Whatever happened to whatsisname?

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I tend to agree with Alun Davies that “People would be happy to vote for a penny on income tax to help fund the Welsh NHS”; opinion polls have consistently suggested that there is a general willingness to pay more tax in order to have a properly-funded NHS (although there is also some evidence that that doesn't always translate into a willingness to vote for a party which proposes exactly that).  But the ‘conclusion’ which he, like several other politicians before him, has drawn (some sort of hypothecated tax increase specifically for the NHS) is one of the daftest and most unworkable policies ever suggested.

Firstly, a hypothecated tax which only pays for part of the NHS does not protect the NHS from cuts.  Future governments can always point to the extra revenue from the ‘new’ tax and say that the whole of ‘that revenue’ is still going into the NHS, but it can only be ‘extra’ if the whole of the previous budget is protected in real terms for the indefinite future.  And that represents a tying of government hands to which no government could or should ever agree, as well as potentially fossilising the way in which funds are spent from that original budget.

But secondly, and more importantly, far from being the radical approach claimed, it is in fact an acceptance of the basic premise of ‘austerity’, which is that government spending depends on first raising funds through taxation.  The blind acceptance of that mantra is what leads the Labour Party in general to a position in which its argument is, in effect, that Labour austerity will be kinder and fairer than Tory austerity; it does not expose the premise of the policy for the lie that it is.

In fairness, of course, the situation in Wales is different.  As a non-sovereign devolved parliament, the Assembly is obliged to produce a balanced budget, in the same way as the local authorities to which it is equivalent in this sense.  Without the powers of a sovereign government, the Assembly cannot break free of austerity – the best it can do is to “ameliorate Tory policy” – exactly what Alun is arguing that Labour should not be doing.  The really radical argument would be to demand that Wales break free of those constraints which ‘devolution’ places on it.  I remember another Alun Davies who used to argue along similar lines – I wonder what became of him?

Who's the silliest boy?

Tweet Requesting that civil servants provide financial details about payments made to named individuals who just happened to be opposition AMs was a pretty silly thing for Alun Davies to have done.  His resultant sacking as a Minister was inevitable, particularly given the way in which he’d been ‘let off’ another misdemeanour just hours beforehand.  As the First Minister more or less said, it’s hard to see his request as other than a clumsy and stupid attempt to misuse his position to instigate personal attacks on other politicians, however much he may try to make out that it was just for 'background' purposes.

Having said all that, I’m less than impressed with some of the opposition response to events, with politicians of the other parties ‘baying for more blood’ as the Western Mail put it in its headline yesterday.  It’s an intensely personalised approach to political debate, which probably results from two factors.  The first is that the politicians are cooped up in the hothouse in the Bay, and the second is that there is so little real difference between them on policy that all they can do is argue about each other’s personal merits and qualities.

A minister tried to do something improper and quite rightly got sacked for it.  Most of us – probably all of us – do silly things from time to time, although the consequences are not always so severe.  And silliness in politicians has never been demonstrated to be party political in nature; foot-in-mouth syndrome can and often does affect politicians from any party.  So can a tribalistic desire to do down one’s political opponents whenever the opportunity presents itself.  But there is – or should be – more to politics than that.

This isn’t what some of us hoped devolution would be about.  It was supposed to bring about a more mature and adult approach to political debate in which different futures for Wales could be laid out and examined, not just an amateurish copy of the pantomime nonsense that we see daily from Westminster.  For sure, demanding blood generates news stories and headlines, but it adds little to the sum total of knowledge and understanding.  And it has even less to do with building a new Wales.