Changing the language of politics

Tweet It's generally recognised that coalitions are likely to be the norm in Cardiff Bay. It's too soon to say whether a similar statement can be made about Westminster, but the hung parliament looks like the result of a long term trend for the two main parties to receive an ever diminishing share of the vote. And any change to the voting system – even non-proportional AV – is likely to increase the number of MPs who come from neither of the two major parties.

However, the language being used by politicians – of all parties, including my own – still seems stuck in a world where single party government is the norm and no party will ever have to talk to, or work with, any other party. I don't think that's terribly helpful, and I don't think it really helps the electors to know what to expect.

Referring to the junior partner in any arrangement as the 'poodles' of the larger, or even as being their 'little helpers' amounts to little more than an attempt to demonise one party by association with another. But demonising only really works if the target audience agrees that the larger party is, indeed, a demon. Such tribalism is alive and well within our political system – but it seems to me to be increasingly breaking down amongst the voters.

And it's no substitute for serious discussion about policies and programmes. Or, rather, it's often an attempt to avoid discussion of policy and programmes. Worst of all, it falls into the trap set by Labour and Conservative alike, of trying to make out that they are really very different, and that people must choose between two differing philosophies and approaches. Letting them get away with that – or even worse, joining them in doing it - can only serve to further marginalise the real alternative voices, by concentrating debate around what are, in practice, fairly minor differences of opinion.

I don't dispute for one moment that the founding principles of the Labour and Conservative parties are very different; I'm just not sure how relevant that is to the twenty-first century. Am I, personally, more comfortable with the founding principles of Labour than those of the Tories? Yes, of course I am – but we need to deal with their programmes for government, not with their founding principles, which are frequently more honoured in the breach.

On an objective analysis of policy overall, it seems to me that the most obvious and rational coalition would have been Tory-Labour. (Or Labour-Tory in the Assembly). There is much on which they agree. However, I don't expect to see such an arrangement any time soon. It may match their policy positions, but it doesn't suit their interests, let alone their current culture or style. And they are both still too emotionally attached to what they think they are to be able to rationally analyse what they actually are in practice.

I think that the future may well belong to those parties who are most able to move out of such a confrontational, partisan, and essentially negative approach. Parties which can move away from name-calling and guilt-by-association and talk more about their policies, and what they would do differently. Parties which state honestly and openly that their programme for government is what they will deliver if elected with a majority, but that they will be prepared to talk to whichever other politicians the public choose to elect if no party has an overall majority.

I really don't see the position of the Labour Party on a whole series of issues as being so radically different from that of the Tories that forming an arrangement with one is acceptable, but even talking to the other is shameful – and I don't see why we should allow either of them to define that for us. It simply helps to set an agenda where we are forever outsiders.

The question in coalition discussions is about whether we can persuade any potential partners to move far enough in our direction to deliver a programme of government which we believe to be better – or even simply less bad - than that which would otherwise be delivered. And the most valid criticism to make of those parties which then form a coalition is not about with whom they have coalesced, but about the nature of the package negotiated – and about its delivery.

That's the basis on which I shall be reading the coalition agreement between the Tories and the Lib Dems. And that's the basis on which I'd like people to judge the success or failure of One Wales. It's time to change the style and language of political debate.