Beware those defending 'democracy'

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The arguments put forward by the Brexiteers at the time of the 2016 referendum were far from honest much of the time, but they did, at least, try and present the case as one with some benefits attached.  That has largely gone by the board by now, and they are reduced to the simplistic argument about democracy.  Never mind what people thought they were voting for, never mind the false prospectus they were sold, never mind that new facts and information have come to light since then, never mind that people might just have changed their minds, never mind the results of the subsequent parliamentary elections – from their simple perspective, ‘democracy’ demands that a vote, once taken, must be implemented.  This is likely – nay, certain – to be at the centre of their campaigning for the European elections and for any second referendum.  It’s probably as good a tactic as any for them to use; they can no longer win the argument about Brexit itself, so they’ll try and win an entirely different argument about something else, i.e. the meaning of ‘democracy’.

It means, though, that they have to gloss over some of the nuances of what that word ‘democracy’ means.  Farage provided an example of that yesterday in a speech in Clacton.  During the speech, he told the good people of Clacton – or at least, the audience who turned up, many of whom seemed to be from elsewhere – “Here you are, one of the biggest leave towns in the country and yet you are represented by a remainer. Doesn’t that sum up everything that is wrong in the country today?”  Leaving aside the accuracy of his claim that the local MP is actually a ‘remainer’ (accuracy never having been his strongest suit, and such evidence as is available is, at best, mixed), the flaw in his argument should be obvious to anyone who is really interested in ‘democracy’ – the current MP was elected with 61.2% of the vote in 2017, and although UKIP won the seat in the 2014 by-election and held it in the 2015 General Election, their candidate in 2017 ended up in third place with 7.6% of the vote.  (Details available here.)

Arguing that having the MP that the electors chose by such an enormous majority sums up “everything that is wrong in the country today” is not the argument of any sort of lover of democracy.  The voters were given the choice of a successor UKIP candidate to the retiring member, and only 7.6% of them decided to vote for him.  Demanding that people should only be allowed to vote for a committed Brexiteer – because that’s the way the town voted in the referendum – is a negation of democracy, not an affirmation of it.  What the election of a ‘remainer’ in a ‘leave’ town shows (if that’s really what has happened here) is that there’s a lot more to this democracy lark than a single vote on a single issue on a single day.  The bigger danger to democracy is from those like Farage who claim there isn’t more to it than that.

Facilitating the abolitionists

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The decision by UKIP to seek a referendum on abolishing the National Assembly, and to campaign in favour of abolition if such a referendum is held, can hardly come as a great surprise.  UKIP is, and always has been, an Anglo-British nationalist party in whose eyes the UK is a single nation.  And for many years, they argued that ‘devolution’ was all a dastardly EU plot to divide that single nation.  It’s rather more of a surprise for a politician of any party to say that he and his colleagues “...add no value to public life”, but then saying strange things is normal in the context of UKIP and expecting them to act on the logic of that assertion is wholly unrealistic.  We are talking about UKIP here.

They are, of course, perfectly entitled to campaign for the abolition of the Assembly, and for holding repeat referendums as part of that campaign.  It’s effectively an admission that a single referendum at a point in time can never amount to an absolute determination of a question for all time - but expecting them to accept the consequences of that in other contexts is also wholly unrealistic.  We are, after all, talking about UKIP here.  But, if they can ever get a majority in the Assembly for their viewpoint, then a referendum probably becomes inevitable.  It’s highly unlikely as things stand, although we need to remember that, just a few years ago, Brexit also looked highly unlikely.  Nevertheless, the prospect of a party or parties denying the existence of a distinct Welsh nation – let alone opposing any form of political expression for that nationality – winning a majority in the Assembly isn’t something which worries me unduly at present.  I’m more concerned about the current majority, which is made up of parties who seem to be forever seeking to put limits on that political expression.  Condemning UKIP for arguing for an extreme isn’t enough to cover their own complicity in the current state of affairs; and perpetuating a system in which the Assembly is open to criticism for failures some of which stem directly from its own lack of power is the breeding ground from which UKIP’s statement flows.

Pre-conditions for referendums

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There has been some confusion about UKIP's policy in relation to the National Assembly.  Actually, I could have written that sentence without the words "in relation to the National Assembly", and on everything except their core policy of Brexit, it would still have made sense.  Yesterday, the party's UK leader half backed the suggestion from the Welsh leader that the Assembly should be abolished, by calling for a referendum.  This is hardly a surprise; it's not so very long since UKIP were claiming that the very existence of the Assembly was all part of a vile plot by those dastardly Europeans to regionalise the UK, completely ignoring decades of agitation for a national legislature for Wales.

There is nothing at all wrong with making such a call - they have as much democratic right to call for such a referendum as I do to call for a referendum on abolishing Westminster's control over Wales (which is the effect of a referendum on independence).  The fact that we have had referendums in the past is not - and should not be - any bar to having another one if it appears that opinions have changed.  It would be nice, though, if they'd recognise that a similar rule should apply to Brexit - if one decision brought about  by referendum can be changed by a further referendum, there is no logical justification for saying that the same isn't true for another decision taken by referendum.  I don't really expect them to understand that, mind: logic and UKIP are not words generally used in the same sentence.

There is, though, a condition which they need to meet first, and it's the same condition which we independentistas also need to meet.  To hold a referendum on either proposition requires there to be a majority of AMs in the Assembly committed to that proposition by manifesto commitment.  It's a wholly reasonable bar to set as a means of determining whether opinion is moving in a particular direction.  It's not one that I see much hope of them crossing though.

Devolution as EU plot

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The new leader of UKIP in the Assembly has made clear his belief that his victory in the internal election was a direct result of his policy of abolishing the Assembly and that he now expects the whole party to fall into line behind him and support that policy line.  In a party with so few members, his 269-vote mandate is probably enough to carry the day and revert to the anti-devolution position that the party long maintained.  The real surprise is not so much that the party is swinging back towards hostility to devolution as that it ever made its fragile peace with the concept in the first place.  Still, as individuals and as a party, they have every right to campaign for the abolition of the Assembly, and indeed for the elimination of the Welsh language and all signs of Welsh identity if they wish.  It’s up to those of us who disagree to make the positive counter arguments, something which necessarily involves rather more than name-calling.

It’s not so long ago that UKIP were arguing that devolution in Wales was all part of an evil plot by the EU to divide and conquer.  Indeed, just two months ago, UKIP Scotland was still arguing that Brexit would expose “… the Scottish Parliament and devolution for what it really is. An EU plot to by-pass National Parliaments and create a Europe of Regions”, and that “Outside the EU there is no need for the devolved assemblies” because “All the assemblies have ever done is administrate and implement EU legislation”.

Their basis for this strange belief has always been a complete mystery to me; it’s as though the history of campaigning for domestic parliaments in Wales and Scotland before the EU was even established is somehow completely erased, and the national movements only sprang into existence at the instigation of the EU in order to help those horrid Brussels bureaucrats implement their dastardly plans.  It also somewhat glosses over the less-than-helpful response of ‘Brussels’ to the campaign for Catalan independence – if they really wanted to create a ‘Europe of the Regions’, an objective observer might suppose that they’d be actively supporting a movement for independent membership of the EU by a ‘region’ like Catalunya.

As another line in the statement by UKIP Scotland makes clear (“For the first time in 40 years, people are realising that sovereignty and legislative supremacy lies in the UK Parliament”), the party’s outlook is based very much on a centralist Anglo-British nationalist perspective.  From that perspective, the idea that anyone could ever espouse an identity which is any way different is anathema; it is the state which defines and gives identity, and the people must accept that.  And the British state is the only ‘natural’ unit of government - there should be nothing above and nothing below that level; independence and sovereignty are absolute and indivisible and belong to the centre.  We should remember though that it’s not only in UKIP that we find this dangerous form of nationalism; UKIP is merely the party which displays it most clearly.  There are plenty in the Conservative and Labour Parties whose core beliefs differ little when it comes to the question of where sovereignty lies.

Proving the wrong point by accident

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That strange fellow Nathan Gill kindly sent me a leaflet through the post this week.  Well, I say ‘sent me’, but I’m guessing that ‘he’ has gone to the enormous expense of sending this to every household in Wales.  But more of that a little later.

The leaflet purports to tell us why the single market is a poor idea, and how we voted to leave it last June, but it’s packed full of statements which are, to say the least, ‘contentious’.  It would take too long to deal with all of them here, but I’ll pick on two in particular:

He tells us categorically that “The UK Government will match £3bn subsidies [for farmers] after Brexit.”  Really?  Has that been confirmed by the government yet?  Because I rather thought that the Leave campaign had told us that all the money we send to Brussels was going to be diverted to the NHS after Brexit.  Perhaps the lettering on the side of that infamous bus was just so small that I read it incorrectly.

“Both Leave and Remain said that leaving the EU meant leaving the Single Market.”  Now, if he’d said that campaigners (i.e. some campaigners, not all campaigners) on both sides of the debate had said that, then he’d be telling the truth, albeit not the whole truth.  But claiming in a blanket fashion that both campaigns said it is a long way from the truth, because I could point to campaigners (on both sides) who said the precise opposite.  I actually agree that leaving the EU whilst remaining in the single market isn’t really leaving (BINO, it’s now apparently being called by some: Brexit In Name Only) – it’s just not what many of them said at the time.

But anyway, back to the munificence of Mr Gill and ‘his’ funding of this little leaflet.  Although the UKIP logo appears at the bottom, the main logo on the leaflet is that of the EFDD group in the European Parliament.  And my guess is that it is that group, funded by the EU itself (out of our contributions), which has paid to send this missive to around 1.3 million households in Wales.  Still, in a rather curious way, I suppose that for the EU to fund a leaflet containing what is, shall we say, ‘misleading’ information about itself does in some small way support the UKIP critique of wasteful spending of the money which we pay in by some of the politicians in the EU parliament.  I’m sure that isn’t quite what Mr Gill intended to demonstrate though.

Differing in degree, not in kind

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The Prime Minister is determined to stick to her unachievable pledge to reduce net immigration to an arbitrary level of ‘under 100,000’ per annum.  In the meantime, the provisional wing of her party, aka UKIP, has plumped for an equally arbitrary level of zero.  Both figures have merely been plucked from thin air in an attempt to appease voters who don’t like foreigners, and both are justified by the use of the magic word ‘sustainable’, a word whose use is, apparently, enough to justify anything with no further explanation required.  The difference between these two policies is not one of kind, merely one of degree – an arbitrary target for net migration levels regardless of economic impact is exactly that, at whatever level it is set. 

Both parties rehearse the usual arguments; no matter how many times they’ve been rationally and logically dissected, analysed, and debunked, they appeal to a sector of the electorate and are therefore wheeled out time and again.  I haven’t, in the past, paid too much attention to the detail of UKIP policy statements, but based on what has happened over recent years, UKIP’s policy today is probably just a foretaste of Tory Party policy and arguments for the next election. 

One of the arguments that UKIP make is that England is the "sixth most overcrowded country in the world".  I assume that they’re talking about relative population density, but I can’t make any sense of this claim.  This data from the Office of National Statistics says that the average population of England is 413 per square km, and this table shows the countries of the world, which can be ranked in order of population density.  The UK is obviously there as a single entity in 51^st position, but if we use the England-only figure, it would be in 31^st position, between Burundi and the Netherlands.  Even if we exclude those overseas territories which are not sovereign countries from the list, I still can’t get England to a higher position than around 17 or 18.

But let’s put aside the mere detail of the claim about England’s position in the table of overcrowding, and turn to the essence of the claim itself – which is that England is ‘overcrowded’.  What exactly does that mean?  Clearly, anyone who believes that country A is ‘overcrowded’ must have at least some idea of what the ‘right’ population level for that country is, but I’ve never heard them answering that one, and I don’t know how they could or would.  It’s an utterly meaningless statement which still manages to appeal to many of those hearing it, usually as a rationalisation of a much baser instinct.

We should also come back to the fact that they are quite deliberately talking only about ‘England’ here.  In Wales (149 per square km), Northern Ireland (135) and Scotland (68), the situation is very different.  Do they think we’re overcrowded as well?  If they do, then merely controlling net migration isn’t going to help them get the English population down to their imaginary ideal level – and if they don’t, then why apply a policy based on the situation in England?  I doubt that they’ve given a moment’s thought to that question.

Part of the problem in all of the discussion about immigration is that the Tories and UKIP do have one valid underlying point, albeit one that they’re failing to grasp other than in a highly distorted fashion.  It is this: if the population in a country is growing and the provision of services is not, then there will be additional pressures on health and other services.  (It’s also true that a country with an aging population will face greater pressures on services such as health and social care.)

That statement is surely indisputable, and the resulting pressures are regularly used as arguments by those opposing immigration.  But that is ignoring the key caveat about matching the growth in provision of services to the growth in population.  If services do not keep pace with the requirements of a growing population, it’s because the government presiding over the situation is neither planning nor providing adequate services.  When people blame immigrants, they’re diverting attention from the failure of successive governments to make adequate provision.  Whose interests does that serve, I wonder?

Heads they lose, tails they also lose

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The prospects for Labour in the Stoke by-election are apparently not looking good, and many are predicting that UKIP may take the seat.  Time will tell; but it seems to be causing a degree of panic in Labour ranks already, with some predicting this as the first of the dominoes.  The reaction, by and large, is to argue that Labour have to follow the opinion of the electorate even more closely than they have been doing to date, in order to shore up their own vote and attract votes from the Tories and UKIP.

I’m not at all convinced by the idea that electors carefully weigh up the policy positions of the different parties before casting their vote.  Decades of experience of actually talking to voters on doorsteps has led me to believe that perceptions, prejudices, and history have at least as much to do with it.  The classic example was the gentlemen who told me that he and his wife would be voting Plaid “because Labour and the Tories gave away the empire”.  (The only possible response was to thank him politely and move on to the next house…)  The idea that electors are carefully studying manifestoes and policies before coming to a rational decision owes more to theory than to practice.

But, just for a moment, let’s suppose that the situation is otherwise; that electors en masse are indeed deciding how to vote based on whether the parties’ policy positions match their own views.  We know that around two-thirds of all those who voted Labour in the 2015 election went on to vote ‘remain’ in the EU referendum.  That means that Labour ‘lost’ around one-third of their vote to the opposing camp.  I can see why they’d want to get those people back – but merely switching sides and supporting the Brexit demanded by one-third of their own support means going against the views of the other two-thirds.  In our scenario of rational vote decisions, aren’t they in danger of losing more than they gain?

The first counter argument would be that even 100% of the support that they gained in 2015 wasn’t enough; they need to eat into the support of their opponents in order to get a majority in parliament.  That’s true, in simple mathematical terms.  But not all of those who voted against them went on to support Brexit and a clamp-down on freedom of movement.  And in targeting the section of the electorate which did, aren’t they, again, in danger of losing much of the support that they already have?

The second counter argument would be that there is a base level of support that will always be with them, whatever they say and do.  It’s what has often, rather unkindly, been called the ‘donkey vote’, on the basis that this group would vote for a donkey if it was wearing a Labour rosette.  Again, it’s probably true, but it means refining our starting scenario.  We are now assuming that the majority of voters will vote based on perception, prejudice, history etc., but that there are a minority to whom a change of policy will appeal, and it is this group to which Labour’s new-found enthusiasm for Brexit and control of freedom of movement is designed to appeal.

That feels more realistic, but it raises another question.  If this group of electors can really be persuaded to support one party over another based largely on whether the parties in question support Brexit and immigration controls, why on earth would they switch their alliance from UKIP or the Tories, who are clearly committed to that position, to a party which looks as though it is adopting that position with the sole intention of shoring up its vote?  Why vote for an imitation rather than the real thing?

It seems to me that the rush by Labour to jump on the bandwagon is doomed to fail.  It is not only unlikely to attract those who have long been hostile to immigration and the EU; it is also likely to repel those who see the benefits of both.  Worst of all, it legitimises and reinforces the UKIP message.  Yet still some people in Wales insist on portraying Labour as a ‘progressive’ force.

Honesty isn't just avoiding lies

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Just a few days ago, Dafydd Elis Thomas said that the deal between Plaid and UKIP to vote for Leanne Wood to become First Minister triggered his departure from Plaid.  At the time of that vote, Plaid denied that there had been any such deal, and even last week – in direct response to what Dafydd said – a Plaid spokesperson claimed that “Leanne Wood has made no approach to UKIP at any stage…”.  Then, yesterday, we had the story in the Western Mail based on an interview with Adam Price in which Adam stated very clearly that he had approached UKIP to ask for their support, which was forthcoming.

‘Truth’ in politics can be an elusive beast, and it is, just about, possible to argue that no-one has told any lies here.  There’s nothing directly inconsistent between the statement that Leanne Wood made no approach and the admission that Adam Price did; and if one defines a ‘deal’ as being something of a reciprocal nature, then if UKIP and the Tories were offered nothing in return for their votes, it’s possible to argue that there was no deal done.

However…  There’s more to honesty than merely avoiding telling lies, and to date, Plaid have striven to give the impression that the decisions by UKIP and the Tories to support Plaid’s nominee in that vote were taken independently and were not the result of any request for support from Plaid.  That impression has now been revealed to be at some distance from the truth.

Does it matter?  Well yes, it does matter to some of us at least if a party which claims honesty and transparency as virtues is revealed to be behaving in a fashion which is at odds with that claim; and it matters if that party then wants us to trust it on other issues.  It’s arguable, though, that this is just froth, and there’s a deeper issue here.

It is a fact of life that, in a legislative body where one party or group holds half the seats and the other half are split between three parties or groups, effective scrutiny will be improved if those opposition parties are willing to talk to each other from time to time, and – yes, even agree on tactics on occasions.  That doesn’t mean adopting common policy positions on what should be done, but it doesn’t preclude united opposition on things which all of them oppose.  It’s a negative approach to a government programme, but on an exceptional basis, there’s nothing wrong with the opposition uniting in that way.

The real problem that this highlights for me is that all of those concerned understand this reality but all are determined, for presentational reasons, to deny it, not least because all of them have, at different times, played the silly game of “he voted with her”.  And they play that game because they believe that we will swallow it.  So in a sense, it’s all the fault of the voters… 

Elections and arguments

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There is much on which I would disagree with Jeremy Corbyn.  He has, though, struck one of the more sensible notes amongst politicians in his refusal to set any sort of numerical limit on immigration, but to pay attention instead to how we respond to any problems caused.  He’s ploughing a lone furrow, however.  Even most of his own party seem to disagree with him, with our own First Minister declaring last week that Corbyn is out of touch with Labour voters, and that however things might look from London, they look different here.  The First Minister is right on that last point, although not perhaps in the way he intended.  The key difference between London and Wales on this issue is that London has a great deal of immigration, and Wales has very little, but I doubt that that is what he meant.

Carwyn Jones didn’t tell us what he thinks that the limit on immigration should be, or how it should be set.  He also didn’t give us the benefit of his views on why immigration is such a bad idea – assuming that he really believes that it is (and he surely wouldn’t want controls if he doesn’t, would he?).  All he told us was, in essence, that Labour voters are against immigration and might vote for UKIP if Labour doesn’t copy the basics of UKIP’s policy.  I wouldn’t personally describe that as a particularly sound basis for policy-making, but I suppose it’s part of what they mean when they say that policy should be ‘evidence-based’.  There’s plenty of evidence that voters don’t like immigration, after all.

Yesterday, disappointingly, Plaid added its two-penn’orth to the anti-immigration argument.  It was more nuanced, and prefaced with a sensible statement that some immigration is good, but it ultimately came down to saying that we should be ‘picky’ about who can migrate, and that we should try and retain an ‘element of’ free movement.  I’m not at all sure that one can have ‘an element’ of any type of freedom; it sounds like it comes from the same school of thought as the idea that a woman can be ‘slightly’ pregnant.  Some things are binary – they either exist or they don’t.

In this case, freedom of movement which is constrained by governments being picky or setting criteria isn’t freedom of movement at all; it’s a privilege granted only to some.  Privilege and freedom aren’t at all the same thing.

So, we have a situation where UKIP, the Tories, Labour and Plaid are now all agreed that freedom of movement is a bad thing and should be constrained; the difference between them is about numbers and criteria - about how many should be accorded the privilege and how they should be selected.  That’s a question of detail, not principle.  The details are not insignificant, and I’m not arguing that they’re not important; but we do need to understand the distinction between a difference of degree and a difference of principle.

The First Minister was at least honest enough to admit, in effect, that his case isn’t based on economics or any other particular impact which immigration might be having on Wales; it is based entirely on party electoral considerations.  I suspect the same is true of Plaid, although it wasn’t made that explicit.

It might be, of course (and it is only a might – this is far from certain), that adopting a watered down version of UKIP’s central argument will help to stop that party gaining further traction.  But that isn’t the same thing as countering their arguments.  In fact, it’s quite the reverse.  Adopting the anti freedom of movement position of UKIP not only fails to counter their argument, it actually legitimises it, reinforces it, and brings it into the mainstream of politics. 

Defeating the arguments of parties like UKIP isn’t simply about keeping them out of power by implementing milder forms of their policies, it’s about getting out and explaining why those policies are damaging and dangerous.  It’s about concepts and ideologies, not just electoral outcomes.  They may well lose the elections, but there’s a danger that they’re winning the battle of ideas, and that their ‘opponents’ are helping them to do so.

I agree with Nige...

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There’s an old saying that if an infinite number of monkeys had an infinite number of typewriters, sooner or later one of them would type out the complete works of Shakespeare in the correct order.  It’s not quite on that scale, but if Nigel Farage says enough things, then sooner or later I’m likely to agree with something, at least in part.  Yesterday, he said that he suspected the Conservative Government "is not fit for the legacy of Brexit".  I agree.  The question which then arises, though, is whether there is any other conceivable government, composed of members of the current House of Commons, which would be more fit to deal with that legacy.  And the supplementary question is whether any new parliament which might be elected would be any better.  Given that neither the remainers nor the leavers seem to have much clue, I doubt both.

There is a sketch doing the rounds which seems to many to sum up the situation in which we find ourselves.  It’s exaggerated, of course; most of the best humour is.  But like all good humour, there is a core point which strikes home, and that is that those who argued for this situation haven’t a clue what to do next and seem to expect everyone else to solve the problems that they have created.  Their justification is that it’s ‘democracy’; the majority have chosen a course of action, and it’s up to everyone to rally round to make it work.  There are other ways of looking at the same thing, though.  If a man is about to jump over a cliff, do you assist him or try and talk him out of it?  The answer of all of those opponents of Brexit who say that we must accept the result would seem to be that we should jump with him.

Farage also said that British politics would suffer “another big seismic shock” if Brexit isn’t delivered by the next election in 2020.  I think that he’s probably right to doubt whether the UK will have left the EU by then, unless the extremists get their way and the UK simply walks out one day and worries about the consequences afterwards.  There are too many complex issues to be resolved, and the two year timescale was always entirely arbitrary.  But whether that leads to a seismic shock depends on a range of factors which are unknowable at this stage. 

Will there still be a majority for Brexit as the details become clearer?  Given UKIP’s current propensity for implosion, will there still be a viable political party able to capitalise on that?  I don’t know the answer to either of those questions.  I’m fairly confident, however, that if those who think that Brexit is the wrong thing to do keep saying that the result cannot be changed, and restrict debate solely to the terms of the exit, they make the Farage scenario more likely, not least because they do nothing to persuade people to turn away from the path on which they have set us all.

Perhaps we should stop pretending

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It’s a long-standing tradition in the UK that diplomats are career civil servants, and that ambassadors are appointed from within the civil service.  The argument is that they are politically neutral, and represent the government of the day of whatever colour.  (Although some would argue that this is part of the reason why UK foreign policy changes little when governments change, whatever the ministers may wish.  ‘Real’ policy is controlled by that ‘neutral’ civil service.)  The United States, on the other hand, has a long tradition under which ambassadors are political appointments; when the government changes, the voice of that government abroad also changes.

I can see merit in both approaches; it’s not as simple as saying that one is right and the other wrong.  What I don’t see much merit in, though, is for governments to appoint as their voice overseas people who agree with, and will kow-tow to, the government of the country in which they work, which seems to be what Trump has in mind.  Can anyone imagine his response if the UK Government were to suggest that Hillary Clinton would be quite a good appointment as US ambassador to the UK?

Having said that, if the UK were to move to a political basis for appointments, then it’s clear that we have recently had a change of government, and some of the policy changes between Cameron and May look to be more significant than they would have been if Miliband had been elected last year.  It seems to me that we have what looks increasingly like a UKIP government in all but name – get out of the EU at any price, clamp down on immigration, reintroduce grammar schools, say whatever is thought might be popular, and make up policy on the hoof, just for starters – so perhaps a UKIP ambassador to the US doesn’t really look as silly as many might think.  Farage is probably closer to the views of the current government than any civil servant would be - it’s just that people pretend he isn’t.

Standing up to bullies

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Imagine, just for one brief moment, that the outcome of the referendum on June 23^rd had been the other way round – same percentages, but with Remain winning.  Does anyone believe, for one moment, that those who believe that the UK should leave the EU would have simply shrugged their shoulders, accepted defeat, and moved on?  Or that UKIP would have dissolved itself (through a formal process rather than the chaos with which they currently seem to be achieving the same end), and Euro peace would have broken out in the Conservative Party?  It’s a nice thought, but it’s well divorced from reality, isn’t it?

But, effectively, acceptance that a one-off decision is final and irrevocable is what the actual winners now expect of the losing side; they expect others to display an approach and attitude which they would never have displayed themselves.  ‘The people have spoken’, they declare, and everyone who disagrees must now shut up and throw themselves with enthusiasm into achieving what the majority decided. 

That would be bad enough if it were only coming from the extremists in the Leave camp; but it isn’t.  Even the UK Prime Minister is saying much the same thing, despite having claimed in advance that this outcome was the wrong one for the UK – and not just saying it, but going out of her way to try and close off any options for reversing the decision.  Even worse are the headlines in some of the tabloids; intolerance of dissent on this issue is rapidly becoming the accepted norm, even to the extent of pillorying judges for the ‘crime’ of upholding the constitutional position that domestic UK law cannot be changed other than by act of parliament, which is, in essence, all that they actually decided.

It increasingly feels as though they’re trying to take us back into some sort of ‘golden age’ where people knew their place and believed what they were told to believe; a time when Britannia ruled the waves and the sun never set.  Restoring that overseas ‘glory’ is, fortunately, well beyond their capability (even if they don’t yet all realise that), but domestically, we’re seeing what amounts to a form of bullying of anyone with an alternative view, as a means of achieving that end.  But the way to tackle bullies isn’t by giving in to them.

No real surprise

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I really don’t understand why anyone in Welsh politics would be in the least surprised at the strength of the leave campaign.  This particular writing has been on the wall for several years now.  The European election of 2014; the UK general election of 2015; the Welsh general election of 2016 – three successive elections where the level of support for UKIP has been at a high level, and all the while we have also known that many of those voting Tory shared many of the same views. 

It feels somehow as though the Welsh political establishment has been ignoring the facts; viewing Welsh politics not through the prism of what is actually happening, but through the prism of an attachment to the old idea of Welsh radicalism and internationalism.  It would be true, of course, that not all of those voting for UKIP in three successive elections actually agree with UKIP on everything; and no doubt, there are even some who disagree with the idea of quitting the EU.  But the growth in support for that party surely suggests a growth in support for its key aim as well – this isn’t a surprise which has somehow crept up on us.

In the same story, Chris Grayling claimed that he’d spoken to many people in the valleys of south Wales “who face the consequences of migration into this area”.  Really?  I don’t doubt that hostility to immigration is driving much of the leave campaign, but still, this looks like another made up sound bite – because immigration into that part of Wales is close to zero.  And that highlights another interesting factor – some of the highest votes for UKIP in recent elections in Wales have come from the areas where the level of immigration is at its lowest.  Whatever is driving opposition to immigration in those areas, it isn’t direct exposure to it or its effects.

There may be a general truth here – what people oppose and fear is precisely that with which they are unfamiliar; there seems to be more tolerance and acceptance of immigrants when they actually appear.  How else can we try to explain why hostility is at its highest in areas where there is least to be hostile towards?

Perhaps I’m being unduly pessimistic; perhaps come Thursday, the result won’t be as close as the polls suggest.  Perhaps.  But whatever the outcome, we all need to recognise that Welsh politics, like UK politics, has changed over the last few years, and not for the better.  Dark forces have been unleashed, and we need to start addressing that, not pretending that Wales is somehow ‘different’ or immune to this type of change.

Geographically challenged?

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The language used by UKIP’s leader in the Assembly yesterday was certainly unacceptable, and it’s not the level of debate to which the Assembly is accustomed.  From what I’ve seen of Australian politics, however, it might be considered fairly tame; the bar down under seems to be set much lower than it is in Wales.  Maybe people are being a little harsh on UKIP in the early days of the new Assembly – after all, South Wales and New South Wales sound very similar.  Surely it’s unfair to expect UKIP’s commuting AMs to know the difference this soon in their term of office?

Accident or design?

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

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

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

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

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

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

What a stroke of luck

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I find it hard to imagine that any sovereign parliament, anywhere in the world, would allow someone who doesn’t live in the country, and who has no intention of moving to live there, to be elected as a member, to draw a salary of £84,000 a year for the privilege, and to appoint his spouse to run his office on another generous salary.  Aren’t we lucky in Wales that those nasty nationalists haven’t succeeded in making the Assembly a sovereign parliament?

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.

Who's controlled from London?

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In advance of yesterday’s great debate between Carwyn Jones and Nigel Farage, the First Minister told us that UKIP are a threat to Wales.  I agree (although I might also apply the same phrase to the Labour Party, whilst I suspect that Carwyn would not). 

He also said that UKIP are “very much controlled from their party headquarters in London.  There’s no other party in Wales that’s like that.”  I’m not so sure about the truth of that one – the words that popped into my mind were pots and kettles.  There is after all no such thing as “Welsh Labour”; it’s merely a ‘local brand’ used by the British Labour Party.  It keeps no separate accounts, is funded from Party HQ in London, and is only ‘allowed’ to debate issues which are devolved to the Assembly.

Perhaps he just has a different definition of ‘controlled from London’ than I do. 

More about Labour than UKIP

Tweet We heard on Monday that an “internal Labour analysis” is projecting that unless the party does more to counter UKIP, it could lose control of the Assembly in next May’s elections.  The first question that crossed my mind was about how genuine the analysis is.  From experience, it’s not unknown for people with an axe to grind to invent ‘internal’ documents with the specific aim of ‘leaking’ them to a friendly journalist.  But let’s assume for a moment that this one really is genuine.  On the basis of that assumption, it raised two other issues for me.

The first is that, looking at the detail of the newspaper report, the fear within Labour is that, if UKIP do well, Labour will lose seats to the Tories, Plaid, or the Lib Dems.  To anyone and everyone, really.  But on the numbers being quoted, that can only happen if Labour voters are over-represented amongst those switching to UKIP.  I find that entirely credible – the idea that there is some sort of reservoir of support for Labour which can never be attracted by the political ‘right’ is one that I’ve argued against previously.  It still surprises me, though, to see any Labour source admitting that what UKIP says is likely to be more attractive to Labour voters than to supporters of other parties.

And the second is that, even if UKIP do win 8 or 9 seats – as currently seems possible – and Labour fall to around 26 in consequence, in what sense does that mean that Labour will ‘lose control’ of the Assembly?  It would certainly mean that there would be more non-Labour members than Labour members – a balance of 34:26 – but if that 34 really does include 8 or 9 UKIP members, can anyone really foresee any outcome other than a Labour-led government?  Whether as a minority or in some sort of arrangement with Plaid or the Lib Dems (if there are any of the latter left), it is inconceivable on the basis of current polling that we will not still have a Labour First Minister after the elections.

For sure, without a clear overall majority, they will have to come to accommodations with one or other party to get their budget approved, and they may have to modify some of their legislative proposals; but the number of occasions when all 34 opposition AMs line up together to oppose Labour seems likely to be minimal.  Labour will still be in control, even if not as absolutely as they might like.

And that brings me back to my doubts about the bone fides of the leaked “analysis”.  No-one in Labour can really doubt the outcome any more than I do, and anyone in a position to be producing official (or even semi-official) analyses from the party would understand that.  Is the real story here more to do with Labour’s internal battles, and an attempt to undermine Corbyn by blaming him in advance for any success enjoyed by UKIP?

Radical Wales?

Tweet Looking at the share of the vote obtained by the different parties in Wales last Thursday, one thing which obviously stands out is how well UKIP did, despite winning no seats.  Taking the chart of percentages from Roger Scully’s blog, in a fully proportional election the numbers of seats won by each party would have been as follows (with the actual numbers shown in brackets):

Labour                       15        (25)

Conservative               11        (11)

UKIP                           5          (0)

Plaid                           5          (3)

Lib Dems                     3          (1)

Green                          1          (0)

It’s not an entirely valid projection of course.  There would only be a fully proportional result if there was a single national list for Wales, and as far as I’m aware, no-one is suggesting that there should be.  Any system which includes a number of multi-member constituencies across Wales will end up delivering a less proportional result than that.  But the key point to draw from this is that Labour remains significantly over-represented by share of vote, and the losers are UKIP, Plaid, the Lib Dems, and the Greens.  Interestingly, the Tories’ share of seats actually matches their share of the votes.

The second thing that I draw out of that table is that the combined number of seats for the Tories and UKIP would be higher than that for Labour – broadly speaking, the parties generally held to be ‘of the right’ (a term with which I’m far from happy, and which needs further discussion in itself, but which I’m using here as shorthand) outpolled the Labour Party, a repeat of the result in the European election (which, because of the lower turnout, was far too easy to ignore).

Even under first past the post, looking at the results in individual constituencies, if Tory and UKIP voters had, in each case, voted for the higher placed candidate of the two, Labour would have lost an additional 8 seats to the Tories – a result which would have left Labour on 17 and the Tories on 19.  Again, that’s an unrealistic analysis, because votes are not that easily transferable between parties, and there are a whole series of reasons behind the UKIP vote which aren’t all down to supporting a party of the right.

But it reinforces the point arising from the table above – there were more people in Wales prepared, for whatever reason, to vote for a party ‘of the right’ than for the Labour party.  And that is a truly remarkable outcome in Wales, underlining the fact that the result was far, far worse for Labour than the overall drop of 1 seat suggests.

I draw three things from this.

Firstly, for decades now the Labour Party in Wales has depended heavily on the fact that they are ‘not the Conservatives’.  There has been a demonization of that party and all those associated with it, based largely on folk memories which are becoming weaker with each passing generation.  But it’s a demonization based on ‘being Conservatives’, not on ideology or policy or actions, which means that if another party comes along which is also ‘not the Conservatives’, even if its ideology is very similar to that of the Tories, the demonization doesn’t readily transfer.  The very superficiality of Labour’s core message in Wales now works against them.  And it’s more than possible that many former Labour supporters, who have been convinced never to vote for the Tories, have been quite happy to vote UKIP as a result.

Secondly, much that Labour said during the election (and Plaid, too, come to that) was based on an assumption that there is a set of communal (broadly ‘social democratic’) values in Wales which is widely shared.  In that context, the electoral appeal needs only to speak to those values to motivate people to vote, and the debate is about which party (Labour or Plaid) can best speak to those values.  But the assumption is profoundly wrong; the romantic image of a radical electorate in Wales is more myth than fact.  Even if it was right a few decades ago, it isn’t now (and I say that with regret, rather than any feeling of pleasure).  But by only speaking to those who hold those values, any party which assumes them to be general has ended up speaking to a diminishing proportion of the electorate in wide swathes of Wales. 

And thirdly, there is a reservoir of Tory support in Wales which is bigger than many of us have chosen to believe.  It’s been there a long time, albeit not always visible – ‘why vote when the votes for Labour are going to be weighed rather than counted?’ has been the view of some of them in the past.  And it’s growing, for reasons which this post is too short to cover.

Whilst politics in Scotland and England are diverging, the opposite is true here – at Westminster level, Welsh politics is becoming increasingly similar to English politics (outside a handful of constituencies where the Welsh language remains strong).  The supposed difference has been taken as read for too long already.  

The values which were prevalent in the past need to be fought for and sold to people, not simply taken for granted; but elections have become too superficial for that to happen.  They’ve become more to do with reinforcing existing views and motivating supporters to vote than with winning people over to a different view.  That doesn’t mean that people’s political standpoints don’t change; it just means that the changes happen outside the formal political process and that political parties are not the main influencers.  And allowing that to happen will always help the ‘right’ rather than the ‘left’.

The danger in the analyses which parties will be making in the aftermath of this election will be that they arrive at the right answer to the wrong question.  Instead of asking how they change people’s values and viewpoints, they will ask how they appeal to people with a different set of values.  That’s precisely what New Labour was all about.  But what we need is a different future, not just the same future under alternative leaders.