Not outrageous enough?

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It takes a very special kind of delusion to look at an electoral defeat and claim that what it actually shows is overwhelming support for the losing party. Donald Trump has it in spades, of course, and is clearly keen to apply it to the results of elections in countries other than his own. Last week, as part of his ‘welcome’ for Keir Starmer, he praised the ‘real winner’ of the election, one Nigel Farage, bizarrely claiming that Reform had won more seats than they were allowed to have. From a man whose one and only election victory (to date) was achieved under an electoral system in which he won fewer votes than his opponent, a degree of confusion is perhaps to be expected.

But we have our own adherents of the idea that a defeat is really a victory much closer to home. Wales’ very own RT Davies, for example, declared this week that Wales is ‘inherently Conservative’, the evidence for which is presumably to be found in the number of seats won by Conservatives in the General Election in July. Zero is, I suppose, a nice round number, and the beautiful roundness of it can easily distract attention from its mathematical significance. He also said that, “The Welsh people reject the extreme liberal ideology of Labour, Plaid Cymru nationalists and the Lib Dems”. I’m struggling to identify which part of the mainstream Tory ideology so enthusiastically swallowed by at least two of the named parties is ‘extreme’, but that’s an aside. The evidence for this rejection is clearly to be found in the fact that the remainder of Welsh constituencies, after deducting those taken by the Tories, were won by the three parties he named. Zero for the Tories and a total of 32 for everyone else is the clearest rejection of everyone but the Tories that a Tory leader could wish for.

Perhaps he’s not mathematically-challenged at all, he just believes that election results are like some strange form of double-entry book-keeping, where every debit has to be balanced by a credit somewhere else, and the rest of us are simply looking at the ‘wrong’ side of the balance sheet. After all, a number which looks like a debt to a customer always looks like an asset to the bank. I’m not sure that I’d want him as a banker, though. Even when it isn’t rhyming slang. It’s more likely that he comes from that school of thought which believes that if you repeat an untruth often enough it ends up being believed. It’s an approach which has a long and disreputable history, but as Trump demonstrates, daily, the more outrageous the statement, the more effective it can be. Maybe RT’s problem is that he simply doesn’t have it in him to be outrageous enough. Everyone, or so they say, has at least one redeeming feature – being insufficiently outrageous could be his.

It's all a bit too eclectic for me

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Whether it’s entirely reasonable to describe the leader of the Conservative group in the Senedd as an idiot, as Martin Shipton has done on Nation.Cymru recently, is a matter of opinion. There is plenty of evidence to support the hypothesis, and some might regard it as simply a ‘harsh but fair’ judgement; but there is a broader question as to whether direct insult is ever a worthwhile tool in political debate, even if the evidence is both categorical and overwhelming. That again is, of course, a matter of opinion. True and fair or not, it’s unlikely that Lenin would have seen him as a ‘useful’ idiot, and not just because there is no evidence that Lenin ever actually used the phrase.

What is less contentious is that Andrew RT Davies and his not-so-merry band do seem to be somewhat obsessive about some issues, most recently about the widespread introduction of 20 mph speed limits in Wales. It’s an obsession which has led them to brand it as part of a ‘war on motorists’ (a war which, apparently, also includes ‘eclectic’ vehicles, and it wasn’t even April 1st).

They’ve even invented a few policies which Labour aren’t proposing to implement (such as reintroducing tolls on the Severn crossings) in order to inflate the extent to which Labour hates anyone who drives a car. In fairness, in doing this one might point out that the Welsh branch of the English Conservative and Unionist Party are merely aping the approach of their supreme leader, who has himself axed a good number of policies which never existed either.

Given their own previous support for the introduction of 20 mph limits, it would be hard to describe their current opposition as being in any way principled, but then that’s not something which one would really expect of them. They have interpreted the result of one by-election as an indicator that voters will support pro-car measures and are trying to apply it more widely in the forlorn hope of avoiding a wipeout; but the evidence that it will work is sketchy to say the least. They are, though, (last time I looked) still in favour of 20mph limits outside schools, hospitals and playgrounds in order to protect users of those facilities from the dangers of vehicles. Presumably, it is assumed either that people will get close to those locations by car rather than on foot, or else will have to just take their chances on pavements further from said premises where there are fewer of them to get run over.

And that leads me to wonder: if it is fair to describe Labour’s approach as a war on motorists, it is surely equally justifiable to describe the Tory approach as a war on pedestrians – and the environment. A demand for more road-building and fewer traffic control measures necessarily implies a degree of environmental damage and a change in the balance of priorities between vehicles and people in our villages, towns, and cities. If changing the balance in favour of pedestrians is equivalent to a war on motorists, isn’t changing the balance in favour of motorists equivalent to a war on pedestrians? The truth, of course, is that it’s a silly argument. Either way. It isn’t a simple question of balancing conflicting interests, even if such dramatic language added anything to rational debate. Most of us are sometimes motorists, sometimes pedestrians, and sometimes users of public transport. Striking the right balance is a good deal more complex than the simplistic Tory obsession suggests, but a party which stands no chance of ever having the responsibility for implementing its policies in Wales can feel free to ignore that. It’s hardly as though anything they do or say can do much (more) damage to their future prospects. Whether the leader is an idiot or not.

Playing to his strengths

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According to Andrew RT Davies, who manages to be the previous ex-leader, current leader, and future ex-leader of the Conservative and Unionist Party in the Senedd, he and his party will be bold enough to break from the policy pursued by the UK party on issues where they think that the Welsh perspective is different. He seems to have struggled to find meaningful examples, though. It is, perhaps, convenient that, on the two issues he did manage to mention (a public holiday on St David’s Day and Barnett consequentials for HS2), the Senedd has no power to act, even in the unlikely event of a Tory Senedd victory. And both have already been dismissed out of hand by his Westminster masters. He won’t be called on to do anything more than get angry, shout a bit, and sloganize. At least he’ll be playing to his strengths, then.

He doesn’t seem to be asking for the transfer of more powers, for instance so that the Senedd could itself declare a Bank Holiday. On all the things where the Senedd actually can change policy, he remains fully aligned to doing whatever his masters in London tell him. It’s a bonus, for him, that he is only the leader of the Senedd group, not of the whole party in Wales. It means that no policy his group of ‘Welsh’ Conservatives in the Senedd adopts will apply to the people in his party who might possibly have some influence in London, namely Welsh Tory MPs. It’s easy to see how the UK party can tolerate this sort of low-level verbal difference of opinion without losing any sleep. It’s less easy to see why Davies would believe that anyone in Wales would be taken in by it.

It's almost certainly not the zeal of the converted.

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Wales’s ‘go-to’ politician, when the media want a silly quote delivered by a man whose only moving part seems to be his mouth, is the man who manages to be both the ex-leader and the future ex-leader of the Conservative group in the Senedd, Andrew RT Davies. And as a bonus, sometimes he doesn’t even wait to be asked; his incoherence can also be entirely spontaneous and unprompted, as in today’s demand for an independent Welsh inquiry into the handling of Covid.

There are some good reasons for having a separate Welsh inquiry, just as there are some good reasons for not holding one, although Davies seems to be having some difficulty articulating the former. That’s probably because his only real reason is his belief that a separate inquiry will do more to damage the Labour government than a UK-wide inquiry. It may or may not be true; there is surely at least an equal chance that separate inquiries will do more to expose the comparison between approaches in Wales and England, to say nothing of revealing what else could have been different if Wales had more devolved power. He should remember who will appoint the inquiry's leader (spoiler: it won't be Andrew RT Davies). In lieu of saying what he really means, and absent any ability to come up with anything better, he’s resorted to saying that Wales will be consigned “to a solitary, overlooked chapter” in any UK-wide investigation. That sounds like the story of Welsh life in general to me, but for the leader of the so-called ‘Welsh’ Conservatives to declare in such an open and forthright manner that the problem with UK-wide processes set up by the Conservative government in Westminster is that they are guaranteed to largely ignore the different circumstances of Wales is either a Damascene conversion or else shows an almost incredible lack of self-awareness. There aren’t many who’d put their money on the former.

Puppetry doesn't cover it.

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Back in the days when Brezhnev ruled the Soviet Union, an acquaintance of mine went on a trip to Moscow, which included a guided tour of the Kremlin. As the guide showed them around the government part of the building, she pointed out one corridor and identified that area as being the offices of the Communist Party. One of the group then asked her what happened when the government disagreed with the party. It was not exactly an unknown problem in the UK at the time – as I recall, Harold Wilson was the PM, and to say that he occasionally had a few ‘difficulties’ with his party would be making the word ‘difficulties’ do a lot of work. The guide looked puzzled, as if she didn’t understand the question, before the questioner helped her out by suggesting that maybe that didn’t happen in her country. Her reply, delivered with a huge smile of relief, ran along the lines of “Ah yes, you are correct. In our country that never happens”.  It was a recognition of where the power lay: Brezhnev’s principal formal role, after all, was as General Secretary of the Communist Party.

The attempts by the former and future ex-leader of the Tories in Wales, Andrew RT Davies, to explain how he would respond if he felt that a decision taken by a Tory leader at the other end of the (M4) corridor was damaging to Wales reminded me of that poor tour guide. It was as if the hypothetical question had no meaning for him – how could a decision taken by a Tory PM ever be wrong? Even if Johnson says one thing one day and the opposite the next, he’s still axiomatically right on both occasions in Daviesworld. Like any good foot soldier, Davies understands that there are only two rules concerning the General:

Rule 1: The General is always right, and

Rule 2: In the event of the General being wrong, Rule 1 above applies.

The accusation by Plaid that this somehow makes him a puppet of Johnson is entirely unfair – a puppet has neither a brain nor a capacity for independent thought. Possessing both and consciously deciding to use neither is far worse than mere puppetry.

For Wales, see England

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One thing that has been consistent throughout the pandemic is that the ‘Welsh’ Tories criticise the Welsh Government whatever they do and whenever they do it, even it if means that the Tories themselves are reversing the position that they had taken the previous week. So, when Boris Johnson was arguing for tiers and differentiation between English regions, they were demanding that Wales should go even further and have greater differentiation at an even more local level. Now that that has been shown not to work, without even blinking they argue completely the opposite – that there should be no differentiation at all, even between the administrations of the UK let alone at any lower level.

It’s tempting to say that they are just being unprincipled, but that would be unfair on two levels. The first is that most of them wouldn’t know a principle if it bit them and the second is that they have now explained what their great underlying principle is: people in Wales get their news via the same media as people in England and therefore differences in approach are confusing. There is, of course, nothing in that ‘principle’ which applies specifically to Covid or the pandemic, which makes it a really handy principle for people who oppose devolution but are afraid to say so honestly. It allows them both to support the existence of the Senedd and Welsh government and at the same time argue that the Senedd and government should take no decisions which in any way make Wales different from England. It will make a neat slogan for May’s Senedd elections: “Vote for us to implement all English government policies in Wales”. It would be foolish for anyone to assume that that won’t strike a chord with a section of the electorate in Wales, but a strategy aimed at motivating their anti-Wales base and undermining the more openly anti-devolution parties isn’t the same as one to maximise their vote.

Is the principle quite as absolute as it appears though? In the unlikely event of England electing a Labour government, and the even more unlikely event of Wales electing a Tory government which holds office concurrently, would they still be arguing that they had to follow the example of London in all things because people would be confused if they didn’t? One suspects that they haven’t thought that through, although thinking things through is an unfair and unrealistic expectation of a party which is quite happy to spend today arguing the opposite of what they argued yesterday. Still, the good news (for us as well as them) is that worrying about what they’ll do if they ever win an election in Wales is the least of their concerns.

There was one sensible point which Andrew RT Davies did make in his statement, though, when he said that, “Just because Wales can do things differently, it does not mean the Welsh government should always do so”. It’s just a pity that he spoiled such an obvious truth by making it clear that what he actually meant is that it should never do so. He also seems to have completely missed the real lesson of his basic point: if people in Wales are confused as a result of consuming the same media as people in England, might that, just possibly, be highlighting a problem with the lack of a distinctive Welsh media? He’d probably fear a Welsh media, but I have a nagging feeling that he’d be wrong to do so. Recent voting patterns suggest to me that a widely read specifically Welsh media might actually benefit a specifically Welsh Tory brand by not always associating it with Boris Johnson and the English nationalist leadership of the Tory Party. I’m far from convinced – and I say this with a degree of sadness – that the Welsh electorate in the twenty-first century is as instinctively anti-Tory as many would wish to believe.

Revealing the truth

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The leader of the Tory group in the Assembly seems to be quite exercised about the fact that MPs aren’t all falling in to line behind his boss to support her Brexit deal. I can understand how committed Brexiters like him are getting increasingly concerned that as time goes by, the ‘victory’ that they won in the referendum looks to be less certain than it did at the time.  He berates MPs who stood on manifestos promising to honour the result for having second thoughts about the detail as it becomes clearer, as though new facts (or, perhaps merely corrections to old ‘facts’) lead MPs to want to change the nature of the Brexit which is to be delivered.  His criticism is misplaced in two ways, though, it seems to me.

The first is that there is still, I believe, a clear majority in parliament who would willingly vote to uphold the referendum result and allow Brexit to proceed, but who want to make sure that the detail of future arrangements is clear before they commit the country to an irreversible path.  I might wish it were otherwise, but I remain convinced that there are enough MPs who would vote for Brexit – even though they don’t really think it’s the right thing to do at all – as long as they could be persuaded that the final deal was not going to do too much damage to their constituents.  The problem that’s preventing them doing that isn’t their own opposition to Brexit – it’s the abject failure and utter stubbornness of the current government even to countenance a meaningful discussion on the detail.  The PM’s insistence on her arbitrary red lines is a far bigger problem than the pro-EU sentiment of opposition MPs.

But the most intriguing thing for me about Davies’ comment was the way in which he accused MPs of putting their "personal ambitions ahead of their responsibility to voters".  I’m not quite sure in what way he thinks that voting for the opposite of what he claims that the voters want is prioritising their own careers.  It seems to me that the opposite would be more likely to be true, and indeed, some of the MPs in his own party supporting a softer Brexit have already been threatened with deselection by their party’s members.  The idea that MPs opposing Brexit could be putting their own ambitions first depends on the assumption that the electorate will favour them as a result; and that depends on an assumption that enough electors have changed their minds since the referendum to make that a realistic assumption.  Perhaps, in his desperation to see his ideological project completed before it slips from his grasp completely, he’s revealing rather more about his knowledge of the political reality than he intended.

Wisdom, impact, or just luck?

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Amongst the many comments made following the downfall of the Tories’ Assembly leader, several mentioned that whilst he may have fallen out with many in his party (including the then Prime Minister, David Cameron) over his support for Brexit, as things turned out it was Davies who correctly read the mood of the electorate and ended up on the winning side.  It’s one of those superficial pieces of analysis which sounds like the truth, but which raises more questions than it answers – and specifically a particular chicken-and-egg question.

It’s undeniably true that the electorate supported the position taken by Davies, but was he (and all the other leavers) following the public mood in Wales, or helping to create it?  The margin wasn’t that large, and it’s entirely valid to ask whether that margin was the result of the campaigns waged or not.  The suggestion that those who ‘campaigned’ on the winning side chose the right side based on the outcome, whilst those who ‘campaigned’ on the losing side chose the wrong one contains an implicit assumption that ‘campaigning’ has more to do with correctly guessing which side is going to win than with changing anyone’s opinion.

Perhaps it’s true that no-one actually changed their opinion at all as a result of Davies’ decision to back leave (and a true cynic might even argue that it’s possible that his decision to back leave might have driven some people to support remaining); but if that’s true for one ‘campaigner’ why would it not be equally true for all the others – on both sides?  It strikes me that an approach to ‘campaigning’ which is all about correctly guessing which side is going to win isn’t really campaigning at all.  Nor is it about leadership, unless we’re talking about leadership in the Ledru-Rollin sense of the word (“There go the people. I must follow them, for I am their leader” - although like many of the best quotes, its attribution is far from certain).

Arguing that someone who happened to join the side which eventually won a debate is somehow blessed with particular wisdom or insight is surely debasing the whole idea of leadership and campaigning.

It's about vision, not process

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When I first read the report yesterday about the speech by the Secretary of State for Wales, it immediately struck me that he was, in effect, proposing that any future regional aid from the UK Treasury to Wales should be managed and controlled from London, not Cardiff, even if he didn’t say that directly.  Today’s comments by the leader of the Conservatives in the Assembly seem to fill in the gap very well.  Not one for a subtle approach to saying what he thinks, Andrew RT Davies has made it very clear that he wants this money managed for Wales not by Wales.  It’s hard to interpret this double-pronged approach as other than the start of a post-Brexit process of removing authority from the Assembly.

They justify it, of course, on the basis of an argument that what matters is not who does it, but that it’s done right.  The problem with that argument is that it means that anything which Cardiff can’t do ‘right’ is fair game for transfer to our masters in London who are apparently uniquely qualified to do everything properly.  By sheer coincidence, there was another story today, reporting on the comments by Professor Richard Wyn Jones including a suggestion that UK institutions have not adapted to devolution.  He said: “… what’s striking about the central institutions of the UK state is they have not changed at all as a result of devolution”.  It occurred to me that the comments by Davies and Cairns sum up fairly well why the UK’s central institutions haven’t adapted, and see no need to adapt, to devolution.  It’s simply that they see devolution not about any recognition of the UK being some sort of partnership of nations (even though they use those words) but about an approach to administration – just another part of local government, in effect.  From that perspective, why should they need to adapt?

Anyway, back to European funding and the Tories’ criticism of the way Labour have managed it.  I have a lot of sympathy with that they are saying in this instance.  It’s perhaps unfair of them to single out Labour alone for their criticism – I don’t remember things being spectacularly better-managed during the One Wales period – but that just underlines that their purpose here is more about political point-scoring than about improving things – and I’ll return to that point shortly.

Over recent years, I’ve been present (as a translator) at a lot of meetings discussing European funding and how to spend it.  I won’t go into individual details, but I have two clear impressions coming out of a range of different discussions.  The first is that European structural funds have spawned something of a consultancy industry in Wales as people line themselves up to help others make applications for funding, and get paid out of those same funds themselves.  The second is of a culture where business plans are written to tick the boxes with the funders rather than as a serious attempt to describe what projects will do – on two occasions, I’ve even heard them referred to as being ‘akin to creative writing’.

In addition to that, I’ve witnessed delays and arguments about the release of funding and a bureaucracy being built up to manage and report on the use of funding.  All of these reduce the amount of funding which eventually gets spent directly on meeting the objectives of projects.

In all those senses, the Tories have a point.  But I’d argue that these are all peripheral points to what I would see as the central criticism, and it’s a criticism that the Tories haven’t even made as far as I can see.  It is this: rather than being seen as special, short-term, one-off funding which the Welsh Government could use to meet a strategic aim of improving the Welsh economy, the money has been seen as a pot of available cash for which people and groups can apply.  This may well have enabled a number of things to be done which would not otherwise have been done – but it has also created a wealth of photo-ops for Welsh ministers and for creating and sponsoring client groups (and I leave it to readers to come to their own conclusion about the relative importance of these things to those involved).  But, and it’s a very big but, there have been no visible underlying objectives or strategy for achieving them.  It has been a massive missed opportunity for Wales.

The problem with the Tories’ position is that in the desire to make a political point about the incompetence of Labour in particular (and by implication, Welsh institutions in general) they have concentrated on the froth and offered only a different process for controlling and managing the expenditure.  They are no more offering a vision or strategy than Labour, and that means that their proposed ‘solution’ is no such thing.

Wales deserves better, but there’s something rather old-style colonial in the apparent belief that better simply means someone doing it for us rather than us doing it ourselves.

Don't do as I do...

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It was always clear that those arguing for the UK to leave the EU were right, in simply factual terms, in saying that if the UK was currently paying in £18 billion and only getting £9-10 billion back, the UK would be able to replicate all current EU spending in Wales and the UK more generally, and there would also be a ‘surplus’ of some £8-9 billion available for spending on other things.  Or, at least, it was factually accurate with one condition - the only impact on finances is the change in the way that £18 billion is spent.

It was always equally clear, however, that that change would not and could not happen in isolation.  Some of the functions carried out by the EU and paid for by the UK subscription would need in future to be carried out by the UK so part of the ‘surplus’ was already accounted for.  And it was always highly unlikely that a UK Government, with a different set of priorities and an ingrained resistance to the whole concept of regional aid, would ever agree to spend the money in the same way.

But, even more significantly than either of those factors, there is the impact on other government revenues and expenditure of the decision to leave the EU.  Now I’ve long believed that the UK economy can and will adapt to being outside the EU, which is why I never saw the argument as being predominantly an economic one.  But that’s not to say that it will adapt immediately; there was always going to be a short-term shock before the adaptation happened. 

The result of that short-term shock will probably be a reduction in growth and a corresponding reduction in taxation revenues received by the Exchequer.  (Insofar as there is an economic argument for Brexit, it is the belief that short-term pain will lead to long term gain, and it surprised me throughout the campaign that the Brexiters didn’t use that honest argument instead of trying to suggest, flying in the face of the obvious, that there would simply be no problems.) 

That in turn means that the £18 billion reduction in contributions to the EU is far from being the only change in the overall fiscal position of the UK Government.  I don’t know what the overall impact will be, nor over what timescales – but then neither does anyone else.

That’s all by way of context to considering the statement yesterday by Andrew RT Davies for the Conservatives in Wales.  His comments (and specifically the line that “the Treasury will have more money”) seem to be predicated on an assumption that there are no other changes to the Treasury’s revenue and expenditure following Brexit.  Whilst he doesn’t come across as a man with a strong grasp of economics, I still find it hard to believe that even he really believes that.  In effect he’s trying to spend money which may or may not exist (neither he nor I can know that at this stage). 

It’s truly astounding that, without a hint of irony, he then goes on to accuse Labour of doing precisely that – spending money which doesn’t exist.  Pots and kettles come to mind.

Not much of an argument

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It’s not often that I find myself defending the leader of the Conservative Assembly group; in fact it may even be a first.  But yesterday’s attack on him for alleged hypocrisy in accepting payments under the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) whilst advocating leaving the EU seemed to me to be more than a little misplaced.  I see no inconsistency between arguing for a different way of doing things on the one hand and making the best of the current situation on the other.  It would be unkind of me (although that won’t stop me) to point out that the criticism seems to be coming mostly from his own party, but whoever is doing it, attacking him personally for accepting farm subsidies from the EU which are not currently available from the UK Government is a long way removed from grown-up debate.  

(A more accurate accusation of hypocrisy would compare his support for farming subsidies to well-off farmers such as himself with his opposition to benefit payments for the poorest in society.  When is a benefit not a benefit? The answer, it seems, is that it depends on to whom it is being paid.)

The spokesperson for Davies is entirely correct to say that the money is effectively funded from the UK’s contributions; and those campaigning for a ‘leave’ vote are equally right in saying that, freed of having to pay the money into the EU, the UK government could simply make the payments direct to UK farmers.  There is no magic money tree in Brussels from which the money springs forth, no more than there is a magic money tree in London from which the block grant to the Assembly springs forth.  In effect, making payments to ‘Brussels’ (or any central government) is, in part, a redistributive mechanism; all countries make payments in and all countries receive payments out, but the proportion of receipts is not the same as the proportion of payments.

On the question of the flow of funds to Wales, the ‘remainers’ are repeatedly asking us to accept that we can trust Brussels more than London to pass funding on to Wales.  I happen to think that they are right on that question (which, incidentally, is part of the reason for a nationalist being more supportive of membership of the EU than of the UK); but that’s because I see the EU as being instinctively more redistributive than the UK.  (It’s not as redistributive as I’d wish, but we’re dealing here with the two options which are on the table, rather than what I might wish for.) 

The issue does, though, draw attention yet again to one of the weaknesses of the ‘remain’ campaign.  I just don’t feel that repeatedly telling us ‘you can trust Brussels more than you can trust us’ is the cleverest argument to be putting.  Politicians supporting continued membership of the EU seem almost afraid to put the underlying argument – that of a deliberately redistributive policy – before us, but that is, in essence, the real difference on this issue.  The ‘leavers’ are playing an essentially selfish hand – we can keep all our money and not pay any to those foreigners across the water - whilst the ‘remainers’ are effectively arguing for a system of active aid to the poorest regions of the EU.  But instead of putting that argument of principle, which actually equates Wales with other countries and nations within the EU and argues for the institution in principle, the ‘remainers’ are responding to selfishness by trying to put a selfish spin on their line as well – ‘we (Wales) will do better in than out’.  It’s not an argument which does much for me.

On the specific of the CAP, there’s another point as well.  As a rule, I tend to argue that trying to predict whether something will or will not change in the future is a dodgy business.  In principle, we can no more be certain that the CAP will continue unchanged than we can be certain that the UK Government would simply replace the CAP subsidies with UK subsidies.  I’ll make an exception in this case, though.  Despite the widespread understanding and agreement that the CAP needs to change, there are so many vested interests and obstacles to change that I think we can be reasonably certain that we will see no significant change any time soon.  However, arguing that the EU is sclerotically unable to make necessary changes doesn’t strike me as the most brilliant argument for continued membership either.

How long is long enough?

Tweet One of the leaders of the Conservatives in Wales has told us this week that five years is too long a term for the National Assembly.  But Andrew Davies hasn’t, as far as I can see, enlightened us as to how long the term should be.  Perhaps he hasn’t made his mind up on that one yet.  Or perhaps Stephen Crabb simply hasn’t told him the right answer yet.

It’s true, of course, that the extension from the previous norm of 4 years to the new one of 5 was more accidental than intentional, as an unthought-through consequence of the decision (by his own party) to move to fixed term parliaments for the UK, and the perceived need to avoid holding elections on the same date.  He’s not arguing with that decision, it appears, even though the effect of a move to a fixed term at Westminster has probably increased the average length of a Westminster parliament from around 4 to 5.  And he doesn’t seem to be arguing that the elections should, after all, be held on the same day.

I wouldn’t object to a shorter term, as it happens.  After all, from what I remember of history, ‘annual parliaments’ was a core demand of the Chartists.  Now that would be a neat way of keeping them on their toes, and getting rid of some of them a bit more rapidly.  It’s an entirely honorable demand to make – but something tells me that it isn’t what he means.

My real questions are:

(a)  how do we decide how long the term should be – he’s come up with a negative with no real justification to back it up and no argument for any alternative; and

(b)  why, if the issue is relevant for the Assembly, it isn’t also relevant for the Westminster and European parliaments.  What’s the difference?

It would be nice to be able to believe that he and his party see the Assembly as being the most important level of government; so important that we need to vote on its membership more often.  I rather suspect, though, that he’s coming at it from the opposite perspective.