The demands and counter-demands about costings from
the various parties contesting the Senedd elections are not just a red herring,
they’re a diversion from the substance of the debate between the parties. The media may be provoking this, but the parties seem to be falling in. There
are three good reasons why no party will ever convince another party (or any
objective observer) that their costings are ‘right’.
Firstly, any set of
costings is necessarily based on estimates and assumptions – it cannot be
otherwise. Those estimates and assumptions will always be open to challenge –
with no shared basis, there can never be a meeting of minds.
Secondly, one of the
few things which seems certain about next week’s results is that no party will
have an overall majority. Whether we have a coalition government or a minority
government, the party leading that government will not be able to get its full
programme through the Senedd without negotiation and compromise with one or
other parties. No programme, no matter how ‘fully costed’ it is, will survive
intact as a result.
Thirdly, even if
there were to be a party with an overall majority, able to attempt to implement
its programme in full, circumstances will always conspire to obstruct it. The
generals say that no battle plan ever survives first contact with the enemy –
much the same is true when a manifesto meets the reality of government.
That doesn’t make manifestoes irrelevant, and it
doesn’t invalidate making at least an attempt to show how they might be
implementable, but debating the financial minutiae diverts attention from the one
thing that manifestoes should give us – a sense of the priorities and values of
the varying parties. Reducing the debate to the level of ‘I’ll show you mine if
you’ll show me yours’, or arguing abut the credentials and eminence of the
economists who’ve given the numbers a detached nod tells us nothing about the
various parties’ visions for Wales. Or, rather more worryingly, perhaps it actually
speaks volumes about their visions.
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