DIY is best

Tweet There's no arguing about the fact that Wales has a lower GVA per head than the UK average. Nor about the fact that this is a very long-standing problem. But whose fault is it?

During his flying visit to Wales, Cameron attempted to pin the blame on Rhodri Morgan and Gordon Brown – presumably hoping that voters have short memories. In reality, insofar as Morgan and Brown are guilty on this score, it is of failing to improve on the legacy left to them by the Tories, rather than creating it. (WelshPoliticalHistory comes to a similar conclusion, although it's disputed in some of the comments. In the narrow context of an utterly hypocritical accusation by Cameron, I agree with his conclusion). In fairness to the Tories – did I really just say that? – they in their turn were guilty primarily of failing to improve on their legacy from the previous Labour government. And so, apparently, ad infinitum…

That doesn't mean that I don't consider Morgan and Brown to have been a failure; merely that the accusation was disingenuous at best, given its source. Cameron is wrong to hurl the accusation at Labour without taking at least equal responsibility for his own party's past actions.

The problem of Wales' comparatively low GVA is a serious and deep-seated issue. It would be easy at this point to revert to the simplistic traditional position that it's not which party is in government which is the problem, but that London government in general fails Wales. I happen to think that that is true, but it isn't the whole story.

It is actually extremely difficult for any government to ensure that GVA per head is consistent across its territory. The very nature of the word 'average' requires that some areas are below it and some above it. There are differences between the different parts of Wales as well. Attention is currently focussed on the differences between Wales and England, but I am certain that in an independent Wales, the differences between Cardiff and Ynys Môn would be receiving a similar level of attention. It isn't just a problem for 'London government'.

Governments setting economic policy make choices. Maximising GVA per head in the economy as a whole isn't necessarily inimical to sharing growth and prosperity; neither are they automatically the same thing. But the belief that the 'free market' is the best way of achieving the former (a belief which is now common to both the Tories and Labour) will almost inevitably lead to 'regional' variations. The question is – how do we respond to that?

The least helpful – and least honest – response is to start accusing the least well-off areas of being somehow responsible for their own failure, of being dependent on handouts from the centre, and of whinging. It's unhelpful, yet it seems to underlie the attitude of a number of unionist politicians, who seem for some perverse reason to be almost pleased that - as a result of their economic policies - 'Wales is too poor to be independent'. Even more bizarrely, the only remedy they offer is more of the same.

A more honest unionist response would be to say something like, "Our aim is to maximise the prosperity of the UK as a whole. We believe that the policies which we are following are the right ones to do that. We recognise that this might well mean that some parts of the UK are relatively less well-off than others, but we will do what we can to redistribute wealth so that all citizens benefit from the prosperity which is being created."

It's a better line than complaining about having to give out 'handouts' to the poorer areas, an approach which serves not only to increase the likelihood of a dependency culture, but also to build resentment amongst both the givers and the receivers of the alleged largesse. The problem is that, to be credible, such a line needs to be backed up by precisely the sort of pro-active regional policy which has been progressively dismantled by Labour and Tory governments alike.

The other response, of course, is to argue that the best way of reducing the disparity in GVA between Wales and England is to have an economic policy focussed specifically on the needs of Wales – and that means maximising the economic powers of the National Assembly and/or Independence.

Nobody will be in the least surprised that I favour the latter viewpoint. I have zero faith that anything which Cameron would do in government would have any more impact than the efforts of previous governments – especially given his stress on cutting the public sector. Focus on, and ownership of, our own problems always seems to me to be preferable to expecting someone else to do something.