The week after a historic Senedd election should have been a moment for Wales to be heard.

Instead, Brecon was left waiting.

BBC Question Time was due to be filmed in the town for a post-election special, bringing a national audience face to face with voters in one of the most politically significant weeks Wales has seen since devolution began. It was scheduled for Thursday, May 14, exactly a week after the election. But at short notice, the programme was moved to London.

The BBC said the decision was made in response to developments at UK level. A spokesperson told the B&R: “The decision was taken to change the location in light of the dramatic and fast-moving events in Westminster last week, which was the focus of the programme. We are looking at alternative dates to return to Brecon.”

Those events included the resignation of Health Secretary Wes Streeting and continued speculation over a potential challenge to Keir Starmer’s leadership.

The London programme, presented by Fiona Bruce, reflected that mood. On the panel were Foreign Office minister Jenny Chapman, former Conservative education secretary Michael Gove, Reform UK’s Danny Kruger, and Steve Wright, general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union.

It was a heavyweight Westminster discussion. But it meant Brecon lost what had been planned as a post-election spotlight.

And that matters, because Welsh politics had just gone through something significant.

Welsh Labour lost government and its status as the largest party for the first time since devolution began in 1999. Plaid Cymru surged into first place with 43 seats. Reform UK became the second largest party with 34. Labour fell to third on just nine seats. The Conservatives were reduced to seven MSs, the Greens entered the Senedd for the first time with two, and First Minister Eluned Morgan became the first UK devolved leader to lose her seat while in office.

It was a political realignment that, in almost any normal reading of events, would have demanded some attention in Wales itself. Not least from a programme that is supposed to take the national conversation out of Westminster studios and into local communities.

That isn’t to say Question Time should ignore breaking UK political developments. Of course it shouldn’t. But the decision does leave a familiar feeling in Wales - that when pressure rises in Westminster, devolved politics can quickly slip down the list.

The BBC has said it will look to return Question Time to Brecon at a later date. Its website has June 4 pencilled in, although that has not been confirmed.

But the last-minute change still leaves an impression. That even in a week when Wales rewrote its own political map, the gravitational pull of Westminster proved stronger once again.