Using semaphore

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Only three parties (the Nigel Farage Party, Labour, and Change UK) managed to get leaflets to this part of the world before I posted back my vote yesterday, although another two (UKIP and Plaid) dropped through the door after I returned from the Post Office.  For this election at least, though, it was an easy choice to make, with or without leaflets – Jill Evans has been an excellent voice for Wales in the EU, and Plaid are clearly the best-placed pro second vote party.

All the leaflets received to date have been less than inspirational, however.  Neither UKIP nor the Nigel Farage party made any effort at all to explain why Brexit is a good idea, both preferring to play on the betrayal narrative.  And neither made any effort to pretend that the election has anything at all to do with Wales – neither naming the candidates nor using a word of Welsh.  Change UK’s solitary concession to the fact that the leaflet was being distributed in Wales was to use 11 words of Welsh – and spell three of those incorrectly.  For all of those parties, Wales is merely part of the electoral battleground where English differences are played out.  Labour’s leaflet was bilingual, chwarae teg (although after this week’s news, I was half expecting that it might have been in Gaelic), and asked me to “back Labour’s plan to bring people back together”, without really telling me what that plan was.

It also told me that the election was a chance to “tell the Tories you are fed up with their divisive austerity policies and incompetent UK government”.  It’s the tired, worn-out, old ‘send a message’ argument, which was also the burden of the headline on Plaid’s leaflet, urging me to “send a message to Westminster that Carmarthenshire has had enough of this Brexit shambles”.  It’s a line of argument that I have long considered counter-productive, not least because it’s asking me to vote for candidates from one party because they’re not members of another party rather than because of what they stand for themselves.  Telling me that my vote for party A will be considered as a rebuff for party B is essentially negative rather than positive. 

It’s also meaningless.  As we saw from the analysis of the English local elections earlier this month, the votes of millions of people cast for a variety of reasons do not easily distil into a single clear message, and pretending that they do is failing to understand – or even attempt to understand – the motivations of the electors.  Theresa May has been lampooned for claiming that the message of the local elections, when people turned massively against the two main pro-Brexit parties, was that MPs should get on with delivering Brexit.  Jeremy Corbyn’s initial response was very similar.  In May’s case, and considering only those who might otherwise have turned out to vote Conservative, she might just be right.  In Corbyn’s case, it is at least possible that frustration with Labour’s lack of clarity over Brexit might have played at least as big a role.  Nor is it clear to me that people swinging towards the traditional ‘third party’, the Lib Dems, as has happened so often in the past, is a ringing endorsement of that party’s position on Brexit, as that party’s leaders have claimed.

People vote for all sorts of reasons, not all of which necessarily have anything to do with either the parties or their policies, and trying to interpret the aggregate actions of millions as a clear ‘message’ that ‘the people’ want X is a fool’s errand.  I remember in one council election which I won, one elderly couple told me that they were going to vote for me because ‘Labour and the Tories gave away the Empire’.  Were they typical of the mass, or outliers?  I strongly suspect the latter – I certainly didn’t take away the ‘message’ from that election that Plaid should support the reconquest of Africa – but on a sample of one, who can be certain?  What I did learn from that is that it would have been a mistake to interpret the election victory as a clear message that the electorate of the ward wanted independence, because there was a much more complex interplay of forces at work.

When I vote, I don’t want to send anybody a message, particularly one which most of them are either not going to understand or else will wilfully misinterpret.  Just tell me what you’re for.

Being syncretic

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There was a review last week on Nation.Cymru of a book telling the story of the foundation of the new political party, Ein Gwlad.  In principle, having more than one political party in Wales advocating independence is to be welcomed; independence isn’t a concept owned by one particular part of the political spectrum, and having a range of parties arguing for different visions of what an independent Wales might be like would be considered entirely normal in most of the other European nations where there is an independence movement.  The reason why it hasn’t happened here is, first and foremost, an electoral system which favours unity rather than disunity, and I suspect that will be the rock on which Ein Gwlad eventually founders.  Electoral reform is long overdue and would probably be a game-changer for political debate in Wales, but things are as they are.

Having said that, I’m highly sceptical of any party which claims to be ‘syncretic’, not occupying any particular place on the political spectrum but able to pick policies, a la carte, from all parts of that spectrum, selecting whatever is best for Wales.  There are, as I see it, two main problems with that approach.

The first is that it assumes that the ‘spectrum’ is actually quite narrow.  If it is possible to mix and match policies from, say, Labour, Tory, Lib Dems and Plaid, then that is because, in essence (and perhaps excluding the constitutional question), the policy differences between them are, by and large, much smaller than any of them would have us believe.  It’s true that the degree of consensus which seemed to be growing in the post-war years has reduced, but broadly the mainstream politicians of all those parties differ mostly in emphasis and degree rather than in principle.  There are people with rather more radical views in all parties, but mainstream debate in UK politics revolves around a fairly narrow axis.

The second problem is how and who decides what is ‘best for Wales’.  The idea that anyone can make such a judgement independently of their own priors is simply not credible, even if the role of those priors is restricted to determining the criteria to be used in making the decision.  What is really ‘best for Wales’ is not something which is either self-evident nor objectively determinable, it is open to a range of differing opinions based on different criteria.  I suspect that syncretism is generally more of a euphemism for populism than a viable political philosophy and amounts to selecting those policies which are most popular amongst the electorate.  But it can never be as easy as that – low taxes and high-quality public services would both be popular, but they don’t combine terribly well.  Oh, and independence isn’t terribly ‘popular’ either.

I believe that it would be ‘better for Wales’ to have multiple parties arguing for independence from different political perspectives (entirely accepting that that belief is based on my own priors rather than on demonstrable proof), but I’m not at all convinced that pretending not to have a political perspective is the way of achieving that.

Gaddafi's gold

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It often seems as though journalists and politicians possess highly selective memories.  Worse, they also assume that the rest of us do as well, and are quite happy for them to regurgitate old stories as if they were new, or even to completely reverse the ‘facts’ if that suits their current requirements.  I mention that as context for the ‘revelation’ that some members of Plaid Cymru went to Libya in 1976 and that the party may, or may not, have received money subsequently.

I was a member of the party’s national executive at the time.  However, it was 40 years ago, and I have no written records from that period, so I am working from memory here – and age, as they say, does not come alone.  I recall, though, that the first I knew about the infamous visit was after the event.  I don’t know how it came to be arranged or how the participants were selected, but I’m sure that it wasn’t through any formal decision-making process.  On the other hand, in those days an awful lot of things happened outside any formal decision-making processes!

The problem with the past is often that we view it through the prism of the present, but the context back in 1976 was significantly different.  At that time, Gaddafi was seen less as a despot and more as a revolutionary who had overthrown an absolute monarchy in a bloodless coup.  And the then comparatively new government of Libya was making efforts to share the country’s oil wealth more fairly, and develop the country’s education and health services.  The BBC’s report includes a quote from Carl Clowes about the reasons for the visit which are entirely true – these were interesting developments from which it was believed that Wales could learn.

One other result of the visit was an attempt to broker some sort of deal between Welsh farmers and Libya to export Welsh lamb.  I’m not sure that very much ever came of it, but the attempt was genuine and well-intentioned.  The one thing of which I am certain is that the visit was not conducted with the aim or intention of securing funding.

Most of what I subsequently learned about the visit came from one of the participants, Brian Morgan Edwards.  Brian, or BME as he was more widely known, was something of a character, to put it mildly.  And on all issues other than the core question of independence for Wales it would be fair to say that his views and mine were more than a little divergent, but we always got on well – and he could be very good company.  But like all good raconteurs, he could at times ‘embroider’ his stories ever so slightly.

(At the time, incidentally, he was not, as stated, Treasurer, but Deputy Treasurer.  The Treasurer at the time was the late Elwyn Roberts from Bodorgan on Ynys Môn.  Having subsequently taken over from Elwyn as Treasurer, I can vouch for the fact that absolutely no-one other than Elwyn would have fully understood the party’s finances at that time, not even the Deputy Treasurer, which was a post with no clearly-defined responsibilities despite having a seat on the Executive.)

Thus it was that one Saturday night in the lounge bar of the Bellevue Hotel in Aberystwyth after an all-day meeting of the Executive (early in 1977, I think) Brian regaled me with his tales of the visit.  He was, shall we say, partial to the odd whisky or six, and had a knack of speaking in a stage whisper which meant that everyone in the room could hear everything he said (including on this particular occasion the gentleman on the other side of the room to whom Brian referred as “Big Ears over there” – in the same stage whisper.  In all fairness, I could hardly blame anyone for listening in in the circumstances).

The Libyans, he told me, had offered guns as well as money, and could not understand why the group were refusing them.  According to Brian, the response to the refusal had been along the lines of “But when the Irish come here, they always want guns.  Why don’t you want guns?”  I was more than a little alarmed at this turn of events, and subsequently spoke to Phil Williams (who had led the visit) privately to express my concerns.  Phil was able to give me the assurances that I sought; the visit had indeed been about looking at what the government was doing in fields such as health and education, not about seeking assistance – and there had been a little ‘embroidery’ in Brian’s tale.

So, with that by way of background, I completely believe the statement by Carl that Brian told him that money had been received; but that is not necessarily inconsistent with believing the counter claim by Plaid that there was no money.  I certainly have no recollection of a £25,000 donation from Libya being reported to the Executive.  The party was, in those days, run on rather less than a shoestring; £25,000 would have been considerably more than 10% of the party’s annual turnover.  It was the sort of sum which only ever arrived as a result of the wills of departed members.  The party’s financial affairs were more than a little ‘complex’ at the time as well; the treasurer was always borrowing from Peter to pay Paul as the party stumbled from one financial crisis to the next.  £25,000 would have made a significant difference. 

On the other hand, in those days political parties as entities were barely acknowledged under the law, and regulation was zero.  Add to that the secretive nature of party financing in general and it’s entirely possible that any party at the time could have received money from all sorts of dubious sources with no more than a handful of people ever being aware of the fact.  For what it’s worth, I genuinely don’t believe that £25,000 was received, but I cannot in all honesty entirely rule out any possibility that some money was received via one route or another with the knowledge of only one or two individuals who are no longer with us.  I suspect not; I simply cannot be certain.

The response by Labour and Lib Dem politicians to the latest rehashing of the story was utterly predictable – seize on a claim, portray it as fact, and issue a condemnation.  It’s utterly hypocritical, as Cai has pointed out, given the links which others subsequently developed with Gaddafi.

It might be argued that it was known at the time that Libya was arming and financing the IRA, and that therefore any contact with the regime was at the least unwise.  With hindsight, that is perhaps so – but there are a lot of things that most of us would do differently with the benefit of hindsight.  And there are plenty of other governments which have funded armed groups in other countries - the US is probably primus inter pares in this respect.  We have to come back to context again.  Although Gaddafi turned out to be a despot, the despotic aspects of his regime were considerably less obvious in 1976 than they were by the 1990s.  At that time, he looked like a man who was utterly determined that all in his country should benefit from oil wealth, and that was a very different perspective on wealth from that prevalent in the capitalist economies.  I couldn’t then, and still can’t, see anything wrong with trying to learn how that was being done in practice.  Everything else about the latest ‘story’ just looks like froth and mud-slinging to me.

Compulsion isn't the answer

Tweet Last week the subject of making voting compulsory raised its ugly head again.  This time it was mooted by Labour MP Chris Ruane.  I’m no fan of the idea, to put it mildly – and I’m not sure that the motivations of politicians who propose the idea are entirely honourable either.

The usual rationale is that voting is a duty which citizens should take seriously and that governments elected on a low turnout don’t have the same legitimacy as those elected on a high turnout.  But the reality of politics in the UK these days is that, when it comes to the election of a government, there is no real choice at all.  For sure, we can choose who implements policies, but the policies will be broadly the same whoever forms the government. 

For those who are broadly happy with Labour-Tory policies, why on earth should it become compulsory to choose who implements them - or even care?  And for those who are not happy with any of the options on the table, why compel them to choose the least unpalatable in order to add legitimacy to a system they reject?  It is – and this is as it should be – up to the politicians to give us something worth voting for.

But I don’t think that the real motivation for compulsory voting has much to do with civic duty or legitimacy; it’s much more about seeking a party advantage.  For any party, ensuring that all those who might vote for it are identified and persuaded to go out and cast their votes is a major task – I’ve been involved in doing it often enough to understand that.  The best organised parties, with the most highly motivated voters and activists have a competitive edge over the others.  Compelling people to vote takes away that advantage, so it should come as no surprise that those parties with the least motivated supporters are most likely to find the idea attractive.  (Did I mention that it was a Labour MP raising the matter?)

Those not involved directly often fondly assume that all that canvassing at election time is about persuading people to vote for A or B.  It really isn’t.  Very little happens by way of persuasion; few people are swayed.  It is, rather, about identifying those who have already decided to vote for party A, increasing their motivation to go out and do the deed, and drawing up a list of people who can be cajoled on election day.  If voting were to be compulsory, there would probably be a lot less direct doorstep contact between politicians and electors.  Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing probably depends on one's perspective, of course.

But it isn’t really the job of the criminal law to make it easier for parties to get their supporters out to vote; it’s the job of the parties to make it feel worthwhile.

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.

Only the rich need apply

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It appears that some in government circles are starting to feel a little disappointed that most of the names emerging for the elections to the new posts of Police Commissioners are past or present party politicians.  Apparently, they had really hoped to see some strong independent characters coming forward, rather than simply having a traditional party battle.

I can understand that hope – after all, possible politicisation of the police is one of the main planks of opposition to their proposals.  But I cannot understand why they might have thought for a moment that there would ever be a significant number of non-aligned candidates.

Elections are the business of parties; parties are structured and organised precisely for that purpose.  They are also funded for that purpose.  And the areas covered by police forces are large, much larger than the average constituency; the chances of a one-person band ever communicating effectively with a significant proportion of the population are slim.

Why would anyone think that there would be many independent candidates who would be able to organise an election campaign over such a large area on anything like the same basis as a political party?  And how would they fund it – unless they are significantly wealthy in the first place?  I cannot imagine how anyone involved in politics could ever have expected the elections not to be dominated by party political candidates.

Parties and differences

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I never met Brynle Williams, but from the tributes paid to him, he obviously got along well with political friends and opponents alike.  I was struck by two points in particular in the glowing tributes paid to him.

The first was from Dafydd Elis Thomas, who said “he could have probably stood for at least three parties”.  He left unstated which one he was less certain about.  Some might jump to the conclusion that, as a Conservative and Unionist, the most likely party to be the odd one out in this context would be Plaid, although I rather suspect that Dafydd was actually thinking about the Labour Party.

The second quote was from Brynle’s former researcher, who went further and said “he could have fitted in to any party, and they’d all have been pleased to have him”.

The two quotes set me thinking, and I found myself wondering how many AMs I could think of who really could fit into one and only one party.  It wasn’t a very long list.  Then I thought about how many could actually slot quite easily into two, three, or even all four parties – and came up with a rather longer list.

The names on the lists are unimportant; no doubt some would agree with me on some, but not on others.  The point is that an ability to imagine some of our politicians fitting so easily into a multiplicity of parties tells us something about political positioning. 

The degree of consensus in the Bay is far too cosy, it seems to me. 

Ends and means

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The Jaxxlanders raise some good questions over the nature of the campaign messages for the referendum which is now a little over a fortnight away.  I’m not sure that there are any easy answers though.  And I think that some of the questions go beyond this particular referendum, and are a reflection on politics in general.

The post highlights two points in particular – the use of ‘celebrity’ endorsements and the vague appeal to patriotism.

I’ll admit to being dubious about the use of celebrity endorsements; I’ve never understood why the fact that one or another well-known person supports a particular outcome should in any way influence my own views.  We need to understand though - the simple fact is that the approach works.  If it didn’t, large companies wouldn’t be paying such enormous sums to the celebs to endorse their products.

The deeper question for me is whether we should really treat the marketing of a political viewpoint as being just like marketing a product.  The temptation of politicians to borrow proven marketing techniques and apply them to their own situation is obvious – but that doesn’t make it right. 

I suspect that one of the reasons that it works for the big brand names is that there is often very little of substance to choose between them.  Sadly, that’s increasingly true of politicians and parties as well – much of what passes for political philosophy these days consists of statements which could conceivably be made by any of the parties.  And there might well be a parallel there between Part 3 and Part 4 of the GOWA as well.  Faced with trying to explain what is not exactly a major constitutional change, resorting to proven marketing techniques is an obvious option.

As for the appeal to emotion – well, again, one would have to conclude that the approach works.  Much of Labour’s election campaigning in recent years – even as a party of government – was based around an appeal to an emotional and historical view of the Tories.  And within the target audience sector, I’d say that it worked.  The point is, though, that it doesn’t work outside that target audience – but if the target audience is big enough to carry the day, does it matter?

I think it does.  There’s a bit of ‘ends and means’ going on here.  If we focus entirely on getting the ‘right’ outcome (in this case a ‘yes’ vote on March 3^rd), then the techniques being used will probably help to achieve that.  What they will not do, though, is engage people in meaningful debate.  Few, if any, minds will be changed.

From the point of view of the protagonists, the end justifies the means (and I’d say much the same about the behaviour of the other side – they are ignoring the substance of the issue to concentrate on those arguments which they believe will deliver their preferred outcome).

I’ve noted before my own view that politics should be about choosing between alternative views of the future, not just choosing which set of politicians is going to implement a cosy consensual set of policies.  And that implies that the ‘means’ are as important as the end.  Whether in an election or in a referendum, changing minds is surely as important as winning votes.

However, changing minds is a long term process; a three week campaign is about identifying supporters and motivating them to vote.  The pity, in the context of the referendum, is that we’re having the three week campaign without that lengthier debate beforehand – and it doesn’t help that the referendum is being held at the wrong time on the wrong issue as well.

Big Ideas and Rhetoric

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Victoria Winckler’s post on the lack of big ideas in Welsh politics certainly provoked some responses in the coverage of it in the Western Mail.  I think she had a point, and that some of the responses are too defensive by far. 

I don’t accept that the ‘Big Society’ is a big idea, mind, which seemed to be the starting point for the discussion.  I’m not convinced that its supporters – or even its originator – really know what they mean by it; it’s always seemed to me more like an excuse for simply shrinking the public sector as rapidly as possible.  Insofar as it has any philosophy behind it, it’s thus more about cutting the public sector than about voluntary and community action, which is just presentational.

Back to Wales, however, and I tend to agree with her assertion that much of what the parties are saying really is more about managing things better rather than about any underlying philosophical differences.  Part of the reason for that is touched on in the comments by Professor Richard Wyn Jones in that there is a higher degree of consensus between the parties at a Welsh level than there is at a UK level. 

I’m not entirely convinced that it’s a ‘left of centre’ consensus and that the solution is to have ‘a more visible centre-right’ though.  I think I could equally suggest that the real problem is the lack of a credible left-wing alternative to centrist market-based policies.  It probably depends on where different people see the ‘centre’.

He’s right, though, to suggest that having our own law-making parliament is a big idea of sorts.  The problem with that is that what was once a ‘big idea’ espoused largely by one party has become a consensus supported by people in all parties (even if not by all the people in some parties); and the party which initially stood alone in pushing for full self-government has become increasingly unwilling to depart from the more recent consensus in favour of small incremental changes.  ‘Big idea’ it might be, but it’s not a ‘big idea’ which any longer differentiates meaningfully between parties.

As voters in the US discovered recently, there’s a difference between a ‘big idea’ and mere rhetoric; simply repeating words like ‘hope’, ‘change’, ‘radical’, and ‘transformation’ is really not the same thing as offering a substantive alternative.

I’m sure that all parties will be looking for striking policies to put in their manifestos for May’s election.  On the basis of past experience, I’d expect Plaid to come up with the most original ideas – the party has something of a track record on that score.  It isn’t the same thing as a ‘big idea’ though – it’s more about being imaginative and original within the confines of the current paradigm, when what we are really lacking is an alternative paradigm.

Hotelling’s Law goes some way towards explaining why a number of parties all seeking votes from the same people will tend to end up offering broadly similar policies, for fear of excluding some potential supporters.  It seriously limits the range within which product differentiation occurs unless one or more players is sufficiently brave to make a bold leap outside that range.

At the moment, I suspect that Victoria Winckler is right to doubt whether that will happen.