Dai-aspora

This is a momentous day for all Welsh and conspiracy theorists, not to mention the free people of Australia. For in that mulleted land on the outer edge of the earthly disc has the fearsome Welsh Lobby faced its sternest task.

Readers of this web blog will be aware of the sheer slate power of the Elders of Capel Seion, the cabal of chapel-goers, eisteddfod adjudicators, thirsty sopranos and plum-faced newsreaders who have screwed up every English political endeavour since the Battle of Morfa Rhuddlan.

No Good Boyo's new friend, the moderate Scotchman Hyperbore, has recently drawn the attention of a world struck mute with horror to Wales's internationalist mission to spread political misery where ever English and other non-Welsh languages are spoken.

He notes that the WikiLeaks revelations that civilians die in wars in Afghanistan just as elsewhere stem from one Bradley Manning. Although a US citizen born to English parents, young Bradley spent his youth in Wales - long enough to be recruited as a sleeper agent.

He joined the US Marines, gathered his documents and, when the moment came to sabotage the Anglo-American plot to impose social democracy on the happy helots of Herat, Bradley unbuckled his belt.

What other evidence is there of Cambrian confusion abroad? Consider the following:

1. The Confederate States of America had everything going for them. Easily defensible territory, a cautious US Congress, excellent military leaders and the tacit support of much of Europe. So who did they choose as their one and only president? Jefferson Davis, whose family hailed from Glamorgan.

The South might as well have burned down Atlanta itself and saved everyone three years of having their balls blown off.

2. Somalia had the makings of a successful state, believe it not. Unlike much of Africa it has an homogeneous population, convenient location on modern trading routes, decent ports, a proper alphabet and a thriving market in the export of glamorous models. The plucky Somalis even managed to oust their dictator Siad Barre all by themselves.

Then along came General Hersi Morgan, who combined the military efficiency of his father-in-law Barre with a devotion to famine and pestilence to rival that of any Horseman of the Apocalypse. The Somalis have not managed to hold a government together since, too preoccupied are they with avoiding al-Qaeda, the Ethiopian Army, pirates, Ridley Scott and one another.

3. Staying in Africa, take a look at Zimbabwe. Comrade Bob is no Welshman, as far as I know, but our ways are more subtle than that. Knowing what it's like, we assumed the International Community would press President Mugabe to cut a deal with the opposition rather than send in the brace of French paratroopers it would take to topple him.

Enter Morgan Tsvangirai and the rather obvious Welshman Ncube. Don't expect Mr Mugabe to be retiring any time soon.

4. Indeed, you could say that Africa's entire ghastly colonial experience came down to a Welsh. Dr Livingstone was as lost as a fisherman in Fortnum's and faced certain death by Mau Mau when he was rescued by Henry Morton Stanley, a hack from Denbigh who specialised in being a literal bastard on three continents.

The ensuing publicity stoked the Scramble for Africa, blighted the place with Bibles, and gave Stanley the chance to resume the career of killing black people that his capture and defection from the Confederate side had cut short during the American Civil War. His sole act of humility was to cede to King Leopold II of the Belgians not only the whole Congo but also the title of Worst White Man of the 19th Century.

Wales has tried to compensate Africa by adopting Lesotho, the only case of one country twinning with another, but we still get Christmas cards addressed to Mr Kurtz.

5. We have not neglected the lesser continents, either. South America seems relatively Waliserrein, apart from the agrarian simpletons of the Chubut Valley in Argentina. These religious pastoralists resented the way science, the telegraph and life-long teeth were ruining their traditional ways in Bala, and so set off for what they thought would be a verdant Eden in the Pampas.

They managed to turn the shrieking rocks and numbing desert that Buenos Ayres had sold them into a fair copy of Cardiganshire, but hopes of autonomy met the same fate as any attempt to rule Latin America that didn't involve ridiculous peaked caps and misuse of the power supply.

The Welsh of the Wladfa, as we call the Chubut colony, avenged themselves on the grim gauchos, though but. The Argentine junta's last gamble was the Falklands grab of 1982, a debacle that led to the election of Raul Alfonsín (a Welsh Foulkes on his mother's side) as president.

Good show, you might say, democracy and all that. Except that Alfonsín, in blazing a trail for the free market and constitutional rule, set up the liberal movements throughout the continent for a fall. Their European sensibility and advocacy of civil society clearly rankled with the Latin soul, as the voters whom they had freed soon ousted them in favour of lunatics, rabble-rousers and mini Castros.

Hell, even the Sandinistas made a comeback.

6. Our impact on Asia seems slight, but consider the heroic work of Agent Anna Leonowens (née Edwards). She encouraged the King of Siam to reform his country to such an extent that he was honoured with a musical, no doubt to the delight of the ladyboys of his elegantly debauched realm.

Again, what's not to like? But Anna's target was not the fragrant Thais, but the neighbouring British and French empires in India and Indochina. A strong Siam frustrated their efforts at expansion. Britain would have ruined their cuisine and the French their womenfolk. Instead they had to make do with Burma and Cambodia, countries renowned for their beastly food, absurd languages and razor-toothed, truculent beldames. In these respects they were a little reminder that Wales is never far away.

7. Even Europe is not immune. Literacy, the Code Napoléon and any sort of plumbing has kept the Welsh out of Charlemagne's patrimony, but the lost lands of Byzantium and the Third Rome are ripe for wrongdoing.

So far we've managed one success. The Orange Revolution in Ukraine was always going to be a disappointment, given the mediocrity of President Yushchenko and the mendacity of his prime-ministerial nemesis, Madame Tymoshenko, but its solid achievement of a free press, democratic process and the rule of law ought to have outlived it.

Not with President Viktor Yanukovych in power, I'm afraid. This carp-brained golem would have been nothing without the backing of the colliery oligarchs of Donetsk - a city and industry founded by, and once named for, Welsh coal baron John Hughes. Soon the proud Cossacks will envy their Belarussians neighbours to the north, with their abundant swamps, radiation and carefree inbreeding.

8. Which brings us back to Australia. This model of sturdy democracy and constitutional progress was dragged in and out of war by Billy Hughes, an Antipodean Lloyd George who cast parties and policies in his wake like teeth on a rugby pitch. The only parliamentary group he didn't wreck in his endless political career was the Country Party, which he could count on to continue his cussedness long after he had descended cackling into Annwn.

The Australians are a generous folk, and their Labor Party decided to give Wales another chance when it chose Julia Gillard, a russet Kinnockette from Barry, as its leader all of two months ago.

The result of Saturday's snap election, as Hyperbore further wrote, shows that she turned a ten-point poll lead into a double defeat - not only are Labor in second place behind the Liberal Party, but with no overall majority it looks like Australia will be run, Israeli-style, at the whim of nutjob independents.

Shall we weep, like Alexander, with no more worlds to conquer? Not while Antarctica lies untaffed, and possibly English planets wink in the Welsh sky. Mae'r Anghenfil yn y Lloer.