Davey has right diagnosis, but wrong cure

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There are few government policies that are so financially ruinous that they cannot be made more so by a determined politician. And this weekend, it was Ed Davey’s turn, for the Lib Dems. His diagnosis – that the US is no longer a dependable ally and relying on them to allow the use of missiles which are leased from the US may make them potentially unusable – is accurate enough. His cure, however – that the UK should develop a completely new set of missiles on its own – would add vast amounts of additional cost to a programme which is already hugely expensive. It would also have a lengthy timescale before it could be ready for use, and one of the known unknowns is whether the US will remain a hostile actor for the whole of that period.

Whether it would make the weapons any more usable is another open question. Their value as a deterrent has always depended on a series of assumptions. That the UK has the ability to fire them at all without US permission is certainly one of those, but there are others: that ‘the enemy’ will simultaneously be mad enough to launch a strike which will incinerate millions and make large areas of the earth (maybe even all of it) uninhabitable and sane enough to be deterred by the thought of millions of their own citizens being incinerated in return; that the orders given to the submarine commander instruct him to launch in certain circumstances and that the commander, contemplating the scale of destruction already wreaked on the planet, would follow those instructions; and that the enemy would not already have located and destroyed the submarine. That’s a whole load of caveats, without even considering whether the system would actually work anyway.

All of that matters only if the possession of nuclear weapons had anything at all to do with war, peace or deterrence. If, as many suspect, it’s actually more to do with a post-imperial mindset amongst UK politicians – Labour, Tory and Lib Dem alike – that still doesn’t accept the reduced status of the UK in the world and clings to the belief that what the UK PM thinks is of any importance, then whether they work or not is largely irrelevant; the important thing is whether the UK is accepted by other states as being what its leaders think it is. It fails, though, even on that level. One of the consequences of diverting so much resource into a single weapons system is that the UK doesn’t have the sort of forces which can actually be of use, leading to boats spending three days bobbing about in the English Channel. Some of us might think that’s a positive, of sorts – but I doubt that it’s what Davey had in mind.

What is to be defended - and how?

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It was reported a couple of weeks ago that there is a £28 billion ‘funding shortfall’ for the UK’s military forces. It underlines the way in which a careful choice of words can frame any discussion. The substance of the story is that the military needs a lot more money to do all the things that it wants to do, and is presenting the lack of that money as a ‘shortfall’. It’s not the only word that could be used. The same gap could equally be framed as a deliberately planned overspend: the expenditure plan has been drawn up in a way which requires more money than the budget has allocated. A ‘shortfall’ is the responsibility of government, but an ‘overspend’ is the responsibility of the defence chiefs. It’s all about blame avoidance.

The more substantive underlying question is about what the UK’s military needs are; establishing that is a prerequisite to talking about how the expenditure is funded. It’s not a question on which either the government or the military really wants any sort of debate, because an open discussion on the question must inevitably put the question of the Trident upgrade on the table. This enormously expensive project is a major element of the UK’s planned military spend, yet it is, in essence, a weapons system which could only ever be used as a posthumous act of revenge following a nuclear attack on the UK. Even then, there’s considerable doubt as to whether the UK could really decide to fire any of the missiles without US authorisation. The UK government always claim that it can be so used, but the phrase attributed to Mandy Rice-Davies applies. Scrapping Trident completely would free up enough funding to overcome the alleged shortfall, even if we collectively decided that we still wanted to do everything else on the military shopping list.

Meanwhile the Lib Dems have come up with an alternative funding mechanism – the issue of what they are calling ‘war bonds’, based on what the government did during the two world wars. According to Ed Davey, this could raise an additional £20 billion for military purposes, and it’s clear that he thinks that the target market is individuals across the UK, so it would be giving the public a chance to "support patriotically our defence". I suspect that he’s right in saying that the government could raise that sort of money, although it’s more likely to come from the wealthiest in society rather than the man in the street, and they’re more likely to buy such bonds for the security of the capital and the interest they would attract than out of any great patriotic fervour. Given that the government (and there is no indication that a Lib Dem government would take a different view on this) regards all bond sales as ‘borrowing’, it would blow a massive hole in any fiscal rules. But they are correct in identifying that there is a market for more government bonds, which gives the lie to the idea that bond-holders are demanding that the government redeem existing bonds, aka ‘pay off debt’.

What they are all doing, though, is talking about the issue as though the constraint is a lack of money, when it really isn’t. The constraints on government spending on the military are firstly whether the spare physical resources (labour, materials, etc.) exist, and secondly, if they don’t, to what extent do we wish to prioritise weaponry over wellbeing by redirecting those resources. Treating money as the constraint serves only the few in society, and makes it more or less inevitable that the cost of increasing military expenditure falls, ultimately, on the wellbeing of the many. Destroying that which we wish to defend is no defence at all. It’s easy to see why the purveyors of war all want to avoid that question.

Half a cheer for the Lib Dems

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In political circles, the things for which the Lib Dems are most famous, and not necessarily in a good way, are dodgy bar charts and an astounding ability to promote completely contradictory policies in neighbouring areas – or even as they move from one house to the next in a street. To give them their due, they’re also quite good at mobilising large numbers of people to deliver a deluge of leaflets to flood voters’ homes in target areas, particularly during by-elections. Long term plans carefully and consistently executed have not, however, generally been seen as a strong point.

Perhaps we’ve all misjudged them. Liz Truss’s ability to pivot from one deeply-held policy position to deeply holding the complete reverse view makes her a classic Lib Dem. No surprise that was her initial choice of party. Infiltrating such an obvious Lib Dem into the Conservative Party with the sole aim of destroying that party from within is something of a master stroke, which shows clear signs of long term planning and organisation. After spending twelve years as a minister supporting the policies of three successive Prime Ministers, it turns out she never agreed with anything they (or she herself) did or said, another giveaway about her true allegiance. From upholding the idea that there is no magic money tree to claiming that she controls a complete enchanted forest, without even pausing for breath, is a manoeuvre which must have taken the breath away from even the most experienced Lib Dem candidate. A party which has spent 40 years telling us that they believe that spending must always be balanced by income suddenly decides to trash the very basis of its reputation by arguing that the bigger the gap the better; that’s on a completely different order of magnitude to merely overturning policy on student fees.

So, why only half a cheer for such an astounding achievement? Whilst the success of the cunning plot has almost certainly exceeded the wildest expectations of the plotters, they really don’t seem to have anticipated quite how much collateral damage would be caused for the rest of us when the bomb exploded. Perhaps they thought that she might get to a senior position but assumed that the Tories would never be stupid enough to make her leader. It’s an easy enough mistake to make (who wouldn’t have made a similar assumption?) but catastrophic for many of the least well-off in society. Next time, stick to dodgy bar charts. Please.

Have Lib Dems accidentally stumbled onto a good idea?

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One party which has so far failed to send any election literature to this household is the Lib Dems (but don’t bother to rush out and do it now, we’ve already voted). It’s a pity, because there is one aspect of their policy for this election which strikes me as really interesting and different, namely their promise of debt cancellation. The suggestion that this would be a funded by a ‘specific and limited pot of funding’ detracts from the proposal, with its implicit assumption that it is the funding which determines how much debt is written off rather than the need, and there is a question in my mind as to whether the Senedd actually has the power or resources to do this, but the idea deserves to be more widely debated and explored.

The Tories continually tell us that we are facing a debt crisis as a result of the pandemic. They’re right, but they’re referring to the wrong debt crisis, because they’re referring to government debt. Government debt really is not a problem, but their ‘solution’ to this non-problem, namely austerity (although Johnson will insist on calling it something different given his oft-stated aversion to austerity) will not only not solve the non-problem, but will worsen the real debt crisis, which is the extent of private debt burdening lower paid families. Apart from austerity, the second part of the government’s post Covid recovery strategy assumes that, as a result of lockdown, people have been spending less and that spending will be released in a splurge when people can start going to restaurants and hotels and taking holidays again. From the perspective of the social circles in which the Tories move, that may well look to be realistic, but for many families, reduced income as a result of furlough, and the fear of job insecurity as furlough ends and some companies find themselves no longer viable means that many have fallen further into debt, and even amongst those who have seen an opportunity to reduce their debts – or even save – it doesn’t follow that they will be ready to risk their financial security immediately.

Debt cancellation is not a particularly new idea; it’s been done in various economies in the past, sometimes in the form of a general amnesty, other times in the form of write-off of specific types or elements of debt. Amongst the earliest examples was the ancient civilisation of Mesopotamia, which went through a series of cyclical cancellations of debt, aimed at freeing debt slaves and maintaining social peace and stability. Whilst people are not, these days, forced into slavery as a result of debt, they often find themselves forced into taking multiple jobs, depending on friends and family, or sinking deeper into debt. And the driver of debt cancellation for King Hammurabi – social peace and stability – is as valid and relevant today as it was 3000 years ago.

The idea goes against current economic orthodoxy, of course, to say nothing of the idea that the poor deserve to be poor and that people who get into unmanageable levels of debt deserve their fate. But these are shibboleths of capitalist ideology which need to be challenged, and selfishness needs to be replaced by a greater sense of social solidarity. The Lib Dems, albeit in a typically timid and limited Lib Dem fashion, are actually onto something important and radical here (although any of them reading this might now start to have second thoughts). It’s a proposal which deserves to be more widely considered, and taken up by others who are more likely to be in a position to do something about it than a fringe party struggling to retain a foothold in the Senedd.

Statistics, damned statistics, and Lib Dem statistics

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It is often suggested that 87.6% of all statistics quoted by politicians are made up on the spot. The MUF-87.6 virus, as it is known, afflicts most politicians, but some seem to catch a more severe infection than others. Boris Johnson suffers from a very serious infection but, in fairness, that’s been exacerbated by his inability to understand what a statistic is or that numbers have meaning. Amongst the worst affected are that endangered species, the Welsh Lib Dems, where the proportion has been known to go as high as 110%. Unlikely, one might think – but they have a wide range of bar charts to prove it.

Their leader illustrated the point over the weekend when she claimed that Welsh independence “…would be 10 times more complex and 10 times more painful than Brexit”. Not 9, not 11, but precisely 10. This particular figure was based not on any careful analysis or consideration of the issue (that would require time and effort to carry out, and there aren’t enough of them left to do that) but on the need for a dramatic sounding figure to include in a speech to what remains of the party faithful. Oh, and an eye to what an uncritical media would faithfully use for a headline or two as though it had some basis in fact.

The biggest problem with her plucked-out-of-the-air number is that it makes unstated assumptions; and it completely overlooks the main reason why Brexit has been so complex and painful. That the economic impact of Brexit was always going to be negative, whatever form it took, was obvious from the outset, despite the promises to the contrary. But the degree of complexity and pain is a direct result of a deliberate decision by the UK government to distance the UK as much as possible from the EU. There was a much easier and less painful option available (remaining inside the single market and customs union whilst opting out of the political union), but in pursuit of some illusory ideas about sovereignty and greatness the UK rejected them. To make independence ten times as complex and painful assumes that any Welsh government negotiating that independence would be ten times as incompetent and irrational as Boris Johnson. A government that monumentally stupid may appear to be a realistic prospect to a Lib Dem, but my problem is that, however hard I try, I really cannot conceive of Wales electing a Lib Dem government. Whatever the bar charts show.

Truth is not on the agenda

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The Lib Dems seem to find it hard to keep up at the best of times, but last week’s call for the resumption of 10 Downing Street’s daily press briefings “to provide clearer guidance” about the pandemic rather spectacularly misses the point. They’re right, of course, to identify that people “have been left confused by the mixed messaging” in recent months, and also when they say that it is “crucial that the government learns from these mistakes”. But it’s a very big jump from a completely reasonable diagnosis to a proposed cure which involves a PM who has spent the last four months in a state of confusion, and who has entirely deliberately spread confusing and mixed messages, being given more air time to continue the process. We certainly do need more clarity and more precise facts but the suggestion that we’re going to get any of that from the current occupant of Number 10 displays a touching, if rather naïve, belief that a congenital liar is capable of changing, even if he wanted to do so. Daily briefings by the scientific experts unencumbered by any political presence might help, but I find it hard to believe that the government would stand back and allow their own untrammelled and fact-free optimism to be undermined by anything as banal as truth and honesty. When faced with a government which claims, albeit with the self-satisfied smirk which the PM seems unable ever to remove from his visage, that 60,000 deaths is a world-beating triumph, the chances of getting clear and unequivocal messaging approximates to zero. If the Lib Dems want to start introducing clarity into political debate, they might do better to start by looking at their own truth-bending election graphs. That’s an area where they could actually have some influence on events.

Living in the wrong place?

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Driving to the shops yesterday, I happened to catch a snatch of an interview by Jeremy Vine of Ed Davey, the deputy leader of the Lib Dems, discussing the major issue of the election, cycle paths.  Davey and the Lib Dems are, apparently, in favour of more cycle paths, but Vine rather unhelpfully pointed out that, where he lives, the local Lib Dems are opposing the creation of new cycle paths.  Davey’s response was roughly as follows: “But where I live, the local Lib Dem council is building new cycle paths.  You should come and live in my constituency”. 

It was a quick-thinking riposte, but it’s actually quite revealing, not to say damaging.  He’ll probably regret the words he used.  There was no attempt to deal with the implicit question that what the Lib Dems stand for varies from area to area, and it even managed to express a vague hint that if the Lib Dems in your area aren’t doing what you want, then it’s your fault for living in the wrong place.  The Lib Dems have, of course, campaigned for many years on a hyper-local platform; they are willing to say whatever will win them votes at any given time and place, even if it’s the exact opposite of what their neighbouring branch is saying up the road.  And there’s nothing wrong with hyper-localism as such, as long as the voters in a particular constituency or ward know what they’re voting for – unless and until a party espousing it claims to have a clear national platform.  If a party’s candidates are elected on widely differing platforms in different constituencies, you can never be certain what their policy really is on some matters until you know which of them is elected; the manifesto is an irrelevant diversion.  He may have been caught out accidentally giving an honest answer - probably a disciplinary matter.

Avoiding the need for divine intervention

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It used to be said that the Anglican Church was the Tory Party at prayer.  There is an old joke about an Anglican priest preparing the service for the Sunday after a General Election before he knew the result, and he was struggling to choose an appropriate hymn.  In the end, he decided to choose three alternative options.  If the Tories won, it would be Now thank we all our God, whilst a Labour victory would be followed by Oh Lord our help in ages past.  In the event of a Liberal victory, the congregation would sing The Lord moves in a mysterious way.

Divine intervention of the mysterious kind is probably the minimum requirement for a Lib Dem victory in the upcoming election, so the chances of them being called upon to actually implement their latest Brexit policy – revoke the Article 50 letter without a public vote – are, to put it mildly, on the low side.  In fairness, though, Cameron’s assumption that he would never be called on to honour his promise of a referendum on the EU is what put us in this mess in the first place, so perhaps we shouldn’t be so quick to discount it.

In simple mathematical terms, if the electorate is evenly divided 4 ways, it is possible to win an overall majority of seats with a little over 12.5% of the votes (25% in half the constituencies); but what is realistically possible (in the absence of divine intervention) is rather different, because votes aren’t spread evenly either geographically or between the parties.  It is, though, entirely possible on the basis of current opinion polls for a party to win a thumping majority of seats with between 30 and 35% of the vote, underlining the utter inadequacy of the UK’s outdated electoral system.  Whilst the Lib Dems are surely right in legal and constitutional terms to argue that the most recent vote always trumps any previous vote (that is the way that the UK’s sticking-plaster-covered constitution works), there must surely be a question about the legitimacy, in more general terms, of a parliamentary majority in an election over-ruling the results of a direct plebiscite on a single issue.  After all, I suspect that they (like myself) would not consider that a Johnson parliamentary majority for no deal on the basis of 30–35% of the vote can overturn a referendum majority which was won on the basis of a very different proposition, which was about maintaining close ties.  Goose, gander, and sauce.  The Lib Dems’ position might have the virtue of clarity but it is seriously lacking in democratic legitimacy.

Labour’s latest position – holding a referendum between a ‘credible leave option’ and remain – has greater moral legitimacy than simply revoke.  It might even be more politically credible too, if they weren’t still peddling the utterly discredited notion that they can negotiate a deal which is not only better than that negotiated by Theresa May, but also potentially better than continued membership.  Perhaps they, too, are seeking divine intervention, but their insistence on clinging to the possibility that a better deal is available leads them to the incredible situation where the main opposition party is unable to say what its position, in principle, is on the biggest issue of the day.  As a canvasser with decades of experience, I can only say that I wouldn’t like to be knocking doors and asking for votes on that basis.

It would be better not to be in the hole which Cameron dug for us; there is no way forward which can possibly bring the hard-line leavers and hard-line remainers together around a single agreed way forward.  The least-worst option is for a second referendum between the option of remaining and the deal (perhaps with a few minor tweaks) negotiated by Theresa May.  The result would provide a degree of short-term certainty – we would either leave in a reasonably orderly fashion or stay in the EU – but it wouldn’t really settle anything.  If the leave side win, we will spend decades negotiating the details of future relationships and new trade deals with other countries, to say nothing of recovering from the immediate economic hit.  But remaining is not an easy or simple option either – if we stay, we will find ourselves with a group of 27 frustrated and angry partners whose time and money have been wasted on a futile process, and there would still be a strong undercurrent of opposition to membership amongst the electorate which will manifest itself in elections and rhetoric for decades to come.  A pro-Brexit party, or alliance of parties, could easily win another election and the whole process would start all over again.

The manoeuvring of the political parties is so tied up with seeking their own electoral advantage that they’re failing to address the longer-term issues at all.  The single biggest change which could help us avoid such holes in future would be the introduction of proportional representation.  Taking away the winner-takes-all outcome which gives complete power to a party or coalition with only around 30-35% support would do a lot to change the nature of political debate – and not just in relation to Brexit.  It has to be better than simply hoping for some sort of deus ex machina, which is where we seem to be now.

Brexit is not their real priority

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If Corbyn’s proposal that he should head a temporary government with an agreed short-term remit to deal only with avoiding a no deal Brexit was, as some have suggested, intended as a trap for the new leader of the Lib Dems, then she certainly walked straight into it.  Having said that stopping Brexit was her absolute top priority, rejecting a firm proposal to achieve that end reveals that it isn’t actually her top priority at all – preventing Corbyn from becoming PM, and/or trying to establish the Lib Dems as the ‘purist’ anti-Brexit party are both more important to her.  The Lib Dems prove to be as keen on putting their own narrow party interests first as ever – if they were serious about stopping Brexit, they’d have immediately accepted the idea of negotiating and raised their concerns or put forward alternatives in those discussions.

Having said that, for Labour to gloat over having so badly wrong-footed her isn’t so clever either.  After also claiming that their top priority is stopping no deal, their move – coupled with an apparent refusal to consider alternative possibilities – reveals that they have higher priorities as well, namely getting Corbyn into Number 10 and smashing the Lib Dem revival.  If they were serious about stopping Johnson’s no deal, they’d have put their proposal on the table and indicated that they saw it as a starting point for an adult discussion, rather than as a trap for the Lib Dems.

As to the substance, well the Lib Dem leader does actually have a point.  There must be serious doubts as to how many of the rebel Tories and newly independent MPs who want to stop no-deal would support a vote of no confidence if the result was a Corbyn-led government.  That does, in turn, though reveal that those Tories and independents who say stopping a no-deal is the most important thing are fibbing as much as Labour and Lib Dems are, because they, too, have a higher priority, namely not being seen to aid Corbyn into Downing Street.  Having spent years demonising him for being something which he is not, they are now unable to exercise the necessary flexibility.  And Swinson’s point is of only limited validity anyway – for every Tory MP who won’t countenance even a single purpose short-term government led by Corbyn, there’s going to be a Labour MP who won’t countenance a single purpose short-term government led by someone other than the leader of their party.  Their opposition to putting a veteran Tory like Ken Clarke at the head of such a government is only what one might expect; but, in typical Labour style, their opposition to putting a different Labour MP at the head is even stronger for many of them.

So, there we have it – three disparate groups, all claiming that their highest priority is stopping no-deal Brexit, all in reality placing more importance on two entirely different questions, namely who is PM and where does the best advantage for their party lie.  Unless at least one of those groups starts to behave like a group of adults and recognises that the important thing here is the remit of any temporary government, not its figurehead nor their respective positioning once the dust has settled, then the Brextremists will win by default.  They have no need to behave like adults or win any arguments; their only requirement for success is that the clear parliamentary majority against their policy remains divided over the peripheral issue of personality.  At the moment, sadly, my head tells me that the Brexiteers are more likely to win if stopping them demands adult behaviour from their opponents.

Will it make a difference?

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Whichever decision Plaid took about standing in the Brecon and Radnor by-election was always going to be divisive for the party’s members and supporters.  There have been those arguing in favour of standing and those arguing against; someone was going to be unhappy either way.

Personally, I’m not sure how much difference it will make.  Doing the mathematics of looking at how people voted in the past and adding up the votes for ‘remain’ and ‘leave’ in a way which gives a majority for a particular outcome is easy enough to do; but mathematical theory isn’t the same thing as electoral fact.  It is by no means certain that people who support a party will vote for a different party just because ‘their’ party asks them to.  And when a party has such a low vote in a constituency as Plaid does in Brecon and Radnor, the probability is that a higher proportion of those voters are committed to the party’s fundamental aim than is the case where the party enjoys much wider support.  That means that asking them to vote for a party fiercely opposed to the stated aims of ‘their’ party may turn out to be counterproductive. 

There are a wider range of policy considerations as well.  If I were an elector in the constituency, I’d have serious reservations about voting for a party which is vehemently opposed to Welsh independence and which supports the retention of nuclear weapons, to name just two policy areas – without even starting to think about how honest and trustworthy they are, having seen their approach to campaigning over many years.  (Not for nothing are they widely known as the Fib Dems.)  Whilst it’s clear what the Lib Dems might gain from the decision, the political gains for Plaid are far from clear, and assisting the party which most threatens one of their own seats to regain some of its credibility could turn out to be a colossal mistake.

And yet…  The looming threat of Brexit is an historic turning point, and I can fully understand why any party which is serious about putting Wales first would seek to act in a way which could help to change the direction of travel on such a defining issue.  And changing the way politics in Wales works necessarily requires an occasional bold decision; there’s no gain without an element of risk.  It’s a pity, though, that an outdated and unfit for purpose electoral system doesn’t do more to facilitate a switching of votes by allowing people to place parties and candidates in order of preference rather than requiring one or more different viewpoints to voluntarily remove themselves from the field of battle.

Whether it’s the ‘right’ decision or not remains to be seen – and it will be many years before that becomes clear, because the implications go well beyond the counting of the votes on 1^st August.  Those claiming that it’s a massive own goal and those claiming that it’s a defining change in Welsh politics are both speaking too soon and projecting their own preconceptions onto the decision.  I rather suspect that it will turn out to be neither of those and will actually make little difference, more’s the pity.

Interpreting the vote

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The IWA website, Click on Wales, published an article yesterday by the Chair of Wales for Europe, Geraint Talfan Davies, setting out his views on the forthcoming (maybe) European elections.  There was much in his analysis with which I entirely agree, particularly his assertion that Wales has little political leverage as a result of the way we have chosen to vote over the years.  He references particularly the 1979 vote on devolution itself and the 2016 referendum on the EU.  I’d be tempted to add all the times when Wales has voted by a majority to support a Labour Party whose main interest is, and always has been, in gaining power at UK level rather than in winning – let alone exercising – significant leverage for Wales.  I can understand, however, why his criticism of Labour is rather less direct and more nuanced than that.

I also understand, and find myself entirely in sympathy with, the frustration he expresses at the failure of the pro-Remain parties in Wales to find common cause for an election which will surely be fought largely on the issue of future membership or not of the EU.  I agree with his assertion that this is the over-riding immediate issue facing us (albeit probably not for exactly the same reasons) and I share his frustration that a fragmentation of the pro-EU vote will facilitate what he describes, rightly, as “the prospect of a disruptive UKIP/Brexit Party presence in the European Parliament”.  However, despite all that basis for potential agreement with his analysis, I still find the expectation that Plaid Cymru, the Green Party, the Lib Dems and Change UK could somehow arrange a combined campaign for the European elections to be profoundly unrealistic.

It isn’t about what he describes (rather unfairly, I thought) as “the narcissism of small differences” between the parties named; the differences between the parties concerned are rather greater than those between the Judean People’s Front and the People’s Front of Judea.  Perhaps many years as a member of one of the parties concerned gives me a different perspective, but what looks like simple logic from the point of view of an organisation campaigning for one single defined aim doesn’t look anything like as logical from the point of view of the leaders of any of the relevant parties.  In this particular context, ‘winning a majority for a pro-Remain position’ is an eminently desirable outcome on election day itself – but how does it translate into the subsequent behaviour of the member or members elected once they enter the parliament?  Such an alliance would almost certainly win one of the four seats from Wales, and maybe even two, but from which party or parties would they come – and what would be the expectation of the way in which they would then try to represent the very different views of those who voted for them in the first place? 

My questions illustrate the difficulties of using an election for members of a parliament to try and answer an entirely different question, and no matter how much I want the same answer to that question, I can see the difficulties of trying to get it via this route.  It isn’t obstinacy or selfishness which drives parties to behave as they do, it is an attempt to express differing perspectives in an imperfect political system, recognising that those elected will serve for up to five years (depending on what happens with Brexit), during which time they will have to ‘choose a side’ in hundreds of debates and arguments on which the parties hold very different views.  We, the voters, would have absolutely no clarity in advance what position our elected members would take on any of those questions if they were elected solely on the basis of an anti-Brexit platform.

Even if it would have been possible in principle to hammer out some sort of minimal agreed manifesto between parties (let alone agree who the candidates would be and how they could be democratically selected by a multiplicity of parties acting in concert), the timescale between the announcement that the elections were to take place and the close of nominations on 25th April simply did not permit the detailed and complex negotiations which would have been required.  What is, perhaps, a more realistic and achievable ambition (and something which, maybe, Wales for Europe could broker?) is to draw up some sort of ‘lowest common denominator’ statement about the way forward for Brexit, which all the relevant parties could sign up to, so that their combined total of votes could reasonably be interpreted as a vote for a particular outcome whilst the pro-Brexit parties remain fragmented.  Failure to achieve even that would be, for me, a much more valid reason for criticism of parties than their failure to agree a common slate of candidates.

Money, students and manifestos

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It’s only a few weeks since the UK General Election and already Labour seem to be rowing back on their promise to write off student debt, with claims in the last few days that it was more of an 'ambition' than a firm policy, even if it didn’t exactly sound that way during the election campaign. 

Here in Wales, Plaid Cymru, the party which helped Labour introduce tuition fees in the first place during the One Wales period, is now criticising Labour for increasing fees to match the latest change in England, claiming that the proposal goes against the Labour Party’s manifesto.  They presumably assume that we’ve all forgotten that when most of the Plaid AMs voted to introduce fees in the first place they were also going against their own manifesto commitment.  (And it’s worth noting that the politician taking the decision to increase fees is actually a member of the Lib Dems, another party with a somewhat, shall we say ‘chequered’, history on the question of fees.)  The whole issue of student fees seems to be one which unites governing parties in supporting them whilst opposition parties unite in opposing them, and that’s true whichever party forms either the government or the opposition.

The underlying question has two strong ideological elements to it.  The first is whether services supplied by the government should be collectively funded or paid for by those who actually use them, and the second is to do with the question of the availability of money for the government to pay for things.

Regular readers will know that I’m a committed supporter of the idea that services should be funded collectively rather than paid for individually, and I entirely accept that that is a position which flows from my own ideological standpoint.  In the case of university education, I accept that those benefitting from it often end up better off financially than those who don’t, but a properly progressive taxation system would ensure that those with the highest earnings also make the highest contributions to paying for services.  (And, as an aside, people who end their education at ‘A’ level tend to do better financially than those with GCSEs, and those with GCSEs do better than those without.  Why single out one particular type of education for payment at point of use?)

But let’s turn to the second ideological factor – the availability or otherwise of money.  Governments, of whatever colour, tell us that ‘we can’t afford’ to provide university education without charging for it.  But like all the other things that they tell us we can’t afford, it comes down to policy choices.  How much the government raises in taxes, how much it borrows, and how much it spends are all political choices.  When the government needs a few billions for some project or other – such as buying the support of the DUP or starting another war somewhere – it can always find it, because the UK Government controls the money supply.

However, the Welsh Government does not control its money supply.  It has long been a theme of this blog that governments are not like households, and they really don’t have to balance their budgets in the same way, but more accurately, that is only true for governments which can control the supply of money – like the UK Government.  The Welsh Government’s budget, on the other hand, really is more like that of a household, and a household whose purse strings are controlled elsewhere and which can be arbitrarily loosened or tightened.  Whilst I might have had more sympathy for Labour’s response if they had been more honest and spelled out more clearly that any promise relating to fees in Wales was wholly dependent on the election of a Labour Government for the UK as a whole (and therefore on voters in England), their basic point that they can only find the money to do something different in Wales if London gives it to them or they cut elsewhere is a valid excuse in itself.

The backtracking by UK Labour is a far more serious issue.  The interesting point is that in his interview McDonnell actually acknowledged that half the nominal amount of student debt will never be paid back in any event.  And figures elsewhere suggest that 70% of students will never repay the whole of their debt.  In essence, the whole edifice of student loans and debts is based on little more than an accounting sleight of hand. 

The UK Government pretends that it is not paying student fees because the students are paying them.  But the students do so by borrowing the money from the Student Loans Company which is wholly owned by the UK Government.  And where does their money come from?  From the Government, of course.  So, instead of using borrowing, taxation or the magic money tree to pay fees, the government raises the same money from the same sources to fund loans through the SLC, and for accounting purposes assumes that it’s going to get around half of it back over a lengthy period.  The other half – the bit that will never be repaid – will, in effect, have already been paid by the government – exactly what the government says it ‘can’t afford’ to do as a reason for introducing tuition fees in the first place.

Before the election, it appeared that Labour were offering hope to young people that they could enjoy a university education in exchange for paying a fair share of tax if they earned more when they took up employment.  It even looked as though they understood that governments are not like households.  After the election, it appears that they’re reverting to type and falling in with the Tories’ attitude towards finances after all.

Old habits never die

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I was ‘lucky’ enough to receive the election communication for our local Tory candidate this week, and it contains some ‘interesting’ claims.  Firstly, there was the rather strange claim that having campaigned for the Brexit Secretary David Davis means that he knows how to get a good deal for Carmarthenshire from Brexit.  The idea that this knowledge has transferred from one person to another by some sort of osmosis just by campaigning together is remarkable enough; even more remarkable is the implicit suggestion that David Davis has much idea himself about how to get a good deal.  Or perhaps that’s the problem – his fellow campaigner has somehow sucked all the knowledge out of him.

Apparently, voting for Havard Hughes (and Theresa May, who according to his posters – “standing with Theresa May in Carmarthen East and Dinefwr” – is also a local candidate) will “stop Plaid from blocking Brexit”.  I’m sure that Plaid would find his faith in their ability – with an expected 3 MPs out of 650 – to stop Brexit in its tracks more than a little flattering, but it only serves to convince me that, despite his apparently impeccable local pedigree, he has spent more time in the recent past dwelling in the same galaxy as his party’s leader.  And it completely ignores the fact that Plaid, like the remainers in his own party and the Labour Party, seem to have given up the fight to retain Wales’ place in Europe.

He goes further – a vote for him will “stop Plaid from helping Brussels break Britain and our economy in revenge for Brexit”.  This is the sort of foaming-at-the-mouth approach to those evil bureaucrats in Brussels which I would generally expect only from UKIP, but it serves to underline just how far in that direction a party which mostly (remember those faraway days just one year ago?) campaigned to remain in the EU has gone off the rails in its pursuit of UKIP votes.

In his write-up in the Carmarthen Journal last week, Mr Hughes revealed that he used to be a member of the Lib Dems, along with his mother (who fought previous elections in this area), before they both defected to the Tories.  However, his leaflet shows that he hasn’t lost all his Liberal Democrat tendencies; it includes a nice bar chart, based on “recent odds” from some bookie or other, which demonstrates, with complete disregard to any actual votes cast in the past, that only the Tories can beat Plaid in this constituency.  You can take a man out of the Lib Dems, but you can’t take the Lib Dems out of a man, to misquote an old saying.

Searching for the silver lining

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It has long struck me as a strange sort of democracy which gives the incumbent Prime Minister the right to choose the timing of the next election in a way which favours his or her party interest rather than being subject to a pre-set timetable.  The act decreeing that parliaments should be for a fixed term may have been the pragmatic product of a grubby coalition deal in which the Lib Dems appeared to be gaining something in terms of their longer term constitutional agenda, but it did nevertheless appear to put an end to what would be regarded as a very dodgy practice in most of the world.

‘Appear’ turns out to be the operative word, however.  The act left a get-out clause allowing the Prime Minister to propose to parliament that it should dissolve itself.  Now it should be fairly obvious that no Prime Minister is going to use that clause unless he or she sees advantage in doing so; and that’s why the two-thirds majority required is of all MP’s, not just those voting.  So unless the government of the day has the sort of overwhelming majority which might just result from this cynical act, an opposition has only to sit on its hands for the proposal to fail.  Had the Labour Party followed the example of the SNP, there would have been no early election unless the Prime Minister decided to propose a vote of no confidence in her own government, a spectacle which many of us might rather have enjoyed.

The act was supposed to provide protection against precisely that which it has now facilitated.  It has turned out to be meaningless in practice – another much-vaunted Lib Dem ‘gain’ from coalition which is worthless in reality.  And the cause of that comes right back to the confrontational and superficial nature of UK politics.  The main opposition party is so much more afraid of being seen to be afraid than it is of being annihilated that it has voted, more or less en bloc, for getting itself culled and for handing power to the Tories for decades to come.  Yes, of course, the right wing press would have pilloried them if they had not supported calling an election; but they were going to find other issues on which to do that anyway.  And they are going to do precisely that mercilessly over the next 7 weeks.

We can be certain that the main thing we will hear from Labour over the coming weeks is that we need to protect services from the Tories.  But allowing the Tories to call an election at a time of their own choosing, when all the indications are that the result will be a much bigger majority for the Tories, is a very strange way of providing greater protection for anyone.  If the outcome is as currently appears probable, the Labour Party will have succeeded, wholly unnecessarily, in making itself irrelevant for the next decade or two.  It is not inconceivable that it could even end up with less than half the seats in Wales.

The polls could all be wrong, of course.  Corbyn could yet succeed in making his case with the public as effectively as he did with his party’s membership in two leadership elections.  And May has managed to make herself look shifty and untrustworthy by saying one thing and then reversing her position on a range of issues.  Perhaps I’m being unduly pessimistic about the probable outcome for Englandandwales - or perhaps I should just focus my mind on the probable advantage for the cause of the independentistas in Scotland.  There has to be a silver lining somewhere in all this.

How realistic is STV for local government?

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The Welsh government’s proposal to allow individual councils to decide for themselves which voting system to use raises a series of interesting questions.  On the one hand, it’s disappointing that the government is unable to come to a clear preference on a method of voting to apply across Wales, although I understand the pressures within the governing party which create that difficulty.  On the other, it’s difficult for those of us who want to devolve more power to local government to argue against giving the choice rather than imposing a single system, even if we might prefer that the power to be devolved was over rather more substantive issues of policy.

In theory, it’s possible that council areas could end up see-sawing between voting systems, depending on whether the ruling group after any given election was for or against STV.  In practice, I suspect that getting a sufficient majority under STV to reverse a decision to adopt it will be a much harder task than getting a majority under FPTP to adopt STV.  In short, any changes are likely to flow in only one direction.

Some commenters seem to assume that where those parties in favour of STV are in power (essentially, Plaid and the Lib Dems), the change will be made, and where they’re not, the councils will remain under the FPTP system.  I suspect that’s rather an oversimplification, because of the way that STV plays out in different types of area.  As far as the Lib Dems are concerned, their influence in Welsh local government at the moment is so limited that consideration of their position is largely irrelevant, although that may change in the future, of course.  The position of Plaid is rather more complicated.

It’s true, of course, that Plaid uses STV for its internal elections, and that the use of STV for all elections is formal policy.  But support for that position is not universal, and there are good reasons for that.  STV requires large multi-member wards, and it’s easy to see how STV will work well in urban areas such as the valleys of the south and the cities of Wales.  Rural Wales, though, is a rather different matter. 

The councils where Plaid is either in control or the leading party (Gwynedd, Carmarthen, Ceredigion) are all essentially rural counties, and there is a feeling in many areas that existing single member wards are already geographically large.  Combining three or four existing wards into single much larger new wards is unlikely to be popular, even assuming that the seemingly relentless pressure to reduce the total numbers of councillors ceases.  It is likely to make councillors appear even more remote from the people they represent.

It’s not an argument which sways me against STV; even recognising the difficulties, I still favour STV because I believe that it produces a fairer and more democratic result.  But it would be naïve to think that individual councillors who have been elected on the basis of their support and activity in one area are suddenly going to enthuse over the possibility that they will have to fight elections in a much bigger area where they are considerably less well-known.  And council groups are composed of dozens of such individual members – persuading those groups to adopt the change may not be entirely straightforward.

So, whilst in principle I welcome the way in which the Labour government in Cardiff has opened the door to a more democratic system of voting, I’m not going to hold my breath in expectation that it will be adopted anywhere.  And for Plaid, for whom this probably looks like something of a concession, it may turn out to be more of a curse than a blessing, if they can’t actually get their groups in the relevant areas to implement it.

Avoiding differences

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I’m not sure that the ‘compact’ between Labour and Plaid lives up to the hype surrounding it.  Whilst Plaid seem to be playing up the headline policy gains, I suspect that the most important part of the agreement will be the setting up of three liaison committees.  This ability to influence government proposals before they become public looks likely to have more impact than the headline policies themselves, and may well do more to advance the national project.  If Plaid is to have more influence than the sole Lib Dem will have as a result of being appointed to the cabinet, it will probably be through these committees rather than as a result of the policies announced so far.

One of the policies which has been announced was the new treatment fund, but it has always looked to me like something of a gimmick.  It will no doubt be popular with those who benefit from it, and with the pharmaceuticals industry.  It’s not clear yet how it is to be funded (is it money diverted from elsewhere in the health service and then ring-fenced, or is it additional funding which is ring-fenced?) but there are two problems with ring-fenced funding like this in the health service.

The first is that whilst the ‘winners’ are easily identifiable, the ‘losers’ are much harder to identify, but losers there will be; and the second is that the funding available will never actually be enough to satisfy all of the potential beneficiaries, given the continued advent of new treatments and their very high cost.

However, it was the Plaid claim that this will end the “postcode lottery” which means that people in Wales and England are subject to different rules when it comes to access to certain drugs which caught my eye.  The phrase “postcode lottery” is one I’ve posted on before; it suggests that people are treated in a random way based on where they live, and that there’s an element of luck involved.  That is a complete misrepresentation of the truth. 

The reality is that the differences in approach stem from different administrations adopting different policies and setting different priorities.  Whether either or both of the administrations are setting the ‘right’ priorities is an entirely proper subject of debate, but this isn’t a question of ‘luck of the draw’.  Differences are a direct consequence of devolution, leading to the election of governments of a different hue.  Advocating identical outcomes is, in essence, an argument for more centralisation, not devolution, and sounds strange coming from a party with a theoretical vague long term aspiration to increase the policy divergences between Wales and England.

Confused and confusing

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Given the unpopularity of politicians in general, proposing a large pay rise for any of them is never going to be a vote winner.  And in proposing to stop the planned pay rise for AMs, the Lib Dems are obviously trying to adopt a populist approach.  Whether it will make any difference to their vote remains to be seen.

It doesn’t look like a terribly honest or thought-through policy though.  In the first place, they signed up, along with the other parties, to the idea of taking AMs’ pay out of the hands of the AMs themselves, and giving the job to an independent panel.  Worse, as I understand it, they also signed up to the guidance and direction given to the panel about the approach that should be adopted.  Complaining about the outcome looks like trying to bolt the stable door.

Having said that, there is something in the basic point that they are making, which is that rises in AMs’ pay should be linked to public sector pay by some formula; but it doesn’t go far enough.  They’re only talking about a formula to determine the size of any pay rise – I’d prefer to see a direct linkage between the salary paid to AMs and the average salary in Wales.  But what I really don’t understand about their proposal is that they seem to want to both have a clear formula linking pay rises to those in the public sector, and to retain the independent panel to determine the level of pay.  What’s the point of retaining a panel of independent members simply to apply an agreed formula?  It makes it sound as though they want to keep the door open for higher pay rises at some future point.  Or is that overly cynical?

It's not just about tactics

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It seems all but inevitable that UKIP will have a significant foothold in the National Assembly by the end of next week.  I’d prefer that it didn’t happen, but appealing to Labour voters to vote Lib Dem in order to prevent it, as the Lib Dems have done this week, seems to me to be avoiding the real issue rather then confronting it.  The stated objective – of keeping UKIP out – is a worthy one, although whether the call is a truly honest one or just a sly means of maintaining a Lib Dem presence is a rather different question.

But the real issue that it avoids is the simple fact that a sizable number of Welsh voters seem set to vote for UKIP in constituencies across Wales.  The original purpose of the additional members in the regions was to rebalance the total membership of the Assembly to take account of the lack of proportionality in the first-past-the-post part of the election, which is exactly why UKIP are likely to win seats.  The Lib Dems seem to want to use the regional list system as some sort of separate election which can be used tactically to deny representation to a party whose support will be hopelessly under-represented in the constituency part of the vote.  It’s a strange position for a party which claims to believe in proportional representation to take.

I’d prefer a single class of Assembly members elected by Single Transferable Vote from multi-member constituencies (which is coincidentally, as I understand it, the formal policy of the Lib Dems), but if we are going to have a system of additional members as a second-best option, then I’d prefer to see that part of the election used as intended, to ensure proportionality (even if that helps parties that I don’t like) rather than see parties trying to game the system.  Such a system would probably work better if there was only one election – in the constituencies – and the proportion of votes in that election was then applied to national party lists to select the additional members.

Whatever, the real problem – which the Lib Dems seem not to want to face up to directly (although, in fairness, they’re not the only ones) - is that so many people in Wales intend to vote for UKIP in the constituency ballot.  This isn’t limited to in-migrants to Wales; many of the constituencies where UKIP have previously attracted – and are likely to attract again – their strongest votes are also the constituencies with the highest proportion of Welsh-born voters. 

It’s too easy to dismiss this as a protest vote or an anti-politics vote, but I suspect that it is an expression of an underlying current of opinion which is far more common that I’d like to believe.  Perhaps UKIP simply will disappear after the EU referendum on 23^rd June.  That would be too late to stop them making progress in the Assembly elections, but it might justify treating them as a one-off aberration for this particular election.  But even if that turns out to be true, a disappearing party is not the same as a disappearing opinion, and there’s a lot more than antipathy to ‘Europe’ behind the rise in the UKIP vote.  The problem seems to be that other parties are too afraid of losing support from electors who sympathise with much of what UKIP says (but don’t intend actually to vote for UKIP) to directly deal with the prejudices and half-truths underlying the rise of UKIP.  Treating it as a question of tactical voting simply isn’t good enough.

Mirror, mirror on the wall...

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… who is the blandest of them all?

When the scriptwriters of VEEP coined the phrase ‘Continuity with Change’, they were actually seeking the most meaningless political phrase they could come up with.  Little did they imagine that any politician would ever use anything similar for real.  Never overestimate a politician.

As the Welsh general election campaign struggles into some semblance of life, no doubt we can expect to hear many other meaningless slogans bandied around.  But who can be the blandest of them all?

The Lib Dems have bolted into an early lead this week with “Our priorities are your priorities” and “Putting People First” (as if any political party would ever come forward and say that they were going to put people last).  I really wish that I could say that I was not expecting keen competition from the others to trump the Lib Dems in the coming weeks…

Is more of the same inevitable?

Tweet There is nothing new in the latest statement from Leanne Wood ruling out any deal with the Tories after next May’s Assembly elections.  It has attracted comments in a number of Welsh blogs already.  Peter Black suggests that categorically ruling out such a deal will weaken Plaid’s negotiating position.  I can’t disagree with that assessment.  It’s in line with a comment that I made in advance of the UK election – but it’s only a problem if establishing a good negotiating position is the intent, and it clearly is not.  Jac o’ The North suggests that effectively it means that a vote for Plaid is a vote for a Labour Government.  And given the range of outcomes from next May’s election which are currently credible, I can’t disagree with that either.  The only choice we’re being given is Labour by themselves, or Labour with a partner.

Gwynoro Jones sees it as a potentially huge missed opportunity, and a repeat of the situation in 2007.  This one I’m a great deal less sure about.  It is based to an extent on the idea that demonstrating that there is a viable alternative to Labour, however cobbled together, will be enough in itself to bring about the sort of change in Welsh politics which will destroy the hegemony of the Labour Party.  That’s not dissimilar to the arguments which were being put forward by the supporters of an alliance with the Tories in 2007.  I thought the argument was wrong then, partly because I feared that such an alliance would end up strengthening rather than weakening Labour, and partly because, for a serious nationalist party, there has to be a long term gain to justify the short term pain which would probably follow such an alliance, and I simply didn’t see such a gain in 2007.

The question for me was (and is) not whether a simple coalition between Plaid and the Tories would be a good idea or not (it wouldn’t), but whether the gain for Wales would be enough to justify the pain for Plaid.  My disagreement with the position taken so categorically by Leanne Wood and Plaid Cymru this time round is that it rules out even considering whether there might be such a trade-off.

And it does so on the basis of what seems to me to be an assumption that the Tories are still the untouchables of Welsh politics.  I’m not at all convinced that that assumption is as valid as many seem to think, but if we accept that it is true, it means in effect that short term electoral advantage for the party is considered more important than considering whether there might be a real long term gain for Wales.

Accepting for the sake of argument the premise that any form of post-election arrangement with the Tories would be electorally damaging to Plaid, could the Tories offer anything at all which might justify such a sacrifice by Plaid in the short term to advance the cause of Wales in the long term?  That is, I think, the question which should be being asked but doesn’t seem to be.  And it’s complicated, of course, by the fact that any conceivable arrangement of parties which comes to a majority over Labour needs to include – on the basis of current polling – at least the tacit support of UKIP as well (an even more unpalatable prospect for Plaid).

Despite all the difficulties and problems, there is actually one potential prize which I think might be worthwhile.  Under the latest Wales Bill, the Assembly is to get control over its own membership and electoral system, and a move to an even more proportional system of elections would be a better way of bringing about the step change in Welsh politics which most parties claim to support in principle.  An Assembly based on 60 constituency seats elected by STV in multi-member constituencies, with a further 20 list members from a single national list, would produce a legislature whose membership matched very closely the overall share of votes across the whole of Wales.

Labour’s projected vote according to the latest polls is around 35%, but the current electoral system is likely to give them over 40% of the seats and be within a few seats of an overall majority as a result.  An electoral system which gave them only 28 seats out of 80 for that 35% would not only be fairer, but with 52 non-Labour members, it would transform the playing field of Welsh politics.

It’s not a huge step forward for most of the parties involved.  Most parties recognise that an increase to 80 members will happen at some stage; Plaid, the Green Party and the Lib Dems are long-time supporters of STV; and UKIP and Plaid recently joined forces with the Greens and others to present a demand for a more proportional system of voting.  Could the Tories be brought round to such a proposal? 

It would not, of course, be enough to make for a stable Welsh Government for a full four or five-year term, but a government which passed such legislation and then sought to dissolve the Assembly for new elections to be held under the new system should be able to hold together for long enough to achieve that more limited aim.  If they’re as serious as they all claim to be in wanting to see the log-jam of Welsh politics removed – and removed by democratic vote, rather than stitch-up – this would be a far better way than trying to put together a far-from-credible multi-party coalition for a full term.

Making peoples’ votes count – all of them, across the whole of Wales – would probably lead to a different outcome, beyond the difference resulting solely from proportionality, as people think about their second and third choices as well as their first.  And it would also open up the possibility of realignment of parties and an opportunity for new and different parties to emerge. 

It’s the stuff of fantasy, of course.  I really don’t see the non-Labour parties in the Assembly being able to come together around such a proposal.  But in the absence of a step change of some sort, then the conclusion reached by Gwynoro looks depressingly likely to be true – we will be facing more of the same for the foreseeable future.