What day of the week is it?

I've mentioned a few times before that the Tories locally seem to have a particular problem with numbers and mathematics. It seems that the problem also affects their grasp on the calendar. The above is taken from the calendar which they kindly distributed to households in the constituency. I'm told that people found it quite useful, until we got to March, when confusion set in.

It's the first time that I've been able to accurately and honestly claim that a political opponent doesn't even know what day of the week it is.

Rationalisation and centralisation

The collapse of plans for a number of local councils to pool certain functions has inevitably led for calls from some to force local councils into co-operating. The Western Mail editorial leads the way with a suggestion that if councils won't share functions voluntarily, then the number of councils should be reduced.

There is a question here about whether the proposed rationalisation should ever have been restricted to local government anyway. If we want a single centralised payroll system for ten councils, why not for 22? And why not include the NHS? Why not, indeed, a single payroll system for the whole of the public sector in Wales? What makes one particular combination 'right' and others 'wrong'?

As I blogged recently, I don't necessarily disagree with the notion that Wales has too many councils, and should re-organise them, but I think we need to start by asking what they are for. The problem with most of the calls for a reduction in the number of councils is that they seem to start from a pretty subjective statement such as "Wales doesn't need 22 Directors of Education", rather than from the question "What's the best way of delivering education services in Wales?".

And it isn't just about education, of course. Local government provides a whole range of services - on what basis do we start with the assumption (which is where most seem to start) that the best way of delivering one service is the best way of delivering all services? Does the structure for delivering education need to be the same as that for delivering leisure services, for instance?

We have an Assembly government with highly centralising tendencies, which is regularly reducing or constraining the scope for local government to add value and make a difference. It sometimes seems to me that differences between Wales and England are considered by some to be perfectly acceptable, but differences between Cardiff and Newport are not.

I find it fascinating to see some arguing for allowing the Assembly Government to do things differently, and then arguing that that same government should enforce a standard approach across Wales' local authorities. This is a particular challenge for those like myself in parties which have traditionally called for more decentralisation. Real decentralisation has to be about more than passing money from the centre to the local authorities and then telling them exactly how to spend it.

I'm not against a reconsideration of local government structures - far from it, I think it's overdue. But we need a proper review, not a knee-jerk reaction. And I think that, as Plaid said in our 2007 manifesto, we really need to look at the governance of Wales as a whole.

The Ashcroft Loophole

At first sight, the announcement by the Electoral Commission last week seemed to be saying that there was nothing at all wrong with the donations made to the Conservative Party through Bearwood Corporate Services (BCS). However, when one looks at the detail, it seems to be, as the Sunday Times put it yesterday, more a case of 'not proven' than 'not guilty'.

The paper went on to say:

'The commission made it clear that it had been unable to find out exactly where the money donated to the Tories by BCS had originated. Papers had been destroyed and the commission had been “unable to obtain any meaningful information” from a Belize company that owned shares in BCS.'

In short, many months of investigation by the Commission have not got to the bottom of the matter, and that has been a result, in no small part, of the Tory leadership being evasive and obuscatory, the relevant Tory officers and staff refusing to attend interviews with the Electoral Commission, and those others directly involved in the matter being singularly uncooperative.

Even the key finding, which is that BCS was 'trading' in the UK, and therefore eligible to donate seems to skip over the fact that the donations were definitely not the result of that UK trading. This seems to expose something of a loophole in the law. On this basis, any company which processes at least one invoice for goods or services supplied in the UK can then proceed to donate millions of pounds without having to disclose where those millions came from.

I don't know what the expectations of those passing the law were, but I would have thought that they would have supposed that a company would be making donations from the profits on its UK activities, yet BCS appears to have made massive donations even when trading at a loss.

In fact, BCS seems to have created millions of new shares in itself, sold those shares to another company or companies in the Ashcroft empire, and used that new-found capital to make its donations. Since the shares were not traded on any open market, it's hard to calculate their worth at the time of their purchase; but the decision to then donate the capital raised to the Tory Party effectively rendered those shares worthless thereafter, since the company had turned capital inflows into revenue outflows.

This loophole, which effectively allows donations from overseas which would be illegal if made directly to then become legal, needs to be plugged. It makes a complete mockery of the law, and politicians exploiting loopholes to avoid the intention of the law should be ashamed of themselves.

Still Digging

The news that Cameron didn't know about Ashcroft's tax status until this week, and that Hague didn't know until a few weeks ago, is pretty astonishing, given that questions and rumours have been circulating for so many years. After all, his lordship has been a key member of the top campaign team for several years and has an office as part of the Conservative HQ structure; successive Tory leaders must have been talking to him on a fairly regular basis.

Yet, assuming that the current Tory leader is telling the truth (and I think we should), we are effectively expected to believe one of two things.

The first is that Cameron (to say nothing of Hague, Duncan-Smith, and Howard before him) never felt that there was any need to ask Ashcroft the question, despite it being asked of him on a regular basis. He preferred to ride out the regular criticism and questioning than to ask one simple question. If this is true, it's diffficult to avoid the conclusion that he had a pretty good idea what the answer would be, but preferred to retain what Nixon memorably called 'credible deniability'.

The alternative is that he did ask the question, but was told to mind his own business, a response which he quietly accepted and did nothing more about. I find it hard to believe either of these, but surely one or other must be true.

All parties, from time to time, have people who for one reason or another are a potential source of embarrassment. I've always believed that it's better in the long run to risk a bit of bad publicity for trying to deal with a problem when it comes to light than to risk a great deal of bad publicity by turning a blind eye.

It looks very much as though four successive Tory leaders have preferred to attempt to ride out the storm for a whole decade - blinded by the vastness of the fortune directed their way. At the moment, I seem to be hearing the sounds of chickens coming home to roost.

Economic Renewal

There was quite a lot of comment last week about the article from Ron Jones of Tinopolis. And the article itself was certainly hard-hitting. But was it entirely fair?

Certainly, drawing attention in a forthright way to the fact that, after all the time and effort directed towards trying to strengthen the Welsh economy, we are still lagging behind is a fair point to make. And I also tend to agree with his assertion that the public sector 'stole' Objective One, although I might not have put it quite in those words. It certainly did not get spent in a way which lifted Wales long term economic performance, which was supposed to have been the original intention.

His comments on the ways in which Wales has suffered from the centralisation which followed nationalisation, and his criticism of attempts to shore up failing or doomed industries also strike a chord.

I do think though, that in some ways, he (and even more so, some of those who have responded to his comments) seems to have looked at the issue over too short a timescale, certainly when it comes to criticising the performance of the Assembly Government since 1999. And I really do think that it's unfair to simply try and pin the blame on the current incumbent at the relevant ministry - and I don't say that just because he's a Plaid minister.

I'm not saying that there aren't some valid criticisms of government policy to be made - merely that the problem has been with us for a long time, and that expecting the situation to be turned round in such a short time is unrealistic. That said, it is surely clear that a change of direction is needed. Carrying on with the policies and approaches of the past was probably inevitable during the first years of the Assembly, but we should have identified and started out on a new direction by now.

On solutions, though, Ron Jones' article was more than a little lacking. It's always easier to criticise what others are doing than to suggest an alternative - that's something which politicians know only too well, of course.

I share at least some of his concern about any government responding by producing yet another strategy – I've previously expressed concern myself about the plethora of strategies and the dearth of clear action plans. Part of that reflects a limited ability to act in some areas, but it would be a mistake to try and hide behind that. However 'Ready, Fire, Aim', is not likely to serve us much better than 'Ready, Aim, … er… that's it', and we need at least some idea of what it is we're trying to achieve.

My biggest worry about the Economic Renewal Programme is not the fact that it is happening, nor the unfortunate wording of the first objective (an open goal for Ron to shoot into), but the fact that it is planned to take up to nine months to complete before it can be implemented. That smacks a little of excessive concern for the partnership and lengthy (and ultimately meaningless) stakeholder consultation of which government seems to be so fond, rather than the short sharp exercise which any private sector organisation would undertake at this point. Nine months is more than enough time to refocus and reorganise an entire multi-national corporation – and to do so at least twice.

For me, the key elements of any revised strategy for driving economic growth in Wales have already been identified by Ieuan – a switch from dependence on trying to attract footloose multi-nationals to an emphasis on nurturing and developing local enterprises, and an emphasis on building growth around industries and activities which support rather then undermine our commitment to reduction of the carbon footprint. Sounds very simple, but it would be a mistake to underestimate the significance of those two changes in terms of economic policy.

Our biggest need is to get on with it – on that much, at least, I can agree with Ron Jones.

Footie

I don't think anyone would claim that Michael Foot was the most successful leader the Labour Party ever had, but he was the most honest and principled. Labour's election defeat in 1983 is popularly ascribed to his leadership, but I've always felt that to be unfair. There were a series of reasons for Labour's defeat that year. Anyone who argued for the sort of radical policies which Foot espoused was always going to be battling against the press barons as well as the Tories from the outset.

His championing of the disarmament cause was something which I always admired, and he held to his views on that when most of his party deserted the moral high ground in search of electoral success.

I heard him speak several times, most notably during the 1979 referendum campaign, when he was on the 'right' side, and deployed his oratorical skills in support of the establishment of an Assembly.

I only ever met him once. A group of us were protesting outside some event or other (as one does) at which he'd been speaking, and he came across to speak to us afterwards. We mentioned the issue of a Parliament for Wales, and he fixed us with a stare and said something to the effect of, "I've been voting for a Welsh Parliament since before you were born". Put us in our place.

Welsh Labour MPs of his day were more very much more prepared to say what they thought than the voting fodder that seems to inhabit parliament today, and he was a giant amongst them. Wales, and Welsh politics, was the poorer for his retirement from parliament. We could do with more like him - in any party.

Avoiding both tax and the question

After ducking and diving for 10 years, Lord Ashcroft has finally admitted what most of us suspected all along – he doesn't pay full UK taxes. It's still not entirely clear whether his donations to the Tories are from his UK earnings or from the overseas earnings on which he's avoided paying UK tax.

The Electoral Commission are still investigating whether the company used to make most of the donations is actually trading in the UK or whether it's just a device to channel money from Belize to the Tories, which would otherwise be illegal. Their investigation has taken a long time. It could have taken less, of course, if the Tory leadership had not been so "evasive and obfuscatory", presumably in the hope that all would not become clear until after the forthcoming election.

The proceeds of Ashcroft's tax avoidance do not seem to have found their way directly into local Tory coffers, but their own annual accounts reveal that staff from Ashcroft's office are regular attendees at their campaign meetings. Of course, they do not need money from Ashcroft locally, because they are largely financed from the proceeds of hedge funds with the single objective of repealing the Hunting Act.

(As I've noted before, one of the advantages of the way in which hedge funds are generally structured is that the profits are treated as being capital gains rather than income, and therefore taxed at a lower rate. It's another legal form of tax avoidance, and one which Plaid are pledged to stop.)

What I found hardest to believe was Cameron's response to Ashcroft's revelation. The first part was that everything is all right now, because after 10 years of ducking the question, we now know the truth, and the second is that there are one or two Labour donors who make use of the same tax avoidance loopholes. Wrong on both counts.

Finally admitting that one of their donors is avoiding UK tax on a massive scale, and pointing out that others do the same is not enough to excuse it. The second part simply means that Labour also have questions to answer; it's absolutely no reason to condone the practice.

After all that's happened recently, it just amazes me that they still don't get it. They really don't seem to understand why anyone would think that there's anything at all wrong with someone who avoids paying UK tax on most of his income sitting in the UK legislature and using his money to influence the results of a UK election.

Honesty in debate

'True Wales' (all of them, I suspect) came to Carmarthen on Saturday to distribute some of their leaflets. As they told anyone who would listen, what they really want is to abolish the National Assembly entirely, but that won't be on the ballot paper in the forthcoming referendum.

Their leaflet (English-only, of course) is the usual mixture of lies, distortions, and non-sequiturs in which they seem to specialise. Of the six points which they make in their leaflet, four are arguments against Independence, one is a complaint about the Convention having been a tax-payer funded 'yes' campaign, and the sixth assumes that everyone who didn't vote 'yes' in 1997 was against the Assembly. It's more of a rant against the idea of Independence and the Welsh political elite (the UK political elite are fine, apparently) than a reasoned argument for retaining the current system.

So what?

It isn't honest politics of course, but if they're funding their own leaflets, I don't see why they shouldn't be free to say whatever they like, however distorted and dishonest it is, and however much it angers those who read and react to the obvious lies.

But at some point, there will be two 'official' campaign groups, and the campaigning of those two groups needs to be directed to the issue in hand. On the 'yes' side, those of us who favour moving to Part 4 of GOWA face a difficult task in explaining the difference and the advantages of moving to legislative powers in one step instead of salami style. And those in the 'no' camp face what I think is the even more difficult task of trying to defend the status quo. It's easy to see how the 'no' side in particular will find their task easier if they try to campaign on an entirely different question.

However, there is provision under the legislation for public funding to be made available to both official groups. At that point, the question of honesty and relevance in the campaign material becomes very significant. Any publicly funded campaign organisation should surely be expected not to publish outright lies at public expense, and to keep to the brief - in this case, explaining why they believe that the current structure is right for Wales.

There seems to be a widespread assumption that 'True Wales' will become the nucleus of the 'no' campaign. I think they've already disqualified themselves. I have to admit that I'm not sure what happens to the provisions for 'official' yes and no campaigns if no credible option exists on one side.

Wrong, wrong, and wrong again

I sometimes wonder if people inside the Labour Party really understand the effect that Peter Hain can have on their political opponents. For such a tribalistic and antagonistic individual to suddenly discover that there is a 'progressive consensus' with Plaid to such an extent that Plaid's supporters should hold their noses and vote Labour is simply not credible. If it's a deliberate Labour tactic, they would have been better advised to deploy a more consensual politician to deliver the message.

His appeal is wrong on three levels.

His appeal is entirely one-sided. He suggests that people should switch to Labour where necessary to defeat the Tories; but nowhere does he accept the converse - that in other seats, Labour voters should similarly switch to other parties. (Adam Higgitt at WalesHome has defended this in the comments thread, arguing that there are many fewer seats in this category. Maybe – but if you want to project the idea that you're talking about any sort of 'consensus' politics, at least presenting it as a two-way street would surely be more likely to succeed).

It's ultimately a very negative approach to politics. Vote against what you don't want, rather then for what you do want – that's the nub of the message.

But most of all, if the Labour Party want to depend on people's second or third choice vote, then they've had 13 years in which they could have introduced a change to the voting system which might actually achieve the result that they want. They've chosen not to do that – and not even to talk about it until it's too late to be more than a vague promise for the future.

The net result is that, instead of opening a possible conversation about the extent of any consensus and how it might be possible to capitalise on that, Hain has managed to project Labour as an arrogant party who feel that they are entitled to the votes of anyone who doesn't like the Tories. The fact that that was probably done unconsciously rather then deliberately serves only to underline how far the attitude of some people in that party needs to change if they want people to believe that they are serious about working with others.

Struggling with the numbers

In one of the places that I've worked over the years, I remember a colleague preparing a business case in which he claimed that costs could be "reduced by over 100%". The case was rejected, naturally. Some people like numbers; others struggle with them.

The Tory candidate locally seems to have a particular problem with numbers. There was the time when he argued that 1 was a larger number than 7, of course. And then there was the leaflet in which he claimed that violent crime had increased by 53% - a statistic for which his party was rebuked by the UK Statistics Authority.

His response when I suggested that the leaflet concerned was misleading, since it tried to give the impression of being an official communication, was to claim that it was in fact "150% clear". Hmmm. Some of the best letters to newspapers are those that communicate their message in a single sentence – and that particular claim by the Tories produced this superb response in the Western Telegraph.

"The fact that Simon Hart believes his canvassing leaflet to be ‘150% clear’ more than adequately indicates how seriously we should take the other statistics contained within it."

Says it all, really.