Congratulations to all the new Senedd Members elected a fortnight ago. I’m sure we don’t need quite so many of them, but I hope they will work in the best interests of residents. While we now have a Plaid Cymru minority government in Wales, they were elected primarily on a mandate of stopping Reform UK rather than support for their aspiration to break up the UK.

It was disappointing therefore that one of the first actions of the new First Minister, before he’d even appointed his cabinet, was to get on the phone to the Leaders of the SNP and Sinn Fein to discuss how they can work together to help break up our country. Apparently, Plaid Cymru’s desire for further powers to be devolved to the Senedd, as a stepping stone to Welsh independence was raised as an issue in the first phone call between the new First Minister Rhun ap Iorwerth and the Keir Starmer.

Polls show there has been no increase in support for Welsh independence. Plaid Cymru deliberately didn’t campaign on the issue of independence for fear of scaring voters, so they should not take this election result as a mandate to devolve further powers to Cardiff Bay. Successive Labour-led governments in Cardiff Bay have shown themselves to be incapable of effectively managing the powers they have had these last 27 years. Hardly an evidence base for increasing the responsibilities.

While the Welsh Government has had some limited success with policies like improving recycling rates, the introduction of the carrier bag levy and the smoking ban, its stewardship of the NHS, the economy and our education system has been pretty disastrous. Almost every performance measure compares less favourably to almost every other part of the UK.

What we need from the new Welsh Government is a relentless focus on bread and butter issues. Making our economy more favourable to small businesses to increase footfall, reduce welfare dependency and get people into work. We need to get a grip of the crisis in our Accident and Emergency departments – the Grange is a particularly dire example, where ambulances queued up outside unable to offload patients is a daily sight. And to get more money into our schools to help drive up standards as well as supporting teachers to improve attendance and discipline.

The last thing our country needs is more constitutional tinkering, on top of the political chaos engulfing the UK Government.