More centralism

Tweet There has been mixed reaction to the about turn by Plaid Cymru yesterday, in deciding to back Labour’s bill on local government reform after all. The Tories' simplistic approach is to slam Plaid for criticising Labour on the issue just a few days ago, and then supporting them yesterday.  Whether that’s a far criticism or not depends on what, if anything, changed in the interim.  The Lib Dems’ spokesman, Peter Black, claims that Plaid got nothing at all in return for their change of heart, whereas Plaid claims major concessions.

As ever, it’s hard to distinguish the hard truth amongst the spin and invective, let alone work out whether anything will really change as a result.  It does appear that Plaid has gained agreement from Labour on only one real issue, and that’s the question of timing.  Even if the bill is passed, nothing can now happen until after next May’s Assembly elections.  To dismiss that as a complete sell-out is a little unfair, but that’s not the same as saying that it’s a major gain.  Since no-one really expects any party other than Labour to be leading the next Welsh Government, and the bill will already be an act by the time that government takes office, it means that the legislative framework for Labour to plough ahead with this will be in place well in advance. 

Any changes to Labour’s proposals will now come about only if Labour does not gain an absolute majority; and will then be a result of horse-trading between parties.  Perhaps the optimism of the opposition parties about denying Labour a majority is justified, perhaps not.  In the first case, it means that there is some possibility of change after the event, in the second, it means that the changes have merely been delayed by a few months.

But one of the other points about Plaid’s statement struck me as rather more significant.  What exactly is the party’s vision for local government in Wales?  According to Leanne Wood’s statement, Plaid’s vision is now about “retaining the existing 22 Local Authorities making them work together as combined regional authorities”.  I’m not convinced that that is very different in its effect from the centralising agenda of Labour.

In the first place, there’s something deeply conservative, small c, about simply retaining the existing structure of 22 councils, which was something of an arbitrary creation in the first place.  Just as Labour seem to have a fixed idea about the right number being smaller than 22, Plaid’s proposal seems to start from a fixed idea that whatever currently exists is the right number, they just need to be forced to work differently.  I really don’t know what the ‘right’ number is – for me the question starts by asking what the role of local government is rather than what the boundaries should be.  That’s a question which none of the parties are asking, except by default – and that ‘default’ is effectively that they’re there to do whatever central government tells them to do.

And that’s the part which really disappoints me more than the innate conservatism of sticking to 22, and more than whether any deals done in Cardiff Bay are worthwhile or not.  Because this is centralism pretending to be support for local democracy.  There is no vision coming from any of the parties about meaningful internal devolution within Wales to strong local government which has its own democratic mandate through the election of councillors; all of them are simply looking at which structures will enable the most efficient implementation of national policy.

It’s a long way from the internal discussions that I remember in the 1970s about empowering local government.

They just keep on digging

Tweet There’s a detailed analysis of the results of the election in Catalunya on Syniadau.  In essence the parties in favour of UDI won a majority of the seats but not of the votes; although if the votes of the pro-independence but anti-UDI parties are added in, there’s a small but clear pro-independence majority, even if there remains disagreement as to how it should be achieved.

The reaction of the Spanish central government has been disappointing, even if hardly unexpected – Spain is an indivisible whole and no change can ever be contemplated.  Formally, the judiciary and the executive in Spain are entirely separate, and the government deny any involvement in judicial decisions, but the announcement that the leader of the Catalan Government, Artur Mas, is to be charged and tried for organising last November’s ‘illegal’ referendum has come within days of the election results.  It may just be coincidence, but it doesn’t look that way.

The Spanish government’s position has been clear throughout.  The law about the unity of Spain (which dates from the days of Franco) is part of the constitution of Spain.  It is unchallengeable and irrevocable.  There can be no referendum on independence, nor can parties use an election victory on an independence platform to claim a mandate.  All routes forward are blocked, legally and for ever.

There are echoes there, albeit centuries later, of the way a small country much closer to home was incorporated “henceforth and for ever” into its larger neighbour; and the same problems arise.  Nothing, in the context of humanity, can ever be ‘for ever’; change is an essential element of human culture.  The rich and the powerful have always pretended that they can fix things in a certain way and keep them like that in perpetuity – but they simply can’t.  It’s an attitude which depends, ultimately, on the fiction that power belongs to the centre, not to the people.

In Spain, the view of the centre is based on an axiomatic statement that Spain is a nation and Catalonia is a region of that nation – a region with its own language and history, to be sure, but no more than a region nevertheless.  From that perspective, Catalans who believe otherwise are simply wrong.  But the fact that that that would still be ‘true’, even if every last one of them voted for pro-independence parties, underlines that such a position is ultimately unsustainable in a modern democracy, because there is no way of maintaining it against the will of the people other than by the use of force.

In the short term, I don’t doubt that the Spanish government will continue to use all the legal powers it can muster to resist and disrupt the independence movement.  That includes the use of criminal proceedings against people who dare to take a different view and try to pursue their objectives in a peaceful and democratic fashion.  But it’s ultimately counter-productive.  Winning a court case here or there might look like a victory at the time, but it simply builds the momentum for the change which now seems to be inevitable.

Could a more enlightened approach have built a negotiated settlement which led to more autonomy within a continued Spanish state?  Possibly.  Just as including a third option on the ballot paper in Scotland might have seriously blunted the independence movement there.  But that goes to the heart of the reason why the centralists will ultimately fail.  They only seem capable of taking a short term view.  Today’s victory is always enough, and they’ll worry about tomorrow’s battle when it comes.  The Catalans have always been playing a much longer term game.  And the end game is now approaching.