Putin from coming back for more". It's a commitment the prime minister has been campaigning for for months, a caveat to all the grand plans drawn up by the so-called Coalition of the Willing. While the details are still clearly very much to be confirmed, whatever comments made by Donald Trump about his openness to help police any peace in Ukraine have been loudly welcomed by all those present, a glimmer of progress from the diplomatic mess in Anchorage. 5:08 Of course, the promise of security guarantees only means anything if a peace deal is actually reached. At the moment, as the European leaders' bluntly put it in repeating Donald Trump's words back to him: "There's no deal until there's a deal." 8:31 Fears of Zelenskyy being painted as warmonger There is clearly real concern in European capitals following the US president's comments that the onus is now on Volodymyr Zelenskyy to 'do a deal', that the Ukrainians will come under growing pressure to make concessions to the Russians. As former Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said: "Given that Donald Trump has failed to deliver a deal, his track record would show that Donald Trump then usually tries to seek to blame someone else. I'm worried that next week it could be President Zelenskyy who he will seek to blame. "He'll paint him as the warmonger, when in fact everybody knows it's President Putin." The European leaders' robust statements describing the "killing in Ukraine" and Russia's "barbaric assault" are an attempt to try to counter that narrative, resetting the international response to Putin following the warmth of his welcome by President Trump - friendlier by far than that afforded to many of them, and infinitely more than the barracking President Zelenskyy received. They'll all be hoping to avoid a repeat of that on Monday. But as in Alaska, the other European leaders won't be there. Despite their long phone calls, the White House doesn't seem to be listening.