The issue of
borrowing powers for the Welsh government is in danger of provoking a similar
response, even amongst the friends of devolution. I am deeply concerned - reading reports like
this one – that the government would use those powers to splurge several years’
worth of available capital expenditure on a very short stretch of road in what
is already the wealthiest corner in Wales.
Indeed for some it seems that the ability to build that one short
stretch of road is sufficient argument for the borrowing powers in itself.
The issue is, I
fear, another manifestation of the way in which Welsh policy favours the
south-east corner of Wales just as UK policy favours the south-east corner of
the UK.
It’s a
depressing prospect, but it isn’t really an argument against the Welsh
government having borrowing powers. It’s
an argument, rather, for electing a government which looks at how it can spread
economic wealth across Wales. That is easier said than done.
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6 comments:
Spreading economic wealth in the workhouse? Can I have tomorrow's gruel today?
"The issue is, I fear, another manifestation of the way in which Welsh policy favours the south-east corner of Wales just as UK policy favours the south-east corner of the UK."
I'm concerned about this parallel. I think most economic activity in Wales, before devolution, was also concentrated in south-east Wales. I don't believe Welsh policymaking has altered that fact. It's much more about market forces.
Anon,
"... most economic activity in Wales, before devolution, was also concentrated in south-east Wales. ... It's much more about market forces."
I agree with that to an extent; the question is whether you believe that governments can or should do anything to try and counter or reverse these 'market forces'. Markets and market forces are ultimately human constructs; they don't exist outside the political and economic contexts in which they operate. What humans make, they can unmake; the huge success of the capitalist ideology is that so many people don't understand that.
Further, if you choose to believe that governments cannot or should not interfere with what market forces produce, then we would equally have to accept that the wealth of the south-east of England is the result of the same forces, and that that inequality is inevitable and irreversible.
The fact that "Welsh policy-making has (not) altered that fact" - and, I'd add, shows no signs of wanting to alter that fact let alone actually attempting it - underlines the failure of those making the policies.
John- "I agree with that to an extent; the question is whether you believe that governments can or should do anything to try and counter or reverse these 'market forces'."
To sum up my view, I believe they should, but I don't think they can.
I have no illusions in capitalism. A capitalist Wales will only ever look like the one we have now, with minor variations here and there. There is no capitalist or market reason for Wales to exist in any national form. There is just about a market justification for activity clustered around Cardiff and also north-east Wales.
"I believe they should, but I don't think they can"
Perhaps we're not that far apart after all. If we accept that government can do nothing, zilch, nada, then all arguments for "devolving the economic levers" become completely futile. I tend to the view that the extent to which governments can actually influence the economy within a free market capitalist system is extremely limited - far more limited than most politicians pretend. But maybe not quite zero.
The belief that governments can make significant differences is what leads most politicians ultimately to espouse some form of social democracy; that and an eye to their 'careers', of course.
At the other extreme, we could just 'wait for the revolution', and merely make propaganda in the meantime.
What governments can do, surely, is stop pandering to the siren voices who tell them that only by actions which have the effect of perpetuating and strengthening the geographical disparities can they build any sort of economy. But that's what they seem to be doing.
Indeed John. We are close on this. I find myself halfway between social democracy and far-left Utopianism (what Lenin called 'an infantile disorder'). I would like an active Government in Wales that was able through substantially further devolution to plan and shape as much of the economy as possible. Some of the minor variations that governments can make in a liberal/capitalist system are quite important to people a well.
I just think in Welsh terms, a wholesale restructuring of activity and demography away from the south east would come up against significantly entrenched market forces and not be feasible.
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