Where's the logic?

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In what must surely count as evidence of it being a slow news day, the Western Mail devotes almost an entire page to an edited version of a speech which Lord Hain has yet to deliver to the House of Lords opposing the idea of devolving income tax powers to Wales without a referendum.  

There is much in his argument with which I actually agree; devolving the power to set a proportion of the income tax levels in Wales without agreement on the Fiscal Framework does indeed create a serious danger that Wales will lose out financially in a big way.  And he is absolutely correct not to trust anything the Treasury says when it comes to funding Wales, although I suspect my distrust would go rather wider than his, since I am equally sceptical of Labour Treasury ministers.

He also makes the standard unionist argument about pooling and sharing resources.  Here, I start to part company with him; whilst I’ve long thought that to be one of the best arguments that the unionists have for maintaining the union, the problem is that it remains a theoretical argument, and unless backed up by action to ensure the “common welfare and decent standards of life for all citizens” which he lauds, then it’s not an argument which holds much weight for me.  And he loses it completely by referring to an annual subsidy of £15bn from the UK Treasury to Wales, a wilful and deliberate misinterpretation of the facts which is becoming standard unionist practice.

What I found completely missing in all of it however was any exposition of the rationale for making tax-raising powers subject to a referendum.  The question of whether the Assembly should or should not have the power to vary income tax rates, and what, if any, safeguards should be put in place to protect Wales’ financial position if it should happen, are entirely sensible subjects for debate, and, as mentioned above, I’d even agree with some of his concerns.  But how do we get from that position to a suggestion that there is a requirement for a specific referendum on that very limited question?  It’s a non-sequitur.

It’s true that at the time of the last referendum on legislative powers for the Assembly, some of those campaigning in favour stated that there would be no move to devolve income tax without a further referendum.  But that was a foolish thing to say at the time, and it was a promise which the campaigners were in no position to either make or keep.  That is not the sort of consideration which will deter a politician though.

I understand the argument for a further referendum if substantial further powers are to be transferred to Wales (although there’s a lot of scope for debate about what ‘substantial’ means’), and if a wide range of tax powers were to be included within that then I wouldn’t see a problem.  But the hang-ups that some have over devolving the power to vary a small element of one specific tax seem out of proportion, and look more like a method of blocking, or at least stalling, devolution to Wales than of arriving at a coherent position.

I suppose that’s not really new though.

Muddying the waters

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It was Peter Hain who, when he was Secretary of State for Wales, steered through the 2006 Government of Wales Act.  That act provided for the referendum on law-making powers which, after the 2011 referendum, turned the largely administrative Assembly into a legislature.  It was also Peter Hain who, as I recall, did everything he could to prevent and deter the Assembly from calling the referendum for which he had made the legislative provision, (even at times endangering the survival of the One Wales coalition, so vociferous was his opposition).

I find it more than a little strange therefore that the same Pater Hain, now having been suitably invested in ermine, should be calling for the Assembly to have powers to block legislation on a subject which seems to me to be outside the purview which he set for the body, even using the powers which he then didn’t want it to have.  The trade unions are arguing that it isn’t actually outside the Assembly’s powers, but the lack of clarity is, once again, a hindrance to good governance.

Hain’s argument is that “It is essential for the devolution settlement to work that the prime minister respects the wishes of the Welsh Government”.  That seems to be asking the current (Tory) UK Government to behave as he says it should, rather than behave as he himself did when a member of the previous (Labour) government.  In reality, what the devolution settlement needs to make it work is clarity over who does what; clarity which he failed to provide when he could; and he now seems to be trying to muddy the waters even further.  

I’m sure that he’d argue that the two situations are completely different.  Any disagreement with Carwyn Jones was merely a spat between two different parts of the Labour Party, but now he’s dealing with the wicked and evil baby-eaters.  Or perhaps there’s some other subtlety which has been lost on me.

What sort of future for Wales?

Tweet There were two stories in the media on Monday about Wales and the forthcoming EU referendum, both of which featured His Unroyal Hainness prominently.  I almost felt a little sorry for him after reading the first one, which said that he had been formally unveiled by Carwyn Jones, as though he were some sort of statue or commemorative plaque.  (Although, come to think of it, perhaps the comparison is not entirely without merit…)

The second was a reference to an article written by Hain and the Welsh Labour MEP, Derek Vaughan about the issues at stake in the referendum.  The headline was a little over the top, I thought.  “The very future of Wales is at stake” implies that somehow Wales might cease to exist if the vote goes the wrong way, as though we will somehow be wiped from the map.  But I suppose that a more realistic “Wales’ future outside the EU would not be the same as its future inside the EU” lacks in impact what it makes up for in truth.

Overall, the article was hugely disappointing.  Firstly, that was because so much of it concentrated on the argument that jobs depend on the EU.  I simply don’t accept that argument as being true – and I’m amongst those who want to stay in the EU.  It’s facile, and based on an assumption that the economy wouldn’t adapt to a new context.

The second issue that they spent many words discussing is the question of immigration.  Arguing that it’s easier to control immigration as a member than it would be outside is an obvious attempt to appeal to those who want out because of immigration, but the basis of their argument looks decidedly dodgy to me.  And even if they were right, the idea that the referendum on the EU is about the best way to control immigration is a long way short of putting a positive case for the EU.

Many of the advantages that they do mention – such as employee rights – don’t actually require the existence of the EU; they are things that any half-decent UK Government could have done anyway.  And there’s something very depressing about Labour politicians arguing that UK Governments, even of their own party, have only introduced such measures because the EU told them to.  That’s pretty close to conceding the case being put by opponents of membership that all these regulations have been ‘imposed’ on unwilling UK governments by ‘Brussels’.

We’re only having a referendum at all because of internal divisions within the Tory party.  A tactic adopted by Cameron to try and retain control of his own party has led to the electorate being asked to take a decision which looks increasingly likely to be made on the basis of a very shallow analysis with little thought about the sort of long term future we want to see.

To return to the lurid headline that I mentioned earlier, there actually is a sense in which the very future of Wales as a nation might depend on the outcome, although I don’t believe for a moment that it is what Hain and Vaughan – let alone the Western Mail’s headline writers – had in mind.  There is a huge difference between the sort of future we can have as a region of the EU (let alone if the aspirations of those of us who want to see Wales become a full member state come to pass) and the future we will have as a small periphery of an offshore island state.  It still doesn’t exactly challenge the continued existence of Wales, but it certainly makes a huge difference to what Wales actually is and can become.  The ‘national question’ is central to the debate, but is thus far hardly being mentioned.

Hold the front page!

Tweet It doesn’t seem to take a lot to get on to the front page of the Western Mail these days.  Being called Hain is usually quite enough.  Yesterday’s Western Mail headline was “Corbyn, Carwyn and the huge test for Welsh Labour”, but it was, in essence, a platform for His Unroyal Hainness to expound his views – again.  (And, of course, with a link to the “full report” on an inside page where his book also gets yet another free plug.)

Reading what he actually says, it doesn’t necessarily relate to the election of Corbyn at all.  His core message is that if the Labour Party mobilises the enthusiasm of its members and supporters to get out and canvass, then it could do well in the next election regardless of who the leader is; if it fails to do so, then it could face a difficult time.

In fact, I’m not even sure that that message is limited to the Labour Party.  HUH could equally have said that ‘if a party can fight a good doorstep campaign it might win votes, but if it fails to do so, it might not’.  Who’d have thought it?  This is a secret which has clearly eluded many to date, and comes as stunning news to the Western Mail. 

We really need a better Welsh media than this.

Something not new, something not old...

Tweet Earlier this week, in comments on the Labour leadership race which seemed to support precisely none of the candidates, the former Secretary of State said something to the effect that the party couldn’t go back to being Old Labour, but neither could it go back to being New Labour.  That left me wondering how exactly one could describe that which is neither old nor new.  Nondescript probably doesn’t quite do it.

In a car showroom, it would probably be ‘slightly-used’ Labour, even adding that it has only had one previous careful driver.  (Well, surely, there must be one of the previous drivers who could be described as careful?)

But perhaps a better answer might be ‘shop-soiled Labour’.  It’s not old, but not quite new, and comes with only a limited guarantee as to its efficacy.  I wonder if that’s what Hain meant.

Man or mouse?

Tweet I know that I really shouldn’t be surprised or shocked by anything our politicians do or say, but I was still taken aback by this report in Saturday’s Western Mail.

In essence, the outgoing MP for Neath has told us that, from the outset, he was convinced that the best person to lead Welsh Labour and become First Minister in 1999 was Rhodri Morgan and that nothing that happened in the following 16 years was enough to change his mind.  But in fact, he actively organized the campaign for Alun Michael instead … because Alistair Campbell told him to.

A key element of Labour’s pitch in Wales is that the party will “stand up for Wales”.  Yet here we have a man who claimed to be representing Wales at the highest level in the cabinet happily admitting that he did what he thought was the wrong thing for Wales, and did it with enthusiasm and energy, because a spin doctor told him to.

How to undermine a party’s campaign in one easy book launch.

Only watching the plebs

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According to Peter Hain, it is “constitutionally an outrage” that Special Branch continued to keep files on him and 9 other MPs after they were elected to the House of Commons.  It seems to me that he’s outraged about the wrong thing here.

There will always be different opinions about whether, and to what extent, the security services should be keeping an eye on what political groups are doing.  Personally, I think it’s outrageous that they should ever do so unless they have clearly evidenced grounds for suspicion of criminal activity.  Others will disagree; and I accept that.  But using that definition, I really don’t see why anyone’s status as an MP should affect that.

If there’s suspicion that an MP is involved in criminal activity (and recent events over expenses etc. surely prove that MPs are no different to the rest of the population in this regard), then why should they be exempt from the attention of the security services? 

The real outrage here is that any MP should apparently think that it’s OK for the security services to keep files on anyone they like - except MPs.  One rule for them, and another rule for everyone else.  His call for the enquiry to look specifically at the surveillance of MPs misses the point entirely; it’s the fact of the surveillance being undertaken at all which needs review, not who was being watched.

Electoral fiction

Tweet Last week, the former Secretary of State for Wales once again gave us the benefit of his opinion, in some detail, on the proposal in the latest Wales Bill to remove the Labour-imposed ban on dual candidacy for the National Assembly.

Fundamentally, his logic is sound, and I find it hard to disagree with his contention that individuals who have been decisively rejected by the electorate should not, nevertheless, end up being elected.  But agreeing with the logic isn’t the same as agreeing with the premise on which it is based – i.e. that anyone failing to win an election in a constituency has therefore been rejected as a person.

For a conventionally conservative politician like Hain, the assumption is so obvious as to not even need examination.  It is a convenient fiction of the UK constitution that all MPs (and AMs etc.) are elected as individuals rather than simple nominees of their party, and it would be unreasonable to expect any conservative to challenge that fiction.

But looked at from another point of view, the idea that people in Neath would still have chosen Hain as their MP if he had stood as a conservative candidate – or even as a candidate for the successor to his former party, the Lib Dems – is patently risible.  Whilst there may have been a small number of astute electors who realised that the difference between the parties was so small that they might as well vote for the person that they most liked, the overwhelming majority voted for the party – the man simply came with the package.  (In all fairness, I suppose that it really is possible that he believes that he would still have won as a conservative, given his unique ability and talents.  He wouldn’t be the first politician to be overcome by such an unrealistic level of self-belief.)

If that’s true in Neath, it’s equally true in Clwyd West, his favoured example of the ‘problem’ that he perceives.  But it simply isn’t true that the three losing candidates were ‘rejected’ by the electorate; it was merely that they were wearing the wrong colour rosettes.  The fact that they lost tells us nothing at all about what the electorate thought about them as candidates.  Equally, however, the fact that they ‘won’ places through the regional list tells us nothing about what the electorate thought about them as candidates either; all it tells us anything about is the relative level of support for the various parties.

All judgement of the merits of individuals is, in practice, done by their parties before presenting them to the electorate as candidates.  One would hope (although there is obviously room for doubt) that the parties would be seeking to put forward their best people to serve the electorate.  The Labour/Hain ban on dual candidacy is more likely to put an unnecessary obstacle in the way of that than to facilitate it. As such, it fails to serve the best interests of the electorate.

The dam with a hole

Tweet Just when it was starting to look as if the whole scheme for a Severn Barrage was sinking rapidly – so much so that the MP for Hafren Power Central Neath was starting to foment trouble elsewhere (How could the Labour Party ever think it could win any elections without his advice?), up pops the Western Mail with a front-page banner headline claiming that the barrage scheme has been “boosted” by the engagement of a number of major companies. The paper thinks this is a big story apparently – although not quite big enough to depose rumours about managers of Welsh soccer teams being enticed away to Everton from the very top of the front page.

I wonder whether it’s really that big a story – is it saying much more than “companies sign contracts from which they expect to make a profit”? The paper merely tells us that the companies have “been engaged” to assess the project; it tells us nothing about the commercial terms of engagement. One assumes that they’re expecting to be paid for their work; and companies accepting paid work for profit tells us little about the viability of the scheme itself.

It’s possible of course that I’m being too cynical here, and that they’re doing work for nothing at this stage in the hope of a bigger payback later. It’d be a gamble if they were.

The Western Mail has become something of a cheerleader for this doomed project. Its editorial tells us that “the environmental advantages of building a barrage are demonstrable”, but gives us only that half of the story which fits that particular narrative.

To read both the story itself and the editorial comment, one might conclude that the only opposition to the scheme comes from the owner of Bristol Port; and that as he is a donor to the Conservative party his concerns can be dismissed with no further consideration.

Not only do the environmental arguments for the barrage not stack up, but neither do the economic ones. This barrage will only ever be built – regardless of what its proponents say – if there is a massive investment of taxpayer funding; even if it is disguised funding. It is no coincidence that all the drawings and artists’ impressions of the scheme show a bridge over the top of the barrage.

Hafren Power have been, in fairness, clear from the outset that they would not provide that bridge, nor build the higher and stronger barrage which it would require. That is something that we would have to pay for, but since no one seems able to conceive of a barrage without a road on top, public involvement would be inevitable.

I’d lay odds that the risks and rewards will end up being shared in the usual fashion between the public sector and the private sector – the public sector (all of us, effectively) would get to share the risks amongst ourselves, and the sponsors of the scheme would get to share the rewards amongst themselves.

Sixes and sevens

Tweet I was somewhat surprised to see the story in last weekend’s Western Mail about Dafydd Wigley giving his support, albeit conditional, to Peter Hain’s pet project, a barrage across the Severn estuary.

The “if” stated by Dafydd (satisfying the environmental objections) is a mighty big one, of course.  It seems to have been more than a little underplayed in the newspaper’s report, which gave a rather more positive spin to his support for the barrage.  Properly evaluated, it’s hard to see how that ‘if’ can amount ultimately to anything other than opposition (although of course Hain himself seems to believe that all of the environmental objections can be overcome by deregistering the Natura 2000 habitat, and pooh-poohing the other objections).

Still, it was clear that ‘in principle’, Dafydd was now supporting the building of a barrage.

The story does rather reinforce once again the fact that Plaid’s energy policy is all over the place.  To summarise:

• On nuclear energy, the party is formally opposed, but any member who disagrees is free to campaign in favour; and a significant proportion of the party’s elected representatives seem to fall into that latter category.
• On wind energy the party is formally in favour, except that all those members who disagree are free to oppose every single proposal to actually build any turbines, and do so with vigour.
• On tidal power the party is in favour of lagoons around Wales instead of a barrage, but it now seems that members are free to support building a barrage instead if they wish.
• On gas, the party is opposed to the negative environmental impacts of building gas power stations, but is not opposed to actually building and operating the stations in the first place.

In summary, the party appears to be formally committed to a future based on renewables, as long as its members are free to oppose all proposals for renewable installations and to support any non-renewable proposals.  Effectively, and regardless of the formally-adopted policy, Plaid's policy on energy is now whatever it's local representatives say it is, and varies from constituency to constituency, depending on what might be attractive to local electors - an approach to policy which is almost indistinguishable from that of the Lib Dems.

Energy policy is central to any coherent environmental policy – Wales needs leadership and direction, and is not getting it from any party now.  Plaid used to provide that leadership, but has moved a long way from its position in the 1970s and 1980s.

The company's representative

Tweet The report published earlier this week on alternative proposals for exploiting the generating capacity of the Severn estuary is a welcome one.  It claims that a cheaper and less damaging approach than a large barrage across the estuary might even produce more electricity in total – and it would certainly have the potential to spread the generating capacity over a longer period rather than concentrate it at the times that the tide is most favourable.

It doesn’t compare like with like, of course; it is including the use of wind turbines in the estuary as well as tidal and wave turbines.  And I don’t know whether the claim that it will produce more power than the barrage will actually stand up to detailed examination.  Both this proposal and the barrage proposal itself still have too many uncertainties surrounding the final designs to evaluate that thoroughly at this stage.  At the very least, however, a rational approach would be to put this alternative on the table for more detailed analysis.

It was disappointing, though hardly unsurprising, to read the response of our former Secretary of State, Peter Hain.  ‘Dismissive’ would be something of an understatement.  Yet again, it looks as though his commitment to one proposal and the company backing it is over-riding any ability to look at the issue objectively.  It continues to surprise me that there has been, apparently, so little concern within the Labour Party at the extent to which such a prominent figure is now acting first and foremost as the parliamentary representative of a commercial organisation. It's surely not what he was elected to do.

When is an interest not an interest?

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Last week I commented on the meeting between Peter Hain and David Cameron at which Hain was attempting to enlist the Prime Minister’s support for the building the Severn barrage.  I still have my doubts about the whole proposal, and there was a column in the Sunday Times this weekend written by Charles Clover (hidden behind their paywall I’m afraid) which he also expressed a number of reservations about the proposal.

I’ve also expressed my concern about the way in which an MP elected to serve the people of his constituency seems to have decided that he will, in fact, spend a large part of his time and energy using his influence, and campaigning, on behalf of a private consortium seeking to develop a major infrastructure project.  In that context, Clover’s article included the following sentence “He says it will bring him personally no benefit – although his wife, Elizabeth Haywood, is an adviser to the company”.  If this is indeed true, it puts rather a different gloss on Hain’s claim about the lack of a ‘personal’ interest.

Barrage isn't only possibility

Tweet I'm uneasy with the idea that an MP should be able to set aside other responsibilities in order to become an advocate for a private company proposing a specific development project, even if it's true, as Hain claims, that he’s not being paid (although denials of any potential post-Parliamentary paid office haven't been so conspicuous to date).  I can imagine what the reaction of senior Labour figures would be if a Tory MP were to behave in a similar fashion.

And given Hain's previous invective against the baby-eating Tories, and against anyone who dares so much as to give said evil ones the time of day, the rather chummy way in which is seeking to enlist Cameron to the cause has a certain irony to it.

There is a danger, naturally, that those who have seen Hain's occasional rather nasty side will instinctively oppose anything with which he is associated – and there’d be a certain poetic justice about that.  The scheme does, however, deserve to be considered on its merits, although personally I remain sceptical. 

I don't doubt the claim that it could produce up to around 5% of the U.K.'s electricity needs.  That has to be subject, however, to the same caveat that opponents of wind farms invariably raise – the electricity produced will not necessarily be available to coincide with peak demand, depending on the times of the tides.

Certainly the proposal to generate on both the flow and the ebb tides is a step forward from the previous proposal to generate only on the ebb.  It's still subject to periods of low or zero generation, however.  That's why I'm still inclined to support the alternative of a series of tidal lagoons or tidal flow turbines around the coast, making use of the different times of high tide to generate a smaller total – but more consistently available – amount of power.

It's claimed that the latest proposal will do less damage to the ecology of the upstream Severn than the previous proposal.  Perhaps; but the detail behind this assertion is notable by its absence to date.

My third reservation concerns the costs.  The claim currently is that the barrage could and would be funded entirely from private sources, provided that the price of the electricity produced is guaranteed.  That sounds plausible for the electricity generating barrage itself (although it's worth noting that providing similar price guarantees to wind has been used as a reason for opposing wind turbines), but is it the whole truth?

All of the illustrations that I've seen show a barrage with a road link, rail link, or both running across the top.  There's a logic to doing that, but it significantly increases both the height and the cost of any barrage.  I somehow doubt that those costs have been factored in to the claim that the barrage will be privately financed, which would mean that we're only getting a partial truth.

Hain has a certain ability to generate PR and hype, but his assertion that the barrage “should be backed by all those serious about tackling climate change” is in line with his usual approach to politics, which is to make bald assertions and then attack the motives and integrity of anyone who disagrees with him.  It will take more than that to convince doubters such as myself.

Hain's legacy

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Seizing hold of a single major issue, and dedicating time to pursuit of that issue, is in the finest tradition of parliamentarianism in the UK, and if Peter Hain had stated last week that he was going to dedicate the rest of his parliamentary career to championing a switch to renewable energy, I’d be forced to seriously reconsider my opinion of him.  That isn’t quite what he said, however.  I don’t expect to be eating my non-existent hat for a while at least.

Rather than pursuing a commitment to the adoption of renewable energy, he is committing himself to a single scheme being promoted by a single consortium, and his statement seemed to suggest that the attraction of that scheme is more to do with the size of the investment involved and the number of jobs created (albeit temporary) than with the energy generated.  Indeed, the fact that it would produce green electricity seemed to me to be almost a bonus rather than being core to the scheme.

I think he’s backing the wrong horse of course; whilst I support the exploitation of the tidal energy in the estuary, I think that there are better ways of doing that than building a giant barrage with all the environmental impact that would have.  That isn’t my main concern about his action, however.

I also rather suspect that the viability of this ‘private sector’ scheme is in reality highly dependent on the public sector coughing up large sums in order to build the barrage higher and run rail and/or road links across the top of it.  But that isn’t my main concern, either.

There is a fine line between campaigning for a particular outcome on the one hand and becoming a parliamentary spokesperson for a particular company promoting a particular scheme on the other.  And it seems to me that he’s in real danger of crossing that line.  MPs are not employed to promote the interests of specific private companies through their parliamentary activity; and that’s my main concern about his statement.

To date it has been claimed that he has no paid position with the consortium concerned, and I have no reason to doubt that.  There is, though, a long and not very honourable history of politicians helping companies whilst in office and reaping their rewards at a later date; cynicism is often, sadly, justified.

Hain is, by his nature, something of a bruiser.  He seems to have difficulty seeing an issue without wanting to disagree vehemently with someone else about it.  But he would probably actually achieve more – and leave a more worthwhile legacy behind him – if he turned his attention from the specific to the general, and tried to build a consensus around that.

Vile and viler

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When Peter Hain came out with his attack on ‘vile’ Tory candidates, my immediate reaction was to think that this was a man heading for a fall.  It was obvious that, sooner or later, someone would draw attention to similar problems with one or more Labour candidate.  It didn’t take long.

Anyone who has ever been involved in the process of selecting and vetting candidates will know that it is extremely difficult – perhaps impossible - for any party to be certain that one or other of its candidates will not turn out to be an embarrassment in some shape or form.  That is particularly true for local elections, where candidates number into the hundreds.

Given that, any politician choosing to attack another party in the way that Hain chose to do is simply leaving itself open to a charge of hypocrisy when one of its own candidates gets found out.  What surprises me is this:  Hain is no novice; he’s been involved in politics in Wales for decades.  He’s seen this happen time and time again in the past – what on earth possessed him to do something so foolish?

In truth, of course, it’s unfair to pick on Hain alone here.  (Almost can’t believe that I typed that.)  He’s merely the perpetrator of this week’s obvious faux pas.  But the ability of politicians to believe that it’s safe to attack other parties in this way because their own party is whiter than white isn’t restricted to Labour.

It’s as though they are afflicted with some sort of selective amnesia when the sound of a good headline gets stuck in their brains.

At it ahain

Tweet According to Hain, the council elections are both an opportunity, in that horribly hackneyed and by now meaningless phrase, “to send a message” to Cameron and the Tories, and should also be used as “a referendum on the UK Government’s budget”.

Even were the Tories wiped out in Wales – a not impossible scenario, although unlikely – I’m not sure what sort of message that would be.  I don’t think that Cameron needs any further ‘messages’ to know that people in Wales are not over-fond of his party – nor that people in Wales would, by and large, prefer to have Labour politicians cutting their services rather than Tory ones.

There’s plenty of existing electoral and opinion polling data from which he can already draw both of those conclusions, just as easily as I have.  The only clear ‘message’ to emerge from this semaphoric activity is that Hain sees local elections as essentially a side-show to the main event, which is to restore him to his rightful place at the cabinet table prepare for the next parliamentary election in 2015.

The mantra that we should vote for Labour Party politicians to cut our services, simply ‘because they’re not Tories’, is a pretty negative and depressing one, not least because it looks like an attempt to avoid any real discussion of the essentially local issues for which councillors are responsible.

It might work for them electorally, of course; and perhaps nothing else matters.  Increasingly, it seems that ‘getting elected’ is more important to most politicians than actually changing anything afterwards.  I don’t know how they’ll know whether or not it worked though.  The Tories seem on course for significant losses almost whatever tactics the Labour Party use.

It’s not particularly good for local democracy.  But given the increasingly centralist tendencies of successive Welsh Governments, perhaps local democracy is doomed anyway.  Without a radical re-empowerment of local authorities, and significant devolution within Wales rather than merely to Wales, there seems to be little chance of recovering the situation.

Friends like these...

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I’ve long-known that politics is a business in which friendship and loyalty count for little, but I was still surprised at the candour of Peter Hain’s description of the events surrounding the replacement of Ron Davies as Labour’s candidate for First Secretary.

Hain was completely convinced, he tells us, that Rhodri Morgan was the right man for the job; right for Wales and right for Labour.  However, instead of supporting Rhodri, he ran Alun Michael’s successful campaign.  He did this, he says, because Alastair Campbell told him that it was ‘what Tony wanted’.

Perhaps Hain expects Rhodri, Labour, and Wales to forgive him, now that he’s been so candid - the repentance of a sinner, as it were.  I suspect that it will just make his ‘friends’ – if he has any left – even more wary about their backs.  With friends like Hain, they hardly need political enemies.

Hain slapped down by Labour

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There is more than one way of looking at the Labour Party’s statement at the weekend on possible changes to the electoral system for the National Assembly.  Predictably, most people have picked up on the part of the statement which says that if the system is to be changed at all, then it should be changed to a wholly FPTP system, and portrayed that as support for what Peter Hain has been saying for some time.

The ‘if’ is important though; because the first part of the statement says that Labour will oppose any change to the voting system if proposed by the UK Government.  Their default position, therefore, is that the current system should remain unchanged, and that any change which does happen should be decided in Wales rather than in London.  As Glyn Davies points out (“Until today, we thought that all parties supported changing National Assembly electoral arrangements to being based on 30 coterminous constituencies as well”), this is a significant shift away from what Peter Hain has been saying.

Their proposal for what should happen if the system is to be changed at all is rightly ridiculed by all and sundry, but concentrating on that aspect - which they effectively describe as their second choice - is to give inadequate attention to their first choice solution.

It’s not so long ago that Hain was claiming that “Everyone is agreed on the need to avoid decoupling in Wales, and maintain the same boundaries for Assembly and Parliamentary constituencies”.  I was not alone in wondering at the time who this ‘everyone’ was and what was the basis for the statement.  This weekend’s announcement puts a significant distance between what the Labour Party thinks and what Hain has been saying.

For all the scorn being poured on Labour, the position taken by them is actually more robust – and, dare I say it, more nationalist – than any other party in Wales.  They’re now the only party rejecting the need for co-terminosity, and the only party arguing that the decision should be made in Wales rather than in London.  It's something of a turn-up.

On-message

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Hain yesterday, Murphy today.  The same message from both of them, which I suppose at least displays a degree of unity, something for which the Labour Party hasn’t always been best-known.

Sadly, however, neither man’s message gets much beyond “Labour Good, Tories Bad”; any proposal coming from the Conservatives must be wrong and therefore should be opposed.  There is no real attempt whatsoever to engage with, or even discuss, the substance or merits of the case.

In response to my post on Hain’s comments yesterday, Jeff Jones commented that this sort of approach “plays well with the core vote particularly if it is over 60 and still living in a world which stopped in 1979”.  There’s a sense in which that is the most hopeful aspect – they’re playing to a demographic which will inevitably decline over the years.

Hainperbole

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Another day, another statement by Hain.  The Western Mail’s extensive coverage is here; the unexpurgated words of the man himself are here.  The juxtaposition of the words attributed to the Presiding Officer in a rather different context (“Oh here we go now”) on the same page of the paper, and to the left of the piece on Hain, seemed strangely prescient.

He’s not alone in his love of hyperbole to make a point, but the suggestion that taxation powers for the National Assembly would "destroy Wales" seemed a bit far-fetched, even for him.

That’s not to say that taxation powers are necessarily an unmitigated opportunity for Wales; they are potentially a double-edged sword.  But, and not for the first time, he puts up a straw man that no-one is seriously suggesting (an immediate move to full power over all taxation and expenditure) in order to knock it down – and dismiss more modest proposals at the same time.

The devil is in the detail; a move to a situation where the block grant is reduced by an amount equivalent to a certain percentage of income tax and the Assembly given the power to vary income tax to recover the lost grant is potentially neutral in its effects on both the Assembly’s total income and expenditure and on the level of income tax paid by people in Wales.  And I suspect that’s much closer to what will potentially be on offer.

My doubts about such a proposal aren’t simply that a power to vary the level of tax (rather than merely recover the lost revenue) is a power which probably dare not be used.  It's more that it adds little to the ability of the Welsh Government to vary the mix of taxation revenues in order to achieve goals beyond the merely fiscal.

There is one point in what Hain said where I actually agree with him, albeit only up to a point.  He said that “We shouldn’t be ashamed or embarrassed... [of the fact that Wales needs more expenditure than we raise in taxation] …Wales’ needs are greater than most other parts of UK”.  It’s a point I made in a piece on WalesHome a few months ago.  Whether the ‘central government’ in question is a Welsh one or a UK one, it can and should be trying to mitigate the effects of geographical wealth inequalities.

Where I part company with him though is that he seems to be implicitly assuming that Wales’ relative poverty is an inherent, unchangeable fact of life which only redistribution by the UK Government can resolve.  I find that depressing and defeatist; one of the best reasons that I can think of for rejecting Hain and his party is precisely that such thinking seems to be endemic to them.  Where is his/their plan to build the Welsh economy to the point where we don’t need handouts?  Where’s the belief in the ability of the people of this small country to turn things round?  Where’s the positive leadership?

I don’t doubt that some would argue that he actually wants to keep Wales as it is, that a dependent Wales providing a block of safe seats to Labour in the UK Parliament is what best suits the Labour Party.  I’ve had similar comments on this blog often over the years I’ve been running it.  I don’t think it’s an entirely fair criticism, though.  The outcome might well suit him, but I don’t believe that he’d deliberately hold us back for such self-interested reasons.  A far more damning criticism is that he just doesn’t seem to be able to imagine any alternative.