Over 200 statues and street names are at risk of removal across Wales, after Mark Drakeford dived headfirst into the culture war. Last November the First Minister commissioned a “Monuments and Street Names Audit” to look at anti-woke names and statues in Wales’ public life. It ended up listing 209 monuments…

The Welsh Government has now confirmed it is openly committed to “address[ing] fully the recommendations from the Monuments and Street Names Audit”, which listed the statues’ historical links to slavery following the Black Lives Matter protests last year.

The audit highlights those who “were directly involved with the slavery and the slave trade or opposed its abolition“, and states that those commemorated are often “presented solely as role models rather than representatives of challenging aspects of the past“. Following the audit’s release, Drakeford claimed it was “the first stage of a much bigger piece of work“. Now, in the Welsh Labour’s new Programme for Government, it looks like Drakeford’s open to renaming or toppling every anti-woke monument the audit identified…

Among those found to be offensive by the report included:

• A Gandhi statue in Cardiff Bay (unveiled by Carwyn Jones and Mark Drakeford themselves back in 2017). “Fascist, racist and sexual predator” according to one cited petition from Leicester
• Three statues of Admiral Nelson. Appeared on UK crowdsourced map ‘topple the racists’
• Two statues of the Duke of Wellington. “There have been calls to remove statues in Scotland by reason of his Indian campaigns.”
• Any pub named The Clarence. The Duke of Clarence: “spoke out strongly and on many occasions in favour of plantation owners and against abolition of the slave trade”

Drakeford will be marching to topple Nelson’s Column before long…