It doesn't have to be like this

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The difference in approach to the pandemic between the English government and the Welsh government has been on display again this week, with the Welsh government inching cautiously towards further restrictions whilst Booster Johnson claims that there is no need for further action because the trend is in line with what was expected. It is, according to him, all going to plan. Drakeford’s caution is understandable; short of independence, he simply does not have the power to take the necessary economic steps to back up further restrictions to the extent which the situation requires, and in the absence of action by the UK Treasury, unilateral action in Wales would mean people here paying a high price. His unionist mindset prevents him reaching the logical conclusion, in the absence of which we are likely to end up with the worst of both worlds – continuing with the highest rate of infection as well as the tightest restrictions.

However, Johnson’s claims about everything being in line with the plan deserve rather more scrutiny than they are being given. The daily rate of premature deaths due to the pandemic is currently erratic to say the least, but the number of deaths per week has been 500 or more for the last three months, and is currently running at around 750. Johnson’s ‘plan’ effectively assumes that it will continue at that rate for the remainder of the autumn and winter. To put that another way, the UK government proactively planned to stand aside and allow more than 7,500 deaths over the last three months and is planning to allow another 10,000 or more preventable premature deaths over the next few months. Seen from Downing Street, these 17,500 people (on top of those who died during the earlier stages of the pandemic) are mere statistics, an ‘acceptable price’ to pay for maintaining the profits of the capitalists who fund the Conservative Party.

But each of those people is an individual, with family, friends and maybe others who depend on them. The death rate due to Covid may be an obvious example of government priorities, but it doesn’t stand in isolation – the government’s approach to benefits will plunge millions of people into poverty this coming winter. The surprising thing is that this callous approach to the health and wellbeing of ordinary citizens has not led to more dissent. Donald Trump famously said that he could stand on 5th Avenue in New York and start shooting people, and it wouldn’t affect his support. Boris Johnson is demonstrating the truth of the sentiment.

It underlines the extent to which capitalist ideology and the selfishness associated with it have come to dominate thinking. Trump’s supporters didn’t believe that they would be the ones being shot on 5th Avenue, and Johnson’s supporters don’t believe that they’ll be the ones dying or being impoverished by his actions. They see it, probably subconsciously without even really thinking about it, as being in their own interests to believe the lie that the poor have only themselves to blame, or that the victims of Covid have either brought it on themselves or would have died soon anyway. And it is in the interests of capital and those who own and control it to ensure that most of us never get to understand that we have more in common with each other than we do with them. It doesn’t help that the main opposition party at UK level basically buys into the same ideology; they might want to tinker a bit with some of the detail, but the basics are broadly accepted, along with the need to ensure that we remain divided.

It doesn’t have to be this way, though; there are other ways of organising an economy or a society. Where are the politicians brave enough to make the case? Anyone not making the case against the current system is effectively supporting its continuation.

Fig leaves and vision

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The Scottish Tories are probably breathing a huge sigh of relief following the news that the PM will not, after all, be visiting Scotland to ‘support’ their campaign for the Scottish Parliament elections. Given Johnson’s unpopularity in Scotland, it’s the sort of ‘support’ that they can well do without. They are perfectly capable of losing votes and seats all by themselves without the PM turning up to accelerate the process. The reason given – coronavirus restrictions – is a fig leaf at best, given the cavalier disregard the PM has shown for such restrictions previously and his campaigning activities elsewhere, but they’ve gone past even bothering to try and come up with a half-credible lie any more.

The Scottish Tory campaign itself seems to be based entirely concentrating all pro-union votes behind a single party by maintaining an outright refusal to allow a second independence referendum under any conceivable circumstances. It’s based partly on the almost certainly false assumption that Labour voters in Scotland hate the SNP more than they hate the Tories, and partly on an equally flawed assumption that they can indefinitely refuse a referendum because ‘the law’ allows it. It means that they are left trying to argue that there is no legal or democratic means of holding such a referendum. Despite what they say, it is far from clear that any referendum organised by the Scottish government would be unlawful, and labelling it as either illegal or ‘wildcat’ is a desperate act. It’s true that constitutional matters (including independence) are reserved to Westminster, but it doesn’t follow that organising an advisory (as opposed to binding) vote on a reserved matter is also outside the remit of Holyrood; it’s something which has yet to be properly tested in court. Even assuming that they are either right about it being unlawful currently or that they bring forward legislation at Westminster to make the situation crystal clear, telling people who currently seem almost certain to vote in a pro-referendum majority of MSPs that it doesn’t matter how they vote seems an astonishingly inept way of proceeding if the intention is to win those people over. Depending on the force of law – backed up, presumably, by actual force where necessary – to compel Scotland to remain part of the union seems almost deliberately designed to have the opposite effect.

The problem that they have, however, is that they have nothing more positive to offer. There was a time when turning the UK into some sort of federation might have satisfied enough people, even though it would never have been enough for some of us. But if all they can offer is that what the Scots vote for doesn’t matter because London will decide, their cause is hopelessly lost. Here in Wales, Mark Drakeford faces a similar problem. He argued this week that, “… the experience of coronavirus has strengthened in people’s minds the extent to which we have had independent powers and use them independently … because that’s what I think devolved Wales would be, an entrenched devolved Wales with powerful, independent right of action to take decisions on behalf of people in Wales on things that only affect Wales”.

He may well be right – in principle. There might well be a majority in Wales supportive of such a position, perhaps not indefinitely, but probably for some time to come. The problem is, though, that a “powerful, independent right of action” is not on offer – certainly not from Johnson who is busily undermining such right of action as does exist, and not, as far as I can see, from Starmer either. Drakeford’s position therefore amounts to saying that:

‘in the improbable event of England electing a Labour government in the foreseeable future, we can ask the Labour PM to entrench Wales’ powers in law, and there is a remote possibility that (s)he might even agree to do so’.

It’s not much of an offer and without significant reform (of the sort for which neither Drakeford nor Starmer seem to have any appetite) even if there was any chance of them being in a position to do something there is no guarantee that the next English nationalist government in London wouldn’t simply reverse or over-rule the law, as they have with the existing devolution settlement and the Sewell convention.

Drakeford’s difficulty is that he is putting all his eggs in the basket of improbability labelled ‘Labour Government at Westminster’, and that he neither possesses a Plan B, nor seems capable of constructing one. It's another figleaf; it will probably be enough to keep him in power at this election, albeit leading a lame drake administration until his pending retirement as First Minister, but it’s not much of a vision for the future.

Accidental inoculation

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Yesterday, First Minister Mark Drakeford told us that he’s against independence, because being independent would shut Wales off from the world and make us inward-looking rather than outward-looking. He may be correct, but if he is it’s only because he’s chosen his own definition of what being independent means. He is, of course, entitled to define the words he uses in any way he chooses, although using a definition which isn’t the same as that used by others can make discourse and debate a little difficult. In this case, choosing a quirky definition in order to dish the outcome also raises other problems. There are 193 member states of the United Nations, each of which presumably believes itself to be an independent state. Under the Drakeford definition, that must mean that all 193 of them are inward-looking and shut off from the world. That doesn’t leave much of a world to be outward-looking and open. Who’s going to tell the likes of Germany, China, and the US that their independence is such a bad thing that it needs to be stripped off them forthwith in order that they can be more open to the world and outward-looking?

Perhaps I’m being unfair to Drakeford here. Perhaps he simply means that his definition, under which independence makes countries inward-looking and shut off from the world, only applies to countries which might gain their independence at some future date, and not to those which have already gained it at some point in the past, although the mysterious force which only acts on countries which become independent after an arbitrary date specified by a politician has yet to be identified by science, let alone by Drakeford himself. Perhaps he’s being even more selective; perhaps he believes that there’s something so special and different about Wales that it would uniquely be unable to cope with independence in the same way as any other country (although someone might need to explain to him that believing there to be something special and unique about his own country comes dangerously close to being a perverse form of that nationalism to which he is so opposed).

There is nothing wrong with believing that the best future for Wales is as a subordinate part of a greater whole, and it’s not unpatriotic to believe that there is strength in unity, even if evidence suggests that either of those beliefs is a triumph of future hope over past experience. There is, though, something very odd about a belief that one’s own country is somehow uniquely unable to cope with a constitutional status which most countries in the world believe to be entirely normal. It’s a belief with some strange side-effects, one of which is that it causes its adherents to perform complex mental and verbal gymnastics in order to try and explain away this unique lack of capacity. Traditionally, it’s also a belief which has infected the majority in Wales, but unfortunately for Drakeford and others who think like them, English politics has developed a strong and effective antidote in the form of a certain Boris Johnson, and the, entirely accidental, vaccination programme across Wales is currently proving successful beyond the wildest dreams of many independentistas.

Sardines and independence

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There was a story yesterday which neatly illustrated the gap between the  scale of reform which is required if the unionists want to stand any chance at all of the UK surviving as a state and the reform which the English nationalists currently running the country are intellectually, ideologically, and emotionally capable of considering. According to the Telegraph, Jacob Rees-Mogg is proposing that, for two weeks every three years, the entire House of Commons (all 650 members) should cram itself into the debating chamber of the Senedd (designed for 60 members) to hold its debates. Although Cardiff is the home of Doctor Who, it was almost disappointing to discover that Jake is not depending on the Tardis-like qualities of the Senedd, which really isn’t bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. Apparently, the lack of space is not a problem because the 650 MPs are accustomed to debating in a chamber which can only hold around 427 people – they just remain standing during debates. Some might argue that there’s a difference between fitting 650 people into a space for two-thirds that number and fitting the same number into a space holding less than one-tenth of that number, but fortunately Jake’s school never taught him about this new-fangled concept called fractions. They probably hadn’t invented fire regulations either.

The master plan behind this scheme, it seems, is that holding two weeks’ worth of debates in Cardiff will bring parliament closer to the people, and demonstrate a commitment to the Union. Since the period proposed for this spectacle is the two weeks after the summer recess and before the break for party conferences, a period during which parliament traditionally debates little of great importance, the probability is that at least half of them wouldn’t turn up, which might go some way to solving the capacity problem. I struggle, though, to think of anything less likely to convince me of the value of the Union than only half the membership of the House of Commons bothering to travel to Cardiff to stand like sardines in a small room holding a debate about something inconsequential. I’m obviously not gifted with Jake’s immense perspicacity on that. Sadly for Jake, I suspect that I’m far from alone in that respect.

Demonstrating close-up the reality of how parliament works is the sort of revolutionary idea which might sound better coming from opponents of the Union rather than its supposed supporters, but if Jake wants to do the job for us, who am I to disagree? A parliament without enough seats for all its members is something which would embarrass most modern democracies, but for Jake and his pals, it’s a source of great pride. It does rather illustrate the point made by our own First Minister this week when he described the UK Government as a “recruiting sergeant” for Welsh and Scottish independence. It isn’t just the UK Government, though – it’s the whole of the UK structure and processes which are not fit for purpose in the twenty-first century but which are incapable of reforming themselves, because they’re proud of being hopelessly outdated and see it as a strength rather than a weakness. And despite Drakeford’s own ability to see the need for change, what he still seems unable to see or understand is that the English Labour Party is part of the problem, not the solution.

Is there a case for the union? 7: Not without change

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After ruling out all the usual arguments, what is left for the unionists to deploy? If I wanted to make an argument for the continuation of the UK which might appeal to those currently inclined to support independence, on what would I try to base it? It’s not a pointless question, and it’s one to which some of the more thoughtful unionists, like David Melding AS, have given a great deal of consideration. The problem, though, which they seem to struggle to accept, is that they are fringe elements within their parties and within unionism in general, in recognising that the union must change if it is to survive. That’s simply not the way that the people actually in charge of the unionist parties and the UK as a whole see things. As Martin Kettle pointed out in this article in the Guardian this morning, people like Johnson see only one way of running the union, and that is the centre imposing its will on the rest. My own starting point would be to look at the deficiencies of the way the union operates today and at what could be done to make it work better:

·        Making a serious attempt at social solidarity is fundamental: not just vague waffle and spin about ‘levelling up’, but a serious attempt to spread wealth more evenly, starting from the basis that all citizens should benefit from a country’s economic success, rather than some having to beg for crumbs. It requires a recognition that massive inequality is incompatible with maintaining cohesion, and a recognition that the concentration of wealth in one small corner is damaging.

·        Developing a more inclusive way of regarding history and culture, one which recognises that the UK is not a homogeneous whole, but an agglomeration of parts with different histories and perspectives. There isn’t just one history of the UK and attempting to impose one to shore up the institution itself is counterproductive. Britain and England aren’t the same thing, and don’t even need to be seen as such to preserve the union.

·        Revitalising democracy, abolishing unelected lawmakers, and implementing an electoral system which enables different views and perspectives to be more accurately reflected. Gifting absolute power to a party which wins only a minority of the votes in just one of the parts of the union will always be resented by the other parts.

·        Strengthening devolution, making it more uniform across the three devolved administrations, and recognising the absolute right of those administrations to legislate in devolved areas with no interference from the centre, something which the Scottish Lib Dems amongst others have called for. It probably requires a written constitution because, under the existing constitution, any legislation to renounce the right to make laws in devolved areas can be repealed at whim.

·        Ensuring that the rule of law applies to all equally and that transgressions are dealt with, whoever commits them.

And, to add a primarily emotional rather than merely practical appeal:

·        Recognising and celebrating the inter-family links across these islands which have resulted from centuries of intermixing, and which often translate into a sense of commonality which transcends many of the more transactional arguments. As a result of internal migration within the UK, to say nothing of marriages and other relationships, there are large numbers of families in all parts of the UK which have relatives in others. That provides an emotional basis, even if it will never be enough in itself to overcome the practical failings.

There are two obvious things to note about the first five items on this list:

1.    They are not quick fixes. Trying to ‘sell’ the existing structures and processes instead of reforming them is like putting lipstick on the proverbial pig, yet that’s the unionists’ starting point. No matter how slick their campaign (and they’re having problems enough with that), they are still trying to sell a pig. A PR exercise just isn’t enough. It’s a point which Mark Drakeford at least understands – the union cannot and will not survive in its current form. The leap which he has yet to make, however, is to understand that the changes which he identifies as being necessary for the union to survive cannot and will not be delivered by either the English Conservative Party or the English Labour Party, because:

2.    The Anglo-British nationalists of both parties are ideologically and emotionally incapable of doing any of them. When you ‘know’, with absolute and unshakeable certainty, that “the United Kingdom is the most successful political and economic union the world has ever seen”, it’s difficult to see why anything might need to change. Ever. Something which is the bestest and perfectest known to mankind throughout the whole of history doesn’t need to change. It’s an astonishing, exceptionalist claim (which I’ve heard in different forms from Labour politicians as well as Tories – the words could have tripped off the tongue of Gordon Brown as easily as that of Boris Johnson) based on outright jingoism unsupported by hard facts or analysis, but one which they genuinely seem to believe, and they are unable to understand why everyone doesn’t accept it as truth.

It’s not that it has become wholly impossible to persuade people that maintaining the unity of the UK is worthwhile, it is that most of those currently in power are so blinded by their own dogma and ideology that they are incapable of doing those things which would be required to achieve their aim. The UK is doomed, not primarily by those of us who seek to dismember it, but by the failure of comprehension of most of its own ‘supporters’, who are incapable of even understanding why structures developed centuries ago are no longer suitable today.

If I give you the vaccine, I won't have any left for someone else...

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Some years ago, I worked in an office where the stationery was zealously guarded by the department’s administrator. Basically, the staff weren’t trusted to take only what they needed to do their job, and had to ask every time they needed a new pencil or biro, presenting the shortened or ink-depleted old one as evidence. On one occasion, I needed a floppy disk (yes, it really was that long ago!), and took myself off to the administrator’s desk, strategically placed in front of the locked stationery cupboard. “I’ve only got one left,” she told me. “That’s alright,” I replied, “I only need one.” “But if I give you this one, I won’t have any left if someone else wants one,” came the response, and no amount of pleading, let alone logic, would get the cupboard unlocked and the disk released into my custody.

What brought the incident to mind was yesterday’s astonishing statement from the First Minister that, because the supply of Covid-19 vaccines which has been issued to Wales has to last until the beginning of February, the government is eking it out to use it at a consistent rate over that period rather than using it all up as soon as it is available in order to vaccinate people more quickly. His argument for this is that, if we use it all at once, members of the vaccination team will then be sitting around idle until more supplies arrive. It’s not much of an argument; if the capacity to use it all in a shorter period exists, then the implication is that that capacity will be underused over the whole of the period rather than completely unused for part of it. To use the timescales quoted by the First Minister: in broad terms, the amount of resource needed to deliver the vaccines is roughly the same whether they’re done in a week or in six weeks – either way, a substantial portion of the capacity goes unused. It’s just that non-activity for five weeks is more obvious than under-activity for six.

Either way, it implies that the Welsh Government has put more capacity in place than it currently needs to deliver the vaccines available to it. Given the urgency of the programme, and the uncertainty of supplies, that’s not something for which it would be fair to criticise Drakeford. Much better to have excess capacity sitting around waiting for the supplies than to be under capacity when the supplies arrive, particularly if it is hoped and anticipated that in the fairly near future the rate of supply will increase dramatically. On the whole, Drakeford has come out of the pandemic looking more competent and compassionate than his English counterparts, even if the results haven’t always been as significantly different as we might hope; but his performance has not been perfect. Unless he has a better or more complete excuse than he’s offered in this case, he looks to have called this one wrong.

It would also be interesting to know whether the other parts of the UK have been following a similar approach. Just because the question seems only to have been asked (and therefore answered) in Wales, it doesn’t mean that a similar question elsewhere wouldn’t prompt a similar response (although in England, asking a question wouldn't necessarily lead to a response at all).

Is the silliness deliberate?

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Yesterday, both the main opposition parties in the Senedd, Plaid Cymru and the Conservatives, criticised Mark Drakeford for being too timid and too slow in tightening restrictions to control the pandemic. It’s fair criticism. Drakeford is in serious danger of being infected with the procrastination virus which is now rampant in Downing Street, although he is, rather, between a rock and a hard place in trying to both protect the population of Wales and maintain a ‘four countries’ approach. There’s no real surprise in Plaid wanting to see him being more independent of Johnson and England’s lackadaisical decision-making, but there’s something more than a little odd about the Tories apparently seeking the same thing.

It was Harold Wilson who said that a week is a long time in politics, so a fortnight is a very, very long time for a politician. It’s not so long for most of us though, and it really is only a fortnight since both Plaid and the Tories were criticising Drakeford for applying what they saw as excessive restrictions on the hospitality sector. It’s a criticism which hasn’t exactly aged well. Adding a charge of giving out mixed messages to yesterday’s criticism of Drakeford is not a good look in the circumstances.

The Conservatives possibly have an excuse, of sorts, if the guidance issued to party activists in Northamptonshire has been more widely shared than has been reported to date. According to the advice, activists should simply “…say the first thing that comes into your head … It’ll probably be nonsense, but it knocks your opponent out of his stride and takes away his headline. You may get a bad headline saying that you spoke something silly, but you can live that down. Meanwhile your opponent is knocked off the news-feed”. I don’t know whether similar guidance has been issued to the party’s members in Wales. I can only judge by what they do and say, and on that basis it looks at least plausible. But we are not in a good place in the middle of a pandemic if one of the main political parties believes that saying things which are both silly and untrue is a sensible and valid strategy.

It's not only coronavirus which is infectious

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For the PM, procrastination is a way of life – this article highlights example after example. One of the 'advantages' of delaying a decision is that the longer the delay the fewer alternative options remain, making the ultimate decision easier, or even inevitable. Brexit is a classic example: the main decisions he’s taken since becoming PM have been those which close out options rather than maximising the range of choice (such as, for example, the pig-headed decision to legislate against any extension to the timetable). We are down to only two choices – no deal at all, or a very bad deal – not because that was always inevitable, but partly because other options have been closed down by inaction and delay.

It’s a bad enough approach for Brexit, where the main damage will be economic, but it’s even worse an approach to dealing with a pandemic where many families are paying the cost not just in economic terms but in terms of the lives of their loved ones. With a population of 66 million, and a death toll to date (and we’re a long way from the end) of somewhere between 64,000 and 85,000 depending on which figures one considers the most accurate, the pandemic has already seen the premature death of around 1 person in every 1,000 in the UK. No government could have avoided any premature deaths in the circumstances, but premature death on this scale was not inevitable and is a direct result of government action – or, more often, inaction.

Yet still the reluctance to act continues. Whilst the principle of having a common approach to Christmas across the four administrations of the UK was always a good one, there was no particular genius in warning that “…falling in line with England doesn’t look like the smartest idea…”, yet that is what a ’four nations’ approach was always likely to amount to. It is clear that three of the four administrations are getting serious cold feet about the proposed relaxation and that the scientists have had their reservations from the outset, only going along with the proposal for fear that people would ignore the rules anyway. Whilst discussions continue, it seems that the English PM has already decided to ignore the views of the other three First Ministers and plough ahead regardless, briefing the media that there will be no change without waiting until discussions have concluded. The reluctance of Mark Drakeford to change the pre-announced rules at this late stage is understandable, but Boris Johnson is putting him in an invidious position. If the rules need to change based on changed facts, then the sooner that is announced the better so that people have more time to make alternative plans. The danger in continuing to try and reach a common approach is that Johnson’s prevarication becomes like a virus itself, infecting the devolved administrations and their leaders with an inability to show leadership and take clear decisions.

A future in comedy?

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Mark Drakeford has never struck me as a potential comedian. He’s never struck me as a stupid man either. But attempting to make some sort of joke and being stupid are the two most obvious explanations I can come up with for his statement, referring to Boris Johnson, yesterday that “We take the PM at his word”. I still tend to rule out stupidity, so it must be the other. Best not to give up the day job.

A Covid surge wouldn't be the best Christmas present

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Wales’ First Minister has supported the idea that the four administrations within the UK should develop a common set of rules governing the Christmas period. The idea seems to have started with the Lib Dems (which ought to be surprising given that they claim to be the party of federalism, both in internal party matters and for the UK as a matter of policy: federal freedom for each administration to make its own decisions as long as they all make the same decision seems more than a little odd). Whatever, in principle, the idea is sensible; but then keeping the four administrations aligned would have been sensible throughout, if only one of the four hadn’t decided that it was going to make rogue and reckless decisions and expect the others to follow.

And that brings us to the problem with the proposal – how do we decide which set of rules suits all four administrations if the position in relation to the virus is different? Minimising the premature loss of life would suggest that the common regulations should be as stringent as those set by the worst-placed administration at the time, whilst maximising opportunities for family gatherings would suggest that they should be set according to the needs of the best-placed administration at the time. In practice, though, we know that one of the four administrations – the biggest – will simply set its rules and expect the others to follow. Their idea of a negotiated agreement looks more like the dictation practice which I remember from my school days.

There’s still two months to go and a lot could change in that time, but, as things stand, falling in line with England doesn’t look like the smartest idea either Mark Drakeford or the Lib Dems have ever had. With its lackadaisical approach to taking action, England is currently suffering the worst surge anywhere in the UK. One study estimates that the number of infections has now reached 100,000 per day, and is doubling every 9 days – a rate of progress which would see a million infections per day by the end of November if more drastic action is not taken. Official figures are unlikely ever to record that sort of level – to record a million positives per day would require doing several millions of tests per day, well beyond any foreseeable capacity. Long before then, they will reach a point in England where most cases are simply going undetected.

Perhaps Johnson will come to his senses and act before England gets to that point, although his current stubbornness isn’t a good sign. It looks, rather, as though he’s resorted to a policy of herd immunity by inactivity. With a population of 56 million in England and a rate of infection of 1 million a day by the end of November, the number of people infected by Christmas would exceed the threshold (believed to be somewhere between 60 and 80%) at which herd immunity (if contracting the virus actually delivers immunity at all – currently a very large unknown) kicks in; there’d be few people left to infect. It’s no longer inconceivable that that is the deliberate policy of the English government. Any vaccine would be too late to have any impact.

There are two major problems with a policy of herd immunity. The first is that big unknown mentioned above – does contracting the virus actually deliver immunity at all, and if so, for how long? The second is that – and this is something that advocates of herd immunity aren’t very forthcoming about – pursuing such a policy in the absence of a vaccine necessarily results in a substantial number of premature deaths. That’s the way nature works; the vulnerable succumb and those that are left are those who withstood the onslaught. It’s not easy to put a precise number on it, of course, and numbers are very impersonal and abstract in any event: we're dealing with real people and real families here. Early indications were that around 1% of those contracting the virus died of it. Assuming that only 60% of 56 million are infected before the spread of the virus is checked, that would result in around 336,000 premature deaths. If the rate of 1% has been overstated because of undetected infections, and if we now know enough about treating patients to be able to reduce the death rate, then even if those two factors halved the number of premature deaths, we’d still be looking at reaching a total of 168,000 – more than an extra 100,000 from where we are today – in England over a period of a few months. And that's using the optimistic assumptions set out above – other scenarios are calculable.

I find it hard – extremely hard – to believe that even the current English government would seriously opt for such a policy, but their actions to date are not very reassuring. If they haven’t formally opted for that approach, they seem to be drifting into it almost by accident and paralysis. So, whilst I agree in principle with Drakeford about having a common approach over Christmas, Wales should be extremely wary about committing to following England (which is what it effectively means) unless and until the English government changes course. Otherwise, we’ll just be opening the gates once again and the pain of the current lockdown will have been wasted.

Saving the precious union

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It was reported yesterday that the UK government is setting up a dedicated ‘union unit’, headed by Michael Gove, to battle Scottish independence and promote the union. Leaving aside the obvious point that if the answer is Michael Gove then someone is asking the wrong question, it seems that the main functions of this new unit will be to ‘explain the advantages’ of the union and brand everything with the union flag. The first will be a struggle, given that the only advantage that they can usually come up with is that the union has made Scotland so poor that they can’t imagine how it could possibly afford to be independent, and the second is likely to be counterproductive.

The idea that the union could be saved is not an entirely lost cause however; Wales’ First Minister has today talked about the sort of changes that could save the union. Whilst I’m not convinced that saving the union is a worthwhile objective in any event, I can see how turning the existing union into what Drakeford describes as “… authentically a voluntary association of nations where sovereignty is held by each nation and then pooled for common purposes” could work if it could be brought into existence. I just don’t see how, in practical terms, it could come about. It implies that the central Westminster government formally acknowledges, once and for all, the sovereignty of the people of Wales and Scotland, and renounces any right to legislate in any area where those countries have not formally agreed to share sovereignty. Technically, I don’t see how that can be achieved without a formal written constitution because any other arrangement falls foul of the absolute principle underpinning Westminster government that nothing any parliament does can ever bind its successors. But more important than the technical issue, I don’t see any possibility that a Conservative government would ever renounce Westminster’s sovereignty in such a fashion, and nor do I see any likelihood that Drakeford will be able to persuade either the current or any other foreseeable leader of his own party to renounce Westminster’s sovereignty either. The most practical route to implement Drakeford’s suggestion is for Wales and Scotland to become independent one day and then immediately agree to share and pool in specified areas, and Drakeford looks unlikely to follow through the logic of his position to that point.

The bigger question with which I struggle is why the union is so precious in the first place. Why are politicians so attached to a structure which was created over 300 years ago to meet the perceived exigencies of the day, as though what was felt to be ‘right’ at that point in time is necessarily and forever ‘right’ in all succeeding circumstances? For those in Wales who have fallen for the myth of ‘too small, too poor, too stupid’, I can understand why they might fear any alternative, but what’s in it for England? After all, if it’s true that Wales and Scotland are a huge financial burden on England, why go to so much effort to frustrate the independence movements? Let’s not forget that ‘sending £350 million a week to Brussels’ (even if it wasn’t true) was one of the motivations for Brexit; it ought to be a surprise that politicians who plugged that line are arguing that they should continue to ‘send £millions a week to Cardiff and Edinburgh’ (even though that isn’t true either) rather than supporting the national movements.

It’s hardly about votes either. We know that English voters are largely ambivalent at best about maintaining the union, and that amongst Brexiteer supporters of the current government there’s a clear majority in favour of getting rid of Wales and Scotland if it makes their purist Brexit easier. I’ve heard unionists waxing lyrical about ‘shared history’ (to say nothing of ‘the war’) and ‘cross-border families’ as though the first means that the past must necessarily determine the future and as though the second will somehow disappear just because a decision is taken to govern these islands in a different way. I’ve also heard (loud and clear!) the nonsense about ‘you can’t survive without us’, but I’ve never heard a cogent, reasoned argument as to why the union is or should be so precious.

It could just be that innate form of conservatism shared by both the Tories and the Labour Party, that inability to conceive of doing some things differently. It could be a fear that the UK (or, rather, England in this context) would be diminished in the world, although it’s hard to believe that architects of Brexit could seriously be worried about that. Maybe it just threatens their own sense of identity in some way. One thing about which we can be certain is that it isn’t about altruism or concern for the people of Wales and Scotland. One has only to glance very briefly at people like Gove and Johnson to know that.

Taking the right decisions

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On the whole, Mark Drakeford has come out rather well for his handling of the pandemic in Wales, with his clear, open, and honest attempts to do what’s right to protect public health and to explain what he’s doing and why. That’s not to say he’s got everything right or that he should be immune from criticism for some of the details, but compared with the bumble and bluster of our next door neighbour he has, quite rightly, enjoyed a large degree of popular support. And I’m sure that, looking at what’s happening over the border, moving to a second lockdown before things get completely out of control is better than the English approach of doing too little, too late. I’m not alone in suspecting that Johnson will be forced to follow suit eventually, but will preside over many more hospitalisations and deaths before that happens. Until that happens, Drakeford may be facing a bit of a bumpy ride from some quarters, asking why something is OK on one side of the border but not on the other. But the ‘Welsh’ Conservatives should be a bit more careful about criticising Drakeford – their words may well come back to haunt them.

The logic of making a distinction between essential and non-essential goods is clear enough. He’s not saying that buying food is safe whilst buying electrical goods, for instance, is not; it’s more a question of trying to ensure that as few people as possible make as few shopping trips as possible, and keep those visits as short as possible – it’s that reduction in contact which will have the required effect, not what people buy when they go into a shop. It might have been better had he explained it simply in those terms. His point about trying to be fair to the smaller shops which can’t open at all by not allowing the supermarkets to hoover up all their custom is also fair and logical, although it rather overlooks the fact that companies like Amazon fill the gap and that both the smaller shops and the supermarkets lose as a result. On-line purchases are better from a disease control point of view than shop purchases, but he may not be doing as much to protect those smaller retailers as he might wish to believe. Another problem is that the definition of ‘essential’ is not at all as straightforward as it appears. Different people in different circumstances will have different needs, and a blanket categorisation doesn’t allow for that.

Sometimes logic isn’t enough or, rather, a different kind of logic needs to be applied. Allowing supermarkets to sell anything and everything that they currently sell would, no doubt, carry a higher level of risk of the disease spreading than curtailing the range of goods sold. But there might be a benefit overall in controlling the spread if it maintained a greater buy-in from the public at large – losing that support carries a real danger as well. It’s a tough call, and somebody has to make it. I’m not entirely convinced that Drakeford has got this one right, but it’s easy for those of us not faced with the decision to criticise it. The thought that up to an extra 1,000 people could die between now and the end of the year if he gets it wrong is clearly weighing heavily on his mind. We should be grateful for that, given the insouciance with which the UK’s PM seems to regard the lives of the old and vulnerable.

Would it be the same if we knew their names?

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A few years ago, I found myself sitting through a meeting of a scrutiny committee at a local authority as the members were looking for potential savings. The officer leading the discussion took them through the committee's KPIs, of which there were something like 76 (a sure sign of a lack of prioritisation and focus – no-one can seriously manage anything against a list of targets that long). Anyway, the officer pointed out that in some cases, the authority was outperforming its targets and that this had a cost. On one KPI, for instance, the Welsh Government had set a target of 80%, and the authority was achieving 95%. This, said the officer, was an opportunity to save money; by reducing the level of achievement from 95% to 80%, resources could be allocated to other activities with no penalties being imposed. It’s a classic example of how a target which is probably intended to set a minimum level of service ends up setting the maximum as well.

This rule has a more general application. Let's take, as a not-entirely-random example, an outsourced track and trace system in England which has a target of tracing 80% of contacts and telling them to self-isolate. It’s easy to see how a company providing such a service will (if you’re lucky – it really depends on whether there are any downsides to the company from failure) strive to achieve the 80%, but it has no incentive to go beyond that. Indeed, over-performing would lead to extra cost with no extra income, thereby hitting profitability. The public health requirements may well see 80% as a minimum requirement for getting things under control, which is probably why it was set at that level, but the profit motive turns it effortlessly into a maximum. It means, in effect, that England is only even attempting to catch 80% of those infected, and the other 20% (plus any margin by which they don’t even achieve the 80% target) of contacts will be allowed to spread the virus freely.

There are implications for Wales given the long and porous border with England: even if the Welsh system is doing better (and it is, albeit far from perfect), being in an open union with a country which has consciously decided to let the pandemic rip at a rate of about 20% of its potential makes it difficult to control the virus here. A short, sharp lockdown is a reasonable response, and is being widely supported, but its effect will be widely undermined unless the Welsh Government takes the opportunity to work out a longer term way of living with an irresponsible neighbour unwilling to take the necessary steps itself. That should have happened during the last lockdown, but didn’t. I can understand that Drakeford et al might truly not have realised just how irresponsible Johnson and pals would be, but they have been slow to react as that level of irresponsibility has been increasingly revealed. And they are hampered by the lack of powers, particularly financial powers to support people and businesses, a factor which does not fill me with confidence that they will be able to take all the necessary actions after the short lockdown ends, even if they wanted to.

The Tories, perhaps inevitably, have reacted by opposing the lockdown, claiming that the WHO have said that lockdowns merely delay things and are not a solution. This is a deliberate misinterpretation of a rather more nuanced stance by the WHO, and would be more credible if they were offering an alternative approach which didn’t start and end with ‘do as the chief incompetent says’. But even if they were right in saying that a lockdown only delays things, what do they really mean by that?

There has been an estimate (and yes, I know that there are always problems with the accuracy of any estimates) that around 1,000 lives would be lost in Wales between now and the end of the year without the lockdown. In a strict sense, given that human mortality is always 100% eventually, it would be accurate to argue that those deaths are not avoided by a lockdown, merely delayed. (The same is true, incidentally, for all medical interventions for all diseases. No lives are ever truly ‘saved’; they are merely extended.) Treating people as just numbers and statistics makes it easy to forget that these are real people with families and friends: we just don’t know which 1,000 people it would be. But if we did, if we could put names and faces to them, would the Tories still be willing to say to them and their families that it’s better for the economy for them to die before Christmas than after? Because that, ultimately, is what saying that a lockdown ‘only delays’ the spread of the virus actually means.

Drakeford has a weakness in his reluctance to demand sufficient autonomy for Wales to be able to take the necessary steps to protect Wales and her people, but at least he’s not completely heartless as the Tories seem to be.

Drakeford channeling Chamberlain?

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There was something very 1939ish about the First Minister’s announcement yesterday that he had sent a final letter to Herr Johnson seeking an undertaking about travel from Covid hotspots, and that, as Chamberlain put it, “I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received…”. Drakeford didn’t go as far as adding that “… and consequently, this country is at war…”, although reading some of the reaction in England one might be forgiven for thinking that he had done. In essence, Drakeford was asking little more than that people in Covid hotspots in England should be subject to the same rules about travel to parts of Wales with a lower prevalence of the virus as people in Wales are. It’s an entirely reasonable and sensible request, but the English nationalists have chosen to interpret it as some sort of attack on them.

It was predictable that the ‘Welsh’ Conservatives would find something to be outraged about, and they have reverted to their customary response about the law being ‘unenforceable’. In the sense that the police don’t have the resources to prevent people from breaking this law, and can’t apprehend everyone who does, they are factually correct. But that position is rather undermined by the fact that the same could be said of burglary (many cases of which don’t even get investigated due to a lack of police resources), and, as far as I’m aware, decriminalising burglary isn’t yet part of the Conservative agenda. (Daylight robbery, on the other hand…). That’s not to gloss over the problem that when an action currently undertaken by many is suddenly criminalised, a limited number of prosecutions and punishments doesn’t immediately stop the criminal activity. The same could be said (and was) about drink driving and failure to wear a seat belt, but what we have seen over time is that criminalising both of those slowly led to a change in social attitudes, and that change in attitudes has probably been more influential over the long term than the threat of apprehension and punishment.

The difficulty in the current case is that we don’t have the ‘long term’ in which that can happen; controlling the spread of the disease requires urgent action now. The most effective way of bringing that about would be through a feeling of social solidarity, a general feeling that we owe it to our fellow citizens to keep them safe rather than simply following our own selfish desires, backed up by the resources to ensure that people are financially able to do the right thing. It would be better if we didn’t need laws and fines to bring about changes in behaviour, but the problem is that the Tories, aided and abetted by New Labour, have spent the last four decades destroying that sense of social solidarity, encouraging selfishness, and purveying the myth that the resources aren’t available. A crisis like the pandemic shows why that solidarity is important – but a four-decade long process can’t be reversed in a few weeks, never mind the days that we have available to us.

It takes a very special kind of crassness and incompetence to turn a mild-mannered Clark Kent look-alike into someone who looks increasingly like an independentista. Unfortunately for Drakeford, the Conservative Party has an apparently inexhaustible stock of crass incompetents; he needs to prepare for much more of the same.

A brave policy

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It would be hard to argue that the Welsh government’s performance during the coronavirus pandemic has been brilliant. Errors have been made and they’ve been slow to act at times. Part of this may be the result of an over-willingness to seek consensus with an English government which has shown itself to have not the slightest interest in working with anyone else. Part of it may be down to a lack of power to vary some aspects of the response to the pandemic. And part of it may be down to the porous nature of the long eastern border of Wales, which makes divergence more difficult. None of that is enough to excuse the Welsh government for all its failures – a government which truly put Wales first and foremost would have diverged sooner and faster from the increasingly shambolic approach being taken by England rather then held back because of the largely political fear of being seen as ‘too nationalist’. Scotland’s response has not been perfect either, although the less equivocal political leadership and greater willingness to diverge there has helped.

Despite the imperfect response in Wales, the polls suggest that the Welsh government, like its Scottish counterpart, is significantly more trusted than the English government. The more cautious approach is in tune with public opinion, and the willingness to at least attempt to answer questions rather than bluster and lie has been notable. That some people are frustrated with the slower pace of release is unarguable; we still have less freedom than is being enjoyed across the border, and that seems set to continue for a while at least. However, public support for that position seems to be holding up. Whether that continues probably depends on what happens in England. If the release of lockdown leads to an upsurge in cases in England, the First Minister can probably count on becoming even more trusted, but if it doesn’t, then the frustration will grow. The evidence to date is that the former is rather more likely than the latter and like most I broadly support the Welsh approach even if I’d quibble with some of the details. Only time will tell.

The utter incompetence of the English PM and his disastrous handling of the pandemic has left the Conservative Party in Wales in a particularly difficult position – they had to decide whether to hang on to Johnson’s coat-tails or to strike a more independent position. They have chosen to ‘resolve’ that conflict by making repeated demands that Wales should follow England more closely. Being as kind as I can, I assume that they sincerely believe that Johnson has got it right and Drakeford has got it wrong, despite all the current evidence suggesting precisely the opposite. Because if I didn’t make that assumption, I’d be obliged to assume that their demands for copying England amount to a demand that we should increase the Welsh infection and death rates to match the English ones. They’re taking a huge gamble on Johnson’s competence in the face of all the evidence to the contrary. If they’re wrong, then effectively demanding that Wales should ‘level up’ the death rate rather than act differently would be a highly original election strategy. Sir Humphrey, in his customarily understated way, would probably call it ‘brave’.

Gradual easing needs more detailed advice

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It appears that most people in Wales are still backing the more cautious approach of the Welsh government rather than the more reckless approach being taken in England. That seems to me completely appropriate – even if we could believe a word that the English PM utters, his approach seems to be ignoring the best scientific advice. Wales’ moves are driven by minimising the death toll, England’s only by ensuring that the number of people hospitalised doesn’t exceed capacity.

In his statement today, the First Minister seemed to be rowing back a little at least from the widely briefed ‘five mile rule’ for contact between households. That’s sensible in principle – the rule as originally rumoured looked like a very Cardiff-centric approach. A five-mile radius circle around the Senedd would be around 50% uninhabited sea, but the landward half would still include around 300-350,000 people. That’s potentially a lot of social mixing. On the other hand, a five-mile radius circle around my home would be entirely on dry land but include no more than 6-7,000 people. It’s more rural than most admittedly, but not untypical of much of Wales. The difference between the two highlights the difficulty in applying a single standard rule to the whole of a country where such a high proportion of the population are concentrated in a small area.

I can understand why the former Tory leader in the Senedd calls it an ‘arbitrary’ distance, and he’s right to do so. And the First Minister is right to refer to it as a ‘general rule’ rather than an absolute one. But that doesn’t help the police in deciding how and when to enforce the rule, and it doesn’t help those who live in more rural areas to decide, in a responsible fashion, what is or is not ‘reasonable’ in the circumstances. Absolute rules are much easier to enforce but will be less appropriate as lockdown is gradually eased, as this one instance already highlights. The less absolute the rules, the more guidance on interpretation will be required, by the police as well as the public. The First Minister’s caution has rightly been well-supported across Wales to date, but if he wants to maintain that support (and he certainly needs to), then his government will need to put more time and effort into fleshing out the guidance.

Is Mark Drakeford "inherently right-wing"?

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The First Minister’s attempt to explain why ‘nationalism’ and ‘socialism’ are incompatible serves only to highlight a lack of clarity about the meaning of either. He’s not alone in that, in fairness; it has been obvious for years that the way in which everyone ascribes their own meaning to both words obscures and frustrates debate rather than facilitating it. I could also throw ‘patriotism’ into the mix as well, given that it’s a word used recently by his own party’s leader. According to Drakeford, nationalism and socialism are complete opposites, but according to Starmer, the Labour movement and patriotism are “two sides of the same coin”. (I guess, though, that he means ‘British’ patriotism rather than the Welsh or Scottish variety.) Logically (and assuming that the two men’s political philosophies have at least a passing resemblance) that can only mean that they also see nationalism and patriotism as being polar opposites as well.

In truth, none of this debate about labels or what they mean is particularly helpful, particularly when we try to apply it to the question of how government should be organised on a territorial basis. It is perfectly possible for a patriotic – and perhaps even a nationalistic – Welsh person to believe that the Welsh nation is best served by remaining part of a larger whole, just as it’s possible for someone who isn’t Welsh, and opposes both nationalism and patriotism, to believe that Wales’ best interests are served by independence. It’s why I tend to use the term independentista – it’s not exactly elegant or commonplace, but it does explain more precisely what it is that I support. Debating the constitutional options for Wales is harder, of course, than simply dismissing anyone who disagrees by labelling them – that’s why Labour have long preferred to use labels. Why anyone would seriously expect Drakeford to be any different is the real puzzle here.

One other point struck me about what he said, however. I don’t know whether he was quoted accurately, because this sentence seems a bit convoluted to me: “In the end, I think it’s an inherently right-wing creed that operates by persuading people that they are because they are against what somebody else is”, but I think he was saying that persuading people to be one thing by contrasting that with what they are not is inherently a right-wing approach. I can’t help thinking that it is awfully similar to the traditional approach of Labour asking people to vote for them because “we’re not the Tories”, another way of avoiding debating the substance of what people stand for. Does that mean that we can safely label any Labour spokesperson who repeats that line as being “inherently right-wing”?

Numerical targets miss the point

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The statement by the First Minister on Monday that no new target for the number of coronavirus tests to be carried out would be set has unsurprisingly provoked criticism from political opponents. They’ve seen an open goal and aimed at it, even if the Tories’ criticism is more than a little hypocritical given the abject failure of their own government in London to get anywhere near its own targets. And, given that there are reports of rifts within the English cabinet (and, when it discusses health issues, it is indeed acting as an English cabinet not a UK one) as to whether the targets are meaningful or useful anyway, they might be about to be outflanked by their own side. Still, I suppose that’s balanced by Labour’s own hypocrisy in abandoning such a target in Wales whilst continuing to criticize the English Health Minister for not achieving the target he set for England.

On the substance of the issue, I have considerable sympathy for the First Minister’s position. There is little point setting targets which may turn out to be unachievable on issues over which you do not have complete control; it simply sets people up to fail and presents opposition parties with an open goal. And the ‘target’ in this case looks to have been entirely arbitrary – geared more to a compromise between what they thought might be achievable and what would be politically acceptable rather than what is needed to deal with the problem. More generally, I’m not a fan of management or government by target anyway – it can often lead to the ‘wrong’ behaviour. I once sat through a meeting in a local authority at which a senior officer pointed out to the members that they were exceeding one particular target laid down by central government, and that one way of saving money would be to reduce the level of service in that area in order to merely meet, rather than exceed, the target. Targets are often set largely as a means of measuring and quantifying progress towards the achievement of an objective; they are just a proxy for the real goal but can end up being the sole focus. Managing to meet a target encourages people to concentrate on the targets rather than understand and pursue the underlying objective. In politics, they can also encourage oppositions to criticise a numerical failure rather than evaluate the quality of the response in relation to the problem which the government is seeking to solve. Easy headlines is no substitute for quality scrutiny.

That said, the disappointing part of the First Minister’s statement was not that there will be no target, but the absence of detail about how the government plans to achieve the underlying objective, which I assume is to do with identifying and getting on top of any new outbreak quickly before it gets out of control. It is clear that any such strategy inevitably involves conducting significantly more tests but trying to set a precise number is irrelevant – it could be lower (but is more likely to be much higher) than any number conjured out of the air. ‘Whatever it takes’ isn’t easily turned into a nice round number. It should, though, be turned into a strategy and plan, and that seems to be as absent in Wales as it is at UK level at present.

Being assertive

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Wales’ new First Minister came in for some criticism yesterday, with the headline saying that he had ‘turned down a one-to-one meeting with the Prime Minister to attend a Labour Party event’.  Fair enough criticism, some might say, but the detail is a little more complex than that.

The First Minister had two pre-arranged meetings.  The first was the Joint Ministerial Committee, with the Prime Minister, the Scottish First Minister and officials from Northern Ireland in the morning, and the second was scheduled for 2pm as a one-to-one meeting with the Prime Minister.  Our First Minister travelled from Cardiff to London, ready and willing to attend both, only to be told that the Prime Minister had subsequently arranged something else at that time, and that he would have to sit around kicking his heels for four hours or so until she could find the time to see him.  He said that he had a prior engagement and declined to wait.

Does it matter here what the nature of that prior engagement was (the criticism has been largely based on the fact that it was a Labour Party event)?  It wasn’t him that unilaterally cancelled a pre-arranged meeting at short notice.  Why haven’t more questions been asked about why the Prime Minister decided that ‘something else’ was more important than a pre-arranged meeting with the First Minister of Wales?  It seems to me that the discourtesy here isn’t a First Minister who honoured an engagement, but a Prime Minister who did not.

Mark Drakeford has been attacked for missing an opportunity to put the case for Wales to a Prime Minister who has made herself notorious for not listening to a word anyone says unless they are agreeing with her.  From the perspective of many in her party, the Welsh (like the Irish) should know their place.  This was never going to be a meeting between equals; there is a power relationship at play here as well.  It seems to me strange that those arguing that the First Minister should have taken the opportunity to stand up for Wales and put our case to the PM are effectively arguing that he should meekly accept his (and, by inference, our) inferior status and sit around waiting at her convenience.  It’s an odd sort of assertiveness for which they are calling.