Sketch: The Welsh are perverts and Theresa May knows it

The Welsh are perverts and Theresa May knows it.

Not actual perverts (although many of them may very well be), but political perverts.

What happened in a community centre in Bridgend, in full view of the TV cameras, was pure, electoral filth. It’s what the people* came for. It’s what the people got.

(*this is an election campaign. “People” therefore means party activists hermetically sealed into a community centre.)

To the politically conventional, the unadventurous, the altogether straightforward, offering the Welsh a choice between “strong and stable leadership under me or a coalition of chaos under Jeremy Corbyn”. as Theresa May did no fewer than six times in a speech lasting nine minutes, might seem strange.

After all, the people of Wales, and indeed the people of the rest of this country have been offered this choice before, not yet two years ago.

“Britain faces a simple, inescapable choice,” a chap called David Cameron said then, in a little post on Facebook. “Stability and strong Government with me, or chaos with Ed Miliband.”

Now, most of the rest of the country voted for the stability and strong government that came to an end four years prematurely, with sterling having devalued itself at 3am. But the Welsh didn’t. They voted for chaos under Ed Miliband, in their millions.

If Monday’s poll is to be believed, that the Conservatives really are on course to win a general election in Wales for the first time since 1918, it can only be because they’ve given the Welsh more chaos than they could ever have dreamed of.

“Strong and stable government with me or a coalition of chaos under Jeremy Corbyn."

That's the offer. The genius is she knows they won’t fall for it. They’ve just had a coalition, for a full five years, and it wasn’t chaotic at all. Not even a sniff of chaos. She knows they know that only she can provide the one-party chaos they so crave.

She knows they know that voting for “strong and stable leadership” and getting the kind of chaos we’ve not seen in the country in peacetime in a hundred years is itself very much part of the thrill.

Actually voting for chaos is far too sensible. Why would any decent, chaos loving Welshman, vote for a chap who actually says that he’ll shut down the armed forces and let terrorists run unchallenged through the streets? It's not chaos if he tells you he's going to do it.

Far more fun to vote for someone who actually walks and talks like a boring old safe pair of hands, when you know they're absolutely anything but. Who actually says Britain’s future is brighter in the European Union and who’ll then drag you out of it. Who actually says six times there won’t be a general election then plonks one in your lap because she's been on a long walk and changed her mind – and in the Welsh countryside of all places.

No. The Welsh don't want green-tea, shortbread-biscuit chaos, more-chaos-anyone? chaos, but full on, you've-got-absolutely-no-idea-what-I'm-going-to-do-next chaos. And they know Theresa May won't let them down.