English nationalism makes Labour their own worst enemies

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During the 2015 election campaign, the Tories made great play (with some nasty but effective little posters to back it up) of the idea that a Labour victory in England would end up leaving Ed Milliband in Alex Salmond’s pocket. Whether it worked or not, we can’t be entirely certain. It was aimed, obviously, only at English voters, and particularly the sort of nationalist English voters who subsequently fell prey to the insane idea that England was so special that it could have all the benefits of EU membership with none of the costs or disadvantages.

It was, though, nonsense. It might not have looked that way at the time, because not many really believed that the SNP would pull off what was almost a clean sweep (winning 56 of 59 seats). However, once the results were in, it was clear that Westminster politics was facing a new reality. That reality was delayed by the unexpected overall majorities for the Tories delivered by an unrepresentative voting system, not only in 2015 but also subsequently in 2017 and 2019. But with the polls currently suggesting both that an overall majority for any one party is highly unlikely and that SNP dominance of Scottish seats is unlikely to disappear any time soon, whichever party comes out top in England in the next election has no choice but to deal with the fact that a block of 50+ SNP MPs is highly likely to hold the balance of power. Whether, or how, they choose to wield it over England-only issues is unclear, but their votes (and those of the people who elected them) cannot simply be ignored.

However, ignoring it is, it seems, precisely what the failed Labour campaign team of 2015 is advising Keir Starmer to do. The lesson that they appear to have learned from that campaign is that they mustn’t allow the Tories to depict a potential minority Labour government as depending on the votes of the SNP for its survival – a rather simplistic interpretation which overlooks the fact that a minority Tory administration would also have to handle the situation in Scotland somehow if it wanted to get any legislation through. In order to avoid the Tories painting them in such a fashion, Labour, they say, must make it clear that there will be no deals or arrangements of any sort with the SNP. This, they hope, will help them attract the votes of English nationalists for themselves.

One element of the proposal makes a certain amount of political sense. Forming a minority government and daring the SNP to vote against the policies they put forward will work for much of the probable Labour manifesto; SNP MPs are more likely to support Labour, or abstain, on most policies than they are to vote with the Tories. And on some issues (Trident leaps to mind), even if the SNP oppose Labour policy, a minority Labour government could probably rely on Tory support. There are some policies which Labour might have to adapt or delay rather than risk defeat, but a minority Labour government could probably work overall most of the time.

The bugbear – and the big argument against the above – is the second suggestion from the failed campaign team, which is that Labour should rule out, in any and all circumstances, allowing a second referendum on Scottish independence. Even if every Scottish MP is from the SNP (not an impossible outcome), elected on a specific platform of holding a second referendum, and even if an overall majority of Scottish electors voted for the SNP (a currently unlikely but, again, not impossible scenario) the suggestion is that the ‘democratic’ Labour Party should simply say no. It's almost guaranteed to encourage the Scottish MPs to be as awkward as possible. It could, of course, be just a campaign tactic to attempt to win over English voters opposed to Scottish independence (although all the evidence of polls suggests that English electors’ opinions on Scottish independence aren’t actually that strongly held), to be followed by a ‘reluctant acknowledgement of the facts’ after the event; but a wholly foreseeable and unnecessary U-turn the day after the election looks like foot-shooting on a Johnsonian scale. But if it isn’t just a tactic, and Labour adopt this as policy, the chances of a Labour minority government surviving for long seem to be slim, undermined by their own wholly avoidable commitment to English nationalist dogma.

If Labour really wanted to protect themselves from the accusation of being in the SNP’s pocket, they could commit to the introduction of STV for all future parliamentary elections. Nothing would do more to reduce the number of SNP MPs than a proportional electoral system in which non-SNP votes received their fair share of seats. As a bonus, it’s a policy which the SNP themselves would probably support. It makes it more likely that minority governments, parliamentary arrangements, and coalitions would become the norm, although many of us would see that as another bonus. But Labour – or at least some of them – seem to be saying that they’d actually prefer another Tory government to a situation where they don’t themselves have absolute power. Sometimes, they are their own worst enemies.

Moving towards a new norm?

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A few days ago, the Welsh branch of the Conservative and Unionist Party blasted the agreement between Labour and Plaid as a “move towards Welsh independence”. I can’t have been the only independentista to read the report and sigh, “If only!”. The rather, how shall I put it, ‘overblown’ claim from Plaid’s leader that this is some sort of “down-payment on independence” can only have added to the Tories’ sense of outrage, a sense which is easily triggered, and seems to have only two settings – extremely high and totally over the top. In reality, of course, the content of the agreement in itself has little or nothing to do with independence, and will advance it not a jot.

There may be another sense, however, in which it is indeed a step along the road, and that is not about the content but about the very fact of the agreement’s existence. It marks a move, initiated by Labour on this occasion in circumstances where some might consider that it wasn’t entirely necessary, to a more mature politics in Wales, one which recognises that in a proportional system (soon to become more proportional, hopefully, as a result of the agreement, although it’s yet to be seen how far Labour will move in practice towards STV), absolute majorities of seats without absolute majorities of votes are at best unlikely, and that some form of co-operation between parties needs to become the norm. Whilst the Tories (and the London leadership of the Labour Party) are stuck in the name-calling ‘we can never work with *separatists / *socialists / *Tories’ (*delete according to your own prejudices) mode of politics, Welsh Labour and Plaid have shown a willingness to move towards the much more European style of politics where post-electoral negotiations and agreements are the mark of a normal grown-up democracy. As Cynog Dafis has pointed out, the idea that everything in the agreement might be delivered in a single three year period is unlikely, underlining the fact that co-operation needs to be seen as a long term norm rather than a one-off fix. It is in that sense of building in more maturity that it might indeed be a step along the road to strengthening the powers of the Senedd and a step further down the long road to independence. The Tories might be slightly right, even if for completely the wrong reason.

It is a pity that both parties (Plaid having been more guilty than Labour on this score) went into the election denying any intention of coming to any agreement with anyone, each party pretending that it could end up forming a government with an overall majority all by itself. The shadow cast by the First Past The Post electoral system used for Westminster elections is a long and dark one. Coming to an agreement after the event can (and will) then be presented by opponents as some sort of U-turn, no matter how the proponents try to finesse the wording. Unfortunately, it looks as though it may yet take some time for the media (and the parties) to understand that the new norm makes trying to rule things out, absolutely, in advance a somewhat silly approach, and that they need, instead, to help the wider public understand the probable outcomes and consequences of proportional voting systems. Obsessing in advance about the precise implications of any particular post-election agreement is unhelpful, because it’s nigh-on impossible to accurately second-guess the outcome of any election and it’s a diversion from a proper examination of the programmes of the respective parties.

The fact that some sort of post-electoral agreement ought to become the accepted norm does not, of course, mean that any particular agreement is necessarily the right thing to do at the right time. My own scepticism in 2007 about both the One Wales agreement and the aborted All Wales Accord was on the details, not the principle. It is entirely to be expected that members of both parties should hold differing views on the detail and be debating those differences. Whilst the current agreement includes a lot of policies which will be acceptable to both Labour and Plaid members and supporters, the degree to which it will be a ‘success’ is hard to prejudge. The detail of the small print in an agreement – to say nothing of the things that aren’t written anywhere – will always leave plenty of scope for disagreement and disappointment in one party or the other. By way of example, one of the biggest running sores within Plaid over the One Wales agreement was over student fees, and it wasn’t because of what the agreement did say (no increase for three years), but because of what it didn’t say (what happens in year four?).

It’s a bold political move for Mark Drakeford and Labour, and a pragmatic one for Adam Price and Plaid. Only history will tell us whether, and to what extent, it actually takes Wales forward.

Co-operation is about more than simple arithmetic

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It was inevitable after the results of the European parliament elections became clear that there would be calls for ‘Remain’ parties to work together to ensure a remain majority after the Westminster election - which is surely now an unavoidable result of the Tory leadership election, even if the timing is uncertain.  After all, the pro-Brexit side managed to offer a single clear choice, and they only ‘won’ because the Remain side failed to do the same.  There are, though, many problems with any such proposal, even allowing for the fact that ‘working together’ is a vague enough phrase to offer multiple possible interpretations.

There are two important – and almost certainly invalid – assumptions underlying such calls.  The first is that a sufficient number of electors will see the Brexit issue as the defining issue of this particular election, and the second is that they will follow the advice of the leaders of ‘their’ party of choice, and vote for the suggested alternative.  The first is certainly true for political commentators – including this blog – but I’m not aware of any hard evidence of its truth for the electorate as a whole.  Many will be voting on all sorts of other issues.  And the second is based on an over-simplistic mathematical analysis of votes coupled with a degree of arrogance in believing that the parties can tell 'their' voters to vote for someone else and be obeyed.  I would find it very hard indeed, even given the importance of Brexit, to cast my vote for any party likely to support the renewal of Trident, or which is utterly opposed to autonomy for Wales, to give just two examples – and many others will have their own red lines.

It’s true, of course, that the Leave side had the advantage in last week’s election of having a single clear option open to supporters, but we should remember that that came about not because of any discussions or agreements between the parties, but because two pro-Brexit parties (UKIP and the Tories) managed to press their self-destruct buttons and implode.  That isn’t going to happen for the Remain parties, with the possible exception of Change UK.  That means that any arrangement depends on the Lib Dems, Plaid, the SNP and the Green Party (and potentially Labour as well if they ever manage to get their act together) coming to an arrangement where they all agree to stand aside in some seats in favour of each other’s candidates.  I put the chances of that happening at approximately zero.

Whilst arrangements between Plaid, SNP and the Green Party look to be achievable, if difficult, in Scotland and Wales, there seems little chance that the resurgent Lib Dems will stand aside in any of their increasingly lengthy list of target seats, and no chance at all of the Labour Party doing the same.  For all their talk of coming together to prevent a hard (or indeed any) Brexit, both of those parties will be looking at the election as their chance to improve their own positions, and ultimately that is a bigger prize than the single issue of Brexit.  And I suspect that politicians calling for an ’arrangement’ fully understand the reality, and that such calls are themselves more to do with trying to position their own parties as the adults in the room than with any real hope of action.

The problem we face is with an electoral system which allows people a range of choice, but then awards the spoils on a wholly unjust basis, meaning that a party gaining only around 30-35% of the vote can end up with a huge majority of seats.  Trying to game the system by treating voters as pawns to be traded on the basis of a mathematical analysis of votes cast doesn’t address that problem.

Identifying the devil

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The leader of the Conservatives-in-Wales group in the National Assembly has written this week about the lack of political engagement with the National Assembly, as measured by turnout in elections.  It’s true, of course, that there is a low level of participation in Assembly elections, just as there is in local government elections and elections to the European Parliament.  The only elections which regularly attract a decent turnout are those to the UK Parliament, although even in that case, there has been a falling off in turnout levels over recent decades. 

That, perhaps, gives us one clue as to the underlying cause of low turnout; there seems to be something of a correlation between the level of turnout and the perceived importance of the relevant level of government.  In fairness to Davies, he does point out that many people will feel that the low level of engagement is indeed down to the limited powers of the Assembly, even if he then proceeds to identify his own preferred cause, which is a perception that voting will not make a lot of difference because Labour will still win.  I have a lot of sympathy with his view that there is a feeling that voting will change little, although there’s rather more to ‘making a difference’ than merely swapping the ruling party, a conflation which seems to be implicit in the piece.

There was another article on Nation.Cymru last week which also talked about the extent and duration of one-party rule in Wales, and the need for an alternative to the Labour Party.  It made some sound points, but the assertion that “In a mature democracy, power will naturally swing back and forth between parties every decade or so” left me cold, I fear.  I really don’t see why, before it can be considered ‘mature’ (whatever that means), a democracy requires a periodic change of governing party, or even the existence of a viable alternative to the governing party to such an extent that all the opposition parties should come together and form an alternative government, which is the implicit thrust of both articles.

Saying that is not to dismiss the criticism of Labour, much of which seems entirely valid to me.  Wales is governed by a party which seems to be managerialist, lacking in vision, unwilling to move out of its comfort zone, and motivated largely by its own desire to hang on to power.  And the basis on which it regularly seeks re-election has no more substance than a simplistic claim to be ‘not-the-Tories’.  But none of that seems to me to be justification for an alternative which by its nature (a temporary and probably fractious union of dissimilar parties) can have no clear alternative vision, which would be motivated largely by the desire of its prominent figures to exercise power and their belief that they can manage things better than Labour, and would be united only by virtue of being ‘not-Labour’.  It’s hard to discern which is the devil and which is the deep blue sea; it’s not a real alternative at all.

The underlying issue is that Wales is getting the government for which people vote under the electoral system which is in use.  A change in that system to one based on STV would mean that Labour would be less dominant than they are currently (the implementation of which therefore requires the turkeys to vote for Christmas), but on current voting habits would still leave a large Labour group and a split opposition.  It’s possible that such a change would also lead to a change in voting habits as well, of course; it would certainly provide more opportunity for newer and different parties to gain representation in the Assembly, even if at low levels.  But the basic problem remains – Labour seem likely, as things stand, to continue to win the most votes and seats.

I say ‘problem’; but what sort of democracy is it which says that one party regularly winning the most votes in a free and open election is a ‘problem’?  The way to bring about change isn’t for disparate parties to come together to try and form a government which sidelines the Labour party; it is for parties to persuade people of the need for change.  But political debate in Wales seems to be less about alternative visions and more about alternative management teams.

To return to the question of political engagement as measured by turnout – why would anyone believe that voting for a different set of managers would inspire people to participate?

Accident or design?

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Perhaps over the coming days it will become clearer whether Plaid in the Assembly really intended to have their leader elected as First Minister with the support of the Tories and UKIP, or whether they were just trying to make a point, and were as surprised as outside observers to receive the unanimous support of both of those parties.  I’m prepared to believe that there was no deal done in advance, which makes the second theory more credible than the first.

What is clear is that if the sole remaining Lib Dem had voted the other way, we would now have a Plaid First Minister, even if that result was more by accident than design.  How workable would it have been for a party with 12 seats out of 60 to govern effectively without a coalition or some other less formal sort of arrangement with the other parties?

Well, there’s a great deal that a government can do without needing to win a single vote on the floor of the Assembly.  Once the First Minister has been elected, then in essence, government only needs to avoid defeat on its budget and on any vote of no confidence tabled by the opposition.  As long as it’s prepared to negotiate on the budget, and as long as the other parties which put it into power are prepared to support it in any confidence vote, a government which avoids any contentious legislation can exercise power within existing legislation quite easily.  What it could not expect is to be able to implement any manifesto pledges which do not attract the support of other parties.  It would be a change of management, but probably not much of a change of direction.

In reality, however, even that limited level of co-operation between Plaid, Tories, and UKIP would be seen as being exactly that – co-operation – and it is likely that there would be a political price to pay.  Who would pay that price is an interesting question; certainly Plaid would suffer (initially at least), but I also wonder what grass roots Tories, never mind UKIP members, would think about their party backing a Plaid Government without any formal participation in it.  And who knows, perhaps seeing that there is an alternative to Labour might lead to other voting changes as well.

The bigger question is whether the price would be worth it.  And by that, I don’t simply mean in terms of the next election or two, but in terms of the longer term.  I’ve posted before that I thought Plaid were making a strategic and tactical mistake in ruling out options in advance of the election (and having ruled them out so firmly, being seen to be apparently doing the opposite once elected, whatever the real truth may be, isn’t the brightest start).  I don't believe that nationalists should ever have any objection in principle to working with any or all other parties if that advances the cause of Wales.  The question is about weighing up whether the long term gain for the national project outweighs the short term pain for one or more parties, and that’s a much bigger question than deciding whether to be in government or opposition.

I’d really like to believe that someone had done that thinking and calculation before yesterday’s vote, and had thought through the implications.  But I rather suspect not.

Coalitions and arrangements

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Simon Thomas seems to have ignited something of a hostile reaction within Plaid yesterday, when he declined to rule out an arrangement with the Tories which falls short of a coalition.  I suspect that, in semantic terms, he was correct to argue that what Plaid’s leader had said only rules out one particular type of arrangement, namely a formal coalition.  But I think most people had interpreted what Leanne said – and were intended to interpret it – as ruling out any arrangement which would put the Tories in power in Wales.

But on the principle, I agree with Simon, and have posted on that before.  It’s not that I particularly want to see the Tories in power in Wales, or see Plaid supporting such a government.  And when the issue was under discussion in 2007, when there was a possibility of including the Tories in the so-called ‘rainbow alliance’, I was even more opposed to a coalition with the Tories than with Labour.  But I was happy to talk to both, because that was the only way of ascertaining what, if any, real progress could be made.  I had two main reasons for not being quite so definitive in ruling out some arrangements in advance.

The first is largely pragmatic, and is to do with negotiating leverage.  In the context of the current voting system for the National Assembly, where coalitions or less formal arrangements are more likely than not, any party claiming to be putting the interests of Wales first needs to get the best deal that it possibly can.  And telling everyone in advance that there’s only one party with which you’re prepared to do any sort of deal doesn’t actually incentivise that party to give a lot of ground.  Quite the reverse – it actually strengthens the Labour Party’s hand in any discussions.

The second is more about the aims and objectives of a party.  I find it extremely difficult to believe that the Tories in Wales would offer more concessions to the nationalist position than the Labour Party, but I don’t find it totally inconceivable that it could happen.  Events are inherently unpredictable.  Ruling out, absolutely, any such possibility in advance looks like the action of a party more concerned with its own short-term advantage than with the constitutional progress of Wales.

Of course, the reason given for that would be that the long term future of Wales depends on the strength of the nationalist party, and that any deal with the Tories would weaken that party.  But is that reasoned argument, or merely rationalisation of pre-existing prejudice?  I’m convinced that any deal with the Labour Party is equally likely to weaken Plaid – that certainly seems to be the experience of One Wales.  But if the main aim is making progress towards independence, then bringing about change, and then entrenching that change, is surely more important than the results of one or two elections.

I accept that this is largely hypothetical – any discussion before the election can only ever be speculative.  I entirely understand why all parties would sooner concentrate at this stage on fighting and winning the election than on speculating about what might happen afterwards.  Perhaps there really will be a political earthquake which propels either Plaid or the Tories into a position where they have enough AMs to be in a position to lead a government, however unlikely that may look at present.  But in a context where all the polls show how unlikely it is that any party will win the majority about which they are all so keen to talk, speculation will inevitably continue to be part of the narrative of the campaign.  That’s entirely natural, and in many other countries in Europe, people and politicians would be struggling to understand why there is such a reluctance in Wales to accept the fact, and debate the possibilities more openly.

Talking about arrangements and compromises is an inevitable part of what it takes to create a different type of politics in Wales, and break away from the UK’s obsession with absolute majorities.  It’s about building a more European style of multi-party coalitions and arrangements.  There’s something very ‘British’ about simply wanting to avoid the question.

Watching the car crash

Tweet If I understand the latest statements from ex-PM John Major correctly, compromising Tory policies in exchange for Lib Dem votes to secure a parliamentary majority, and having Lib Dem ministers in just about every department of government to keep an eagle eye on what their Conservative colleagues are doing, is a perfectly acceptable thing to do.  But if the Labour Party were to enter government committed to negotiating some compromises on a much looser basis (and taking it vote by vote) with the SNP, that would be tantamount to being held to ransom.  (And the sky might fall in as well.)  And that seems to be not far away from Labour’s own position – doing a deal of some sort with the Lib Dems is fine, but the SNP are regarded as being untouchable.

I struggle to see any logical difference - in both cases, it’s simply a question of recognising that any party which cannot command a parliamentary majority by itself will need the support – or at the very least, the considered abstention – of members of one or more other parties if it is to carry its legislative programme.  In most European countries, that is simply the accepted norm; it’s the way things work, as National Left discussed earlier today.

At this stage however, both parties are being driven more by electoral logic than by any real thought about what happens afterwards.  They’re reminding me of an attitude I came across in one of my many jobs over the years, where the sales team were prepared to make just about any wild claim in order to close the sale, and simply assumed that those of us charged with delivery would be able to talk our way out of the commitments later.  It’s not honest in business – and it’s not honest in politics either.

I don’t know if Major and the rest really believe what they’re saying, or have given any thought to the longer term consequences, but somehow I doubt both.  It hints at desperation – a last throw of the dice in an effort to convince all of us – and the Scots in particular – that we should vote for whichever of Labour-Tory we dislike least, rather than think more positively about the future that we want.

For them, and their cheerleaders in the press, it’s the only way of preserving the status quo of a political battle fought between two parties who agree on just about everything, but occasionally pretend to be slightly different for electoral purposes.  The Lib Dems are - from this perspective - part of the same cosy consensus.  The last thing that any of them want is a block of MPs who might actually believe that a different way forward is possible, let alone having to depend on their support.  In that sense, it’s nothing to do with that block being from Scotland or from a nationalist party; the ‘Scottishness’ of the SNP merely makes them easier to demonise as ‘outsiders’.

Labour suggests that the Tories are deliberately talking up the SNP to damage Labour.  It sounds almost credible, but assumes that the Tories are being driven by strategy rather than panic.  I suspect that the Tories are panicking as much as Labour; they both want to return to the cosy two party politics of old, but neither of them really understands how to achieve that.  The result is that they attack the symptom (the growth in support for the SNP) rather than the cause, which is that the Scots have seen through the two parties, and have been offered an alternative which they seem to rather like.  But by doing so, they merely reinforce the conclusions which the Scots have already drawn about the pair of them.

At the start of the election, I thought that it was at least possible that the SNP surge would start to dissipate, and that the suggestions of 50 plus seats would be shown to be an impossible dream.  Perhaps that will still happen; but everything that Labour and the Tories do seems almost calculated to persuade the Scots to turn in ever greater numbers to the SNP.  The Labour-Tory campaign feels like watching a car crash in slow motion, with the drivers unable to bring themselves to do anything to avoid the collision, not because they can’t but because they won’t.

And they haven’t even begun to think about how they talk themselves out of the hole after the election.

Collaboration will be the norm not the exception

Tweet Labour’s Party Political Broadcast last week, parodying Nick Clegg, has been much criticised by other parties.  Whilst I agree that it really isn’t a very grown-up approach to politics, and has nothing positive to say, I can’t help thinking that it’s an inevitable result of the race by Labour and the Tories alike to employ ‘gurus’ from the USA in their campaigns.

Negativity and personalisation are the bedrock of US politics; why would anyone expect that employing ‘experts’ in the field would not lead to replicating the same approach?  There’d be little purpose in recruiting such people and then telling them “Actually, we don’t do things that way here”.  The very fact of their employment tells us that both parties are planning to further Americanize their approach to campaigning.  Pathetic it may be; but we can only expect more of the same.

Insofar as there was any serious point to the broadcast, it was the notion that the Lib Dems are “propping up” the Tories.  It’s not a very mature approach to the concept of coalition, and may well come back to bite Labour if they find themselves turning to the Lib Dems for support in the future.

There was a time when the overwhelming majority of the electorate voted for one of only two parties, but in recent decades, political allegiance has become much more fragmented.  Labour and Tory alike obviously regret that, but believing that such a situation will return any time soon – if ever – is just wishful thinking on their part.  Even under the current electoral system – let alone the more proportional one which will be with us at some future date – collaboration with other parties will become the norm, even if it doesn’t always lead to formal coalition.

Given that fact, attacking the very fact of such collaboration just because it’s with someone else looks childish.  Drawing attention to elements of any particular deal leaves more than enough scope for attacking the Lib Dems and their role in government, but to attack the fact of their having entered into a coalition is to ignore the reality of modern politics.

Arbitrary numbers and coalition arithmetic

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I’m grateful to Glyn Davies for setting out so clearly the background to the debate over the number of MPs and their constituency boundaries.

As he points out, at the last Westminster election, the Tories committed to reducing the number from 650 to 585.  This was, of course, a wholly arbitrary number (as indeed is the current 650), but reducing the number of politicians is always a popular idea.  (Whether there are enough electors who believed that the turkeys actually would vote for Christmas to make much difference to the election is another matter entirely.)

Never to be outdone in the populism states, the Lib Dems promised to go further and cut the number to 500.  It’s a nice round number, but just as arbitrary as either 585 or 600.  And of course they never really believed at the time that they would be anywhere near having the power to implement anything that they had said.

In the event, the election was indecisive, and a coalition was formed.  In so far as one can reasonably argue that the manifesto pledges of governing parties represent some sort of mandate for government action, it’s fair to conclude that the electorate had given them a mandate to reduce the number of MPs to another arbitrary number, somewhere between 500 and 585.

So, in the coalition negotiations, they duly agreed on another entirely arbitrary number, this time selecting 600.  Perhaps they thought that was splitting the difference – if their approach to doing hard sums on economic issues is anything to go by, it’s certainly a credible theory and the only surprise would be that they didn’t suggest that 700 was half way between 500 and 585.

It could, of course, simply be another example of how the Lib Dems are a moderating influence on Conservative policies.  If they happen to moderate them even further away from Lib Dem policies, I’m sure that’s just an unfortunate accident.

In any event, it seemed there were some caveats on the whole deal which never actually got recorded in the coalition package.  The Lib Dems’ unstated caveat was that the Tories mustn’t upset them by rejecting a wholly unrelated proposal to reform the House of Lords.  And the unstated caveat of many Tories seems to have been that the changes shouldn’t actually threaten the boundaries or territorial integrity of their own constituencies.  Having equal numbers of electors is fine apparently, but only so long as it’s achieved by carving up somebody else’s seat.

I don’t entirely disagree with the point Glyn makes about the House of Lords’ intervention being a case of making an inappropriate amendment to a different proposal, although it is a point of procedure which will only really interest the anoraks.  It does however look like pretty small beer in procedural terms when compared to the sophistry of the coalition partners themselves.

When all’s said and done, enough turkeys have found their excuse not to vote for Christmas.  Not just yet anyway.

The bumbler and the mumblers

Tweet The mumblings against Nick Clegg from within his own party are growing stronger, or at any rate more public.  Given the probable loss of most of their seats at the next election, it’s hardly a surprise that some of those around him are starting to look for liferafts.  

It’s not clear what his specific political crimes are, other than being an apparent election loser, but unless his party are certain that any potential replacement stands any better chance of salvaging something from the looming disaster, it’s hard to see how changing leader will do more than expend another political career on a lost cause.

Entering into a coalition with political opponents requires a willingness to compromise and make concessions.  It’s unrealistic for any party to believe that a leader who succeeds in doing that, and in selling those concessions and compromises to his party in order to enter coalition, would then turn out to be a man of steadfast principle during the following five years of government.  It is surely much more likely that a natural compromiser will continue as he started, and make compromise after compromise to secure the government’s success.  And it will always be the junior partner which has to compromise most.

The implications of going into a government with a natural compromiser at the helm, and the implications of the convention of Cabinet collective responsibility under which ministers are duty bound to accept and support other Ministers’ decisions, even if they were never even discussed at Cabinet, was almost certainly not spelled out to the party members.  It should have been obvious of course, but optimism and the mandatory rose tinted spectacles which accompany entry into government after interminable opposition probably blinded them to both until it was too late.

I suspect that Clegg will hold on, not least because anyone taking over control of the ship at this stage would probably need to have something akin to a political death wish.  And then he’ll go quietly just after the next election.  In the meantime, his party’s public mumblings will serve only to increase the scale of their losses when the election eventually comes.

A perennial unanswered question

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Some questions never really go away, although they can be framed in different terms as the context changes.  The statement by Cynog Dafis this week draws attention to a case in point.

I cannot remember a time when there was not an ongoing debate within Plaid about whether the party existed primarily to bring about change by gaining support, and ultimately power, itself, or whether its main purpose was to act as an effective lobby, and a sufficiently strong political threat, so that others would implement the constitutional change it sought.  (And there was also, of course, a complementary debate about the best way of achieving whichever of those aims was the most appropriate.)

In practice, up until 1999 at least, lack of electoral success meant that it was only actually capable of following the second of those two paths.  Whether it did so successfully is a moot point.  I believe that it was successful; the existence of a small and intermittently well-organised party, which had the intellectual clout and political courage to make the arguments consistently over a lengthy period was, in my view, a key factor in the journey Wales took up to the 1997 referendum.

Others might argue that Labour would have taken the same path anyway, or that having to deal with a nationalist challenge actually strengthened the hand of the anti-devolutionists within Labour, or even that Labour might have got there more quickly had Plaid disbanded itself and encouraged its members to join the Labour Party and fight from within. 

Regardless of what Marx said, we only get to live history once; we don’t have the luxury of trying it again in two different ways to see which worked best.  All of us will bring our own perspective and judgement to our interpretation of what happened and why.  But I'm convinced that it was a successful approach.

Whatever, the establishment of a national legislature in 1999, even if it didn’t look like a legislature at the time, had to be a turning point.  The context, and the way the question was framed, inevitably changed. 

Gaining power in London was never an option for Plaid; the best that could be hoped for was to gain all, or at least a majority, of the Welsh seats in the UK Parliament, in the way that Irish Nationalists had done decades earlier.  But gaining power in the National Assembly was, at least theoretically, a possibility, and the stunning and, to be honest, unexpected electoral success in the first Assembly elections in 1999 made it look a realistic possibility within the foreseeable future.

But still the party never really answered the question about what it was for.  Indeed, at one level, the possibility of forming a government within the new institution even made the question harder for the party.  A party of government needs a consistent policy platform; it needs to decide what sort of ideology it espouses, and although Plaid had adopted a broadly ‘left’ policy platform over many years, it still retained a number of members who were naturally averse to adopting any detailed policies beyond the simple demand for independence.

The deposing of one leader and the election of a new one in 2000 complicated the question further.  The members elected a leader who was clearly, shall we say, ‘uncomfortable’ with the aim of independence, whilst still themselves clinging to the notion that independence was the party’s main goal.  The only possible outcome from that was to fudge the question.

In the sense of keeping the party united, fudging worked, after a fashion, until the next turning point in 2007.  (It clearly didn’t work electorally, however.  It left people – including at times many of the party’s own members – confused as to what the party was for, and encouraged the criticism that the party was being dishonest about its own aims, or even hiding them from the public.)

Part of the problem with the decision to enter government in 2007 was the failure to discuss, let alone answer, that perennial question about what the party was for.  The members supported going into coalition on a wave of optimism (and would have done exactly the same for the so-called ‘rainbow’ had it not been for the fortunate and timely incompetence of the Lib Dems.)

I suspected at the time, however, that the fact that the party had so enthusiastically agreed to it would be interpreted by some as being an answer, of sorts, to the question.  And who can blame them?  The party had overwhelmingly decided to become a ‘party of government’ after all, even if the implications of that decision were neither spelled out nor discussed.  The managerial agenda for 2011 can be seen as almost inevitable from that perspective.

In 2007, the framing of the question had effectively been changed again, so much so that I’m not sure that it was even recognised by all as being the same question.  Supporters of coalition turned the question into “do you want to be in government or do you want to be in opposition?”.  Posed like that, which politician would not choose government?  It’s a no brainer; one can always achieve more within the term of an Assembly by being part of the government than by being part of the opposition.

It was, and is, however, an over-simplification of the question.  ‘Choosing opposition’ is not the same thing as ‘choosing not to join this government at this point in time’, and it was misleading to paint it as such, which is what proponents of both coalition options did.  And ‘within the term of an Assembly’ is a massive constraint on political horizons.  But having managed to frame the question in a way which helped to get the answer that they wanted, I repeat, who can blame them for assuming that they’d been given a rather more general answer?

Those who see Plaid as a natural coalition partner for Labour are merely following the logic of that apparent decision in 2007 to its conclusion, and are being entirely consistent in so doing.  But that leads in turn to another reframing of the question.  If Plaid’s main purpose is to influence the Labour Party on the detail of policy in the short to medium term, then isn’t the best way to do that from within the Labour Party itself?

Half a cheer for the Lib Dems

Tweet There is a long-standing convention in the UK that all members of the Government should support the government’s position on all issues, and should resign if they are unable to do so.  Backbenchers are not bound by this convention, but the job of the whips is to try and ensure that they vote as if they were as often as possible.

It’s the sort of convention that governments like, and when all ministers are chosen by the Prime Minister, who can dispose of those who dare to disagree, it’s a powerful tool for motivating the ‘payroll vote’ to support government policy. 

It’s a convention, though, which is better suited to one-party governments than to coalitions, and the fact that it has been so rarely challenged has as much to do with the unusualness of coalitions as anything else.  And it’s a convention which has been adopted – unthinkingly as far as I can see – by the National Assembly in Cardiff as well.

I can understand why coalition partners would be expected to support the government position on all matters covered in the formal coalition agreement, but I cannot understand why the convention should apply to all decisions taken by the government, even if those decisions are both outside the formal agreement and contrary to the stated policy of one of the coalition partners.  I certainly did not understand why the junior partners in One Wales found it necessary never to disagree in the Senedd with anything that the senior partners said or did.

In that context, the decision of the Lib Dems in London to abstain on a motion welcoming Cameron’s removal of the UK from the negotiating table in the EU is a very welcome challenge to the convention.  I hope that we will see more of them.

So why only half a cheer?  Because I’m completely convinced that if the same thing had been done by a party other than the Lib Dems, then the Lib Dems would have been the first to condemn such an outrageous breach of convention.  Consistency of argument has never been one of their strong points.  But having put down a marker in this way, I’d be delighted to see them showing a bit more consistency from here on in.

Tangoing with the Tories

Tweet At the time of the 2007 Assembly election, there was a great deal of speculation as to whether Plaid would, or would not, enter a coalition with one of other of the parties in the Assembly.  It wasn’t always popular with the electors, though – I found a number of people telling me something along the lines of “If you go in with Labour/the Tories (delete as applicable), I’ll never vote for Plaid again”. 

Overall, the numbers deleting ‘Labour’ from that sentence were roughly equal to the number deleting ‘the Tories’.  It was of course a constituency where Labour and Tory supporters were fairly evenly balanced – as the eventual result showed.  I can imagine that the balance would be significantly more one-sided in the many constituencies in Wales where Labour have a large amount of traditional support and the Tories are close to non-existent.

I can understand, therefore, why Helen Mary would feel that, had Plaid ruled out any alliance with the Tories, she would still be AM.  Where a majority is as wafer-thin as that gained by Labour in Llanelli, a single factor such as that might well have made the difference.  But I’m not convinced that it is thus in the interests of either Plaid or Wales to respond to the 2011 election by explicitly ruling out working with the Tories.

Certainly, if Plaid is going to rule it out, it’s better to do it well in advance of any future election than to do it after the polls closed as happened earlier this month.  I was not alone in my incredulity at that one.  There is, though, a wider question about why the party would want to rule it out, and it comes right back to my questioning of what Plaid is trying to achieve.

If a national party’s main objective is to bring about self-government for Wales, and to take whatever opportunities that arise in the interim to move towards that, then it must surely be prepared to work with whichever party is most willing to facilitate the next step.  Now, it might be argued that the Tories are unlikely to be that party; that would be a valid and very pragmatic reason for ruling out working with them at a given point in time, but not necessarily for ever. 

For instance, if the Tories were to talk about moving to a formal federal set-up (David Melding has already got to that point, and it’s entirely conceivable that Cameron will get there at some stage as he tries to deal with both a referendum on Scottish Independence and a demand for ‘English votes on English issues’ from within his own ranks), then would a nationalist party really want to rule out working with them to achieve that, and argue that it should instead only work with a Labour Party which puts forward a much more limited programme of change?

Alternatively, it might be argued that Plaid has a strong commitment to decentralised socialism and cannot therefore ever work with a right wing centralist party like the Tories.  That’s a valid line, as far as it goes; but what then is the distinguishing feature between say Blair’s Labour and Cameron’s Tories which makes one acceptable and the other not?  On a rational basis, it’s hard to see one – and this was one of the issues where Plaid really struggled to demonstrate a clear narrative during the recent election and in the immediate aftermath.  Were they saying ‘Labour-Tory, all the same’, or were they saying ‘Tories are savage reactionaries and Labour are part of a progressive consensus’?  At times they appeared to be saying both, but they cannot both be true.

The third possible reason for ruling out ever working with the Tories is the hard-nosed electoral one.  There are many in Wales who do not simply dislike the Tories; there is a degree of hatred which is visceral.  It tends to be almost inherited rather than based on a reasoned analysis of the two parties’ respective policies.  Labour do everything in their power to keep the attitude alive and strong; it is in their own electoral interest to do so.

As long as it is thus, it might well be in the short-term electoral interests of Plaid to ‘go with the flow’ and simply rule out working with the Tories.  But there is a need to recognise that the main beneficiary of an approach which reinforces Labour’s narrative about the differences between themselves and the Tories will be Labour.

There is a phrase much-loved by consultants to describe the way in which many organisations work – ‘Ready, Fire, Aim’.  But, generally speaking, organisations achieve more if they aim before firing.

So - was it worth it?

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If One Wales was part good, part bad, and part ugly, was it worth doing overall?  It’s hard to make an assessment of what would otherwise have happened; there’s inevitably an element of subjectivity and guesswork. 

Taking the Good first:

I don’t think that we would have had the Holtham Commission without One Wales – and that has to be a major plus point for the agreement.

I don’t think that we would have had the new language Measure either – at least not in as comprehensive a form.

Whether we would have had the referendum is a more open question.  We certainly would not have had it under the Rainbow option for which Plaid’s leader and many others were initially so enthusiastic, and I don’t think we would have had it under a minority Labour Government either.  Whether Carwyn Jones would have decided to go for it in this new term is also open to question; some say he would have done, but I’m inclined to think that he would have waited at least another term, until the reduced number of MPs had been elected on new boundaries, thereby reducing his own internal opposition.

Turning to the Bad:

Had Plaid Cymru remained in opposition to a minority Labour government, I’m convinced that Labour would have been unable to get their change of policy on tuition fees through the Assembly; it would have remained a matter of principle for more AMs.  What would have happened under the Rainbow is a more open question.

Absence of One Wales would have made no significant difference on the question of a Welsh daily newspaper, or on the implementation of government policies on small schools or Welsh medium education.

And in summary, therefore, most of the Bad that I noted would still have happened, but we would have lost some important elements of the Good.  Purely on a comparison between the Good and the Bad, therefore, it seems to me that One Wales did more good than harm from the point of view of the national project.

But it’s the Ugly that is the killer for me, because it blunted the one force which had previously been so responsible for shaping the debate about the future of Wales.  Whether permanently or purely temporarily is something that remains unclear at this point.

Actually this was one of the things that most concerned me about entering One Wales in the first place.  I was never convinced that the party was being led with a sufficiently clear sense of direction to be able to both make and justify short term compromises whilst also being able to continue to present a more far-reaching vision of how things can be.  Without that, pragmatism replaces idealism rather than supports it.

I’ve never opposed the idea that Plaid should be willing and ready to take responsibility – even shared responsibility as a junior partner – for the government of Wales. 

And, unlike some former colleagues, I don’t see that Labour and the Conservatives are so different, in the context of longer term ambitions for Wales, that there should be any axiomatic differentiation between them as potential coalition partners.  There are sound political considerations and significant practical difficulties in terms of policy agreements for taking a different view about the two, but no great issues of principle as far as I’m concerned.  Treating the Tories as untouchables is playing to the Labour agenda.

But any coalition or agreement should have clear objectives, rooted in the context of the wider aspirations, which move the project along in definable ways.  And people should not be afraid or embarrassed about stating where compromises are being made, and especially not afraid of enunciating clearly what the preferred option would have been in such cases.

Failing to do that, and trying to insist on absolute loyalty and support for a compromise programme as though it were the real thing, is to ape the binary (government-opposition) model which operates in Westminster, and to lose an opportunity to create a very different and more pluralistic kind of politics here in Wales.  Copying a model that we know is always easier than devising a new model, but that doesn’t make it the best solution.

Many are talking about a change of leadership as though that will solve the problems, but it is really only part of the solution.  The problem is also one of institutionalisation; those who are part of an establishment have ended up conforming to, and working within, its norms, limitations, and culture. 

Westminster has frequently been described as being the best club in London; there is a danger that the Senedd becomes the best club in Cardiff.  It doesn’t have to be that way, though.  There always seemed to be a certain inevitability about the final paragraph of Animal Farm, but if the other animals had realised what was happening sooner, I’m sure that they could have prevented it.

... and The Ugly.

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I don’t recall precisely how and when Plaid spokespeople started to use the phrase ‘Plaid-driven’ to describe the government, but I felt from the outset that it was a mistake.  I don’t recall it ever being discussed with party officers outside the Bay, but it somehow slipped into widespread use.  It seriously compromised the party later though - to spend four years talking about the government being driven by Plaid, and supporting all government motions, and then start rubbishing the decisions of the Labour ministers looked, and was, disingenuous to put it politely. 

It was simply not a credible approach.  Dafydd Elis Thomas has recently talked about the negative campaign; more specifically, he talked about exactly this point – supporting government decisions for four years and then attacking those same decisions.  On this point, I agree with him.

But it goes further than that.  During the 2007 Assembly election, I was critical of the local Labour AM for having supported government decisions in vote after vote in the Assembly and then claiming to be leading the campaign against those same policies in the constituency.  I took a similar line with the Labour MP over post office closures.  I thought – and still think - that it was fair criticism. 

But what we’ve seen this year is some Plaid AMs doing exactly the same thing.  Spending four years voting through One Wales policies and then claiming to be campaigning against those same policies is simply not a credible or principled way of operating.  It looked as though Plaid had simply been sucked into the system and was trying to operate in the same way as the other parties, when what was needed was either more determination to oppose the policies in the Assembly itself, or else a more robust defence of them outside.  And I’d have greatly preferred the former.

Simplistic sloganeering is no substitute for critical analysis.  It felt at times as though there was an expectation that all Plaid members would say that everything the government did was good and everything the opposition said was bad.  That’s nonsense.  It led, for instance, to the embarrassing interlude when Plaid spokespeople were claiming that ProAct and ReAct had somehow protected Wales from recession, on the basis of a single month’s employment figures.  Pure folly.  And it was exposed as such by subsequent months’ figures.

If Plaid is to be credible in the future, it needs to regain its ability to cast a critical eye over what government is doing – and subject its own government’s policies to the same level of scrutiny, however uncomfortable that might be at times.  The idea that government backbenchers are on committees to ensure that the government’s views prevail rather than to provide genuine scrutiny must be abandoned, and rapidly.  And those outside the Assembly should be less afraid to voice discordant views from time to time, particularly if they are merely reiterating agreed party policy.

Perhaps worst of all was the inability of some to accept that the party might sometimes say something different from the government.  Making and supporting a compromise is one thing; making out that that compromise is actually the right policy in principle is quite another.  Expecting the party to trim its policies to match those of the government is to deliberately lower horizons, and it’s a major part of the attitude which led to this year’s bland programme.

A party like Plaid, if it is to have any unique relevance, needs to have, and retain, a sense of vision about its purpose, as a context within which compromises can and must be made to drive things forward.  Seeing some members failing to hold to that vision and seeking to amend the party’s position to fit with that of the government was a depressing sight.

The rush of some to get back into government as quickly as possible looks from the outside as a failure to learn the key lessons.  I remain as convinced as ever that Plaid must always be willing to take on the responsibility of governing our nation, but it must do so from a position which is about rather more than simplistic and persistent pragmatism.  If that lesson is not learned, the party’s distinctiveness and mission will simply be further eroded.

... The Bad ...

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From my vantage point, the absolute low point of the One Wales years was the change of government policy on student fees.  Seeing Plaid AMs voting against one of the manifesto commitments on which they were elected was an uncomfortable moment, to say the least. 

Compromise in coalition is sometimes inevitable, and we all need to understand that, but the worst aspects of this episode were not to do with the making of the compromise itself, but the failure by some within the Assembly to recognise just how strongly some of us outside the Assembly felt on this issue, and the apparent expectation that the party would simply fall into line behind what the leader and the ministers had decided.

The failure to deliver on a daily newspaper in Welsh was another disappointment.  Again, though, it was the handling of it which caused me the most grief.  An honest statement that a pledge was being broken because the numbers simply didn’t stack up would have been immensely preferable to an attempt to argue that no pledge was being broken at all because there had never been any commitment to one particular option.  (There had not, of course, been a specific commitment to Y Byd, nor should there have been; but the simple and undeniable facts are that One Wales pledged a daily newspaper in Welsh - and there is still no such newspaper.)

It’s all very well developing exciting strategies, but they also need to be implemented.  I don’t think that I’m alone in feeling that production of strategies seems to have become an end in itself, and that once the strategies have been published, business carries on as before.  I don’t think I’m far away from Carwyn Jones on this one; we’ve probably got enough strategies to be going on with – let’s implement some of them, and do so with conviction and determination.

Locally in Carmarthenshire, the difference between words and actions - what the government said it was doing and what it actually did - came very much to the fore in the field of education.  I’ve posted on this a number of times, but for all its fine words on Welsh-medium education, the One Wales government was effectively an active participant in denying that opportunity to children in parts of Carmarthenshire.  Similarly, the drive from Cardiff to close small rural schools ran directly against what most of us had been saying for years.  Simply blaming the councils which were implementing government policy was not good enough.

And then, of course, there’s the economy.  I’m not sure that it’s entirely fair to say that One Wales failed spectacularly – the Welsh Government doesn’t really have the tools and levers it needs to have the necessary degree of influence.  There is though, a tendency to suggest that they can achieve more than is ever actually going to be achievable, and that invites people to compare performance with the promise rather than with the achievable.  On that comparison, the failure looks worse than it should or need look – why oh why do politicians walk into that one?

One Wales: The Good...

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Now that it has come to an end, I’d like to think that the successes and failures of the One Wales period can be dissected a little more objectively than has tended to happen to date.  Supporters of the agreement tend to see only the good, whilst opponents see only the bad; and whether people want to rush into another similar agreement or not seems to depend on which side of that argument they find themselves.  In real life, there were some things that were good, some things that were bad, and some things which were downright ugly.

I’ll start with some of the good points, although this is not intended to be a comprehensive list.  And I make no apologies for looking at the issue from the standpoint of my own political outlook.

One of the things most frequently bandied about was that the hospital rationalisation programme of the previous Labour government was halted.  Technically, this actually happened before One Wales was agreed, so it isn’t a direct result of One Wales.  But One Wales would have been impossible without it, and Labour could read that writing on the wall.

I felt that one of the most positive things about One Wales wasn’t an outcome as such, it was the detail in which the programme was defined.  There is often a world of difference between what a party says in a manifesto and what it does once elected; the discipline of having a detailed written programme, which was essential to any decision by Plaid to enter coalition, gave a road-map to the government for a four year term.  It’s something that perhaps even single party governments might learn from.

The reports of the Holtham Commission were hugely significant.  Although Plaid had been banging on about the unfairness of Barnett for years, the reports of the Commission finally convinced the other parties.  Labour’s argument that it wasn’t necessary to do anything about it earlier because the squeeze didn’t apply when the settlement was generous might be technically correct, but it sounded a bit like saying that we didn’t need to fix the hole in the roof because it wasn’t raining.  Holtham changed the basis of the debate – in Wales, at least.

The calling and winning of a referendum on Part 4 of GOWA was undoubtedly a huge plus for the agreement.  I’ve noted before that the Lib Dems could legitimately claim a certain amount of credit for that, albeit by accident, but it was One Wales which delivered, and delivered handsomely.  The result has created a quite different sort of Assembly in Cardiff, and gives Wales a new basis for moving forward.

There can be little doubt that the Welsh Language Measure steered through by Alun Ffred was a major piece of legislation.  Sure, it doesn’t do everything that some of us would like, and there’s more to be done, but surely no-one can really believe that we would have had anything like this Measure without One Wales.

Some of the strategies produced by One Wales, such as on energy and the environment are extremely far-reaching.  The government took huge strides forward in recognising the importance of lowering Wales’ ecological footprint; and related to this was the switch in emphasis within the transport programme from road-building to public transport.  All of this creates a sound foundation for the future.

But not everything was perfect…

Not really a minority government

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Wales is not Scotland, and it’s always a mistake to assume that what applies to one can easily be applied to the other.  But it’s also a mistake to assume that what applies to one can never be applied to the other.

For the last four years, Scotland has had a minority administration.  Certainly, that has meant that Alex Salmond’s government has been constrained at times, and that he has had to cut deals from time to time.  But it worked; the sky didn’t fall in, and a crafty and cunning operator used the situation to his, and his party’s, great advantage.

I haven’t understood the recent speculation that Labour in Wales would have to form a coalition because 50% of the seats isn’t enough to govern, and I’m not in the least surprised that Labour have decided to try it.  They’ll have to learn to accept some constraints on what they do – they cannot expect automatic support – and to cut an occasional deal.  I don’t think Carwyn Jones will find that much of a problem.

There’s another angle as well.  The idea that he would have difficulty getting his programme through is based on the mathematical presupposition that all the opposition parties would work together consistently in order to defeat him.  I don’t see it. 

Labour fought – and won – an election on the basis of opposition to the Tory-Lib Dem coalition in London, and did so using the (less than entirely honest) claim that a vote for Plaid was a vote for a Tory-led administration.  Surely, the last thing that Plaid AMs would do now is to enable Labour to confirm that message by taking a blindly oppositionist stance to the government, and working over-closely with the Tories and Lib Dems? 

I never understood why, from the start of One Wales, there was such a stress on the government always voting down opposition motions, even if they said what one of the coalition partners had said during the previous election.  Such an outright binary position wasn’t necessary then; in the new circumstances, it’s not only unnecessary, it would be completely counter-productive. 

I suspect that Labour will have an easier ride than some are suggesting; for a while at least.