Interesting report from John Osmond of the IWA on a panel discussion with representatives of the four main parties. His conclusion “Meanwhile, on the evidence of last week’s conference, the difficulty is going to be distinguishing the parties one from another” touches directly on an issue which I’ve raised before, and which is relevant to this post last week.
I expect a lot of similarity between Labour, Conservative, and Lib Dem parties; that’s become normal; but with Plaid joining the consensus as a post-nationalist party – what is the distinguishing feature? Shorn of Obama-esque rhetoric about hope and change, the leader’s speech to Plaid's Spring Conference as reported in the media seemed to be based primarily on the simple assertion that Plaid would manage things better.
It’s a bold assertion, but leaving aside any (entirely reasonable) questions about whether it is a supportable statement or not, I remain as unconvinced as I was the first time I heard it that it is a plausible distinguishing feature from the point of view of the electorate at large, let alone a sufficiently radical message.
One of the two coherent responses I’ve had to the question of whether Plaid still has a USP in the new context of Welsh politics has been to talk about the need for ‘nation-building’; creating and building the institutions and consciousness of Wales as a nation. It’s a long term project, which can keep the party busy for decades, to paraphrase what one of Plaid’s members said to me.
I don’t disagree with the suggestion that there’s a job to be done on nation building, nor with the idea that Plaid has a role to play in doing that job. But I do question whether that role is either ambitious enough, or unique enough, for a nationalist, or even post-nationalist, party.
One rather less-than-fully-gruntled Plaid member once described ‘nation-building’ to me as being little more than an excuse for some of Plaid’s elected members to join the establishment, claim their generous salaries and expenses, challenge nothing, yet claim that they are still advancing the national cause. It’s a parody, and it’s unfair to some members, but like all the best parodies there’s enough of a hint of truth in there somewhere to give it bite.
To take the first of my questions, I certainly don’t see ‘nation-building’ as being a sufficiently ambitious aim for a nationalist party. It represents a huge step backwards from the ambitions of the past, however unrealistic the timescales suggested may have been (such as Gwynfor’s ‘self-government within 15 years’, for instance). It reduces an argument for radical and fundamental change in the way Wales is governed to an electoral appeal based largely on the idea that Plaid can manage things better than the rest (which is clearly the direction being set at present).
And that brings me to the second point (the lack of uniqueness), which is of even greater concern. All four parties in the Assembly – to a greater or lesser extent – have effectively committed themselves (admittedly, in the case of the Tories, it’s been done against the better judgement of most party members) to strengthening Welsh institutions. Much, and perhaps all, of the detail of policy coming under the broad heading of ‘nation-building’ could be said or advocated by any of the four parties. It’s no accident that they are sounding increasingly similar.
But does Wales really need four parties all saying much the same thing? History and tribalism prevent the Conservatives-in-Wales and the Labour Party from recognising the extent to which their policies are similar, and it seems unlikely that they could ever work together. But one of the things which started to make me think seriously about where Plaid was going and why was the period immediately after the 2007 election, when it became clear that any other combination was a real possibility.
It was Lenin who talked about the concept of an ‘objective alliance’, and if a radical and different party has a clear objective in mind in entering into an alliance, and is visionary enough to maintain a focus on longer term issues, then it is possible to justify doing do. But if the objective is, in effect, little more than becoming a ‘party of government’, and involves abandoning – or deferring more-or-less indefinitely as they would probably prefer to put it – any wider aspirations, then the ultimate gainer from the ‘objective alliance’ is the establishment, not the radical alternative.
And actually, if ‘nation-building’ really is the main objective from now on, then the best way to achieve that might be for nationalists to join the Welsh wings of the unionist parties and reinforce the Welsh identity of those parties. It’s not an objective which requires a separate party to achieve – indeed, I think I could make a reasonable argument that trying to claim that aim as the territory of one party might actually make it harder to achieve.
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