Morality in politics

Tweet In the first two elections that I can remember, those in 1964 and 1966, I was too young to vote.  But I can remember a certain amount of excitement at the time, and also some of the promises being made by the Labour Party under Wilson.  One of the headline policies was that Polaris, the UK’s nuclear-armed submarines, would be scrapped.  It didn’t happen, of course; and far from divesting the UK of its nuclear arsenal, the Labour Party have either taken, or been complicit in, every subsequent decision to modernise and replace the nuclear arsenal.  I ended up disillusioned with the promises of the Labour Party before I was even old enough to vote.

Although there has long been a strand in the Labour Party which has opposed the possession of nuclear weapons, and the issue looked like it might come to the fore again when Michael Foot was leader, time and time again the Labour Party has proved that it is not a serious party of disarmament, and with the other two main UK parties committed to retention as well, it has never really been an election issue for the last half a century.

The anticipated closeness of the coming election has created a situation where the Green Party, SNP, and Plaid can again put the matter on the agenda.  There’s a certain amount of posturing in this, of course (there is no conceivable outcome to the election which doesn’t result in a House of Commons containing an overwhelming majority in favour of the continued possession of nuclear weapons), and talk of ‘forcing’ the government into abandoning them is fanciful at best.  But at least it’s an issue which can be discussed in a way which hasn’t really happened for 50 years – and almost everyone in the UK looks like having an opportunity, at least, to vote for an anti-Trident candidate.

It’s hard to discuss the issue without getting into moral arguments.  For the three main UK parties, that’s something to be avoided at all costs.  For them, the ‘fact’ of deterrence is a given, the possession of these weapons is an inalienable right, and the only question is about the most cost-effective way of renewing them.  But for most opponents, there is always and inevitably a moral dimension to the debate.  

For the ‘deterrent’ to be in any way credible, those in charge of it have to be able to say convincingly that there are circumstances in which they would be prepared to give the order to obliterate whole cities. I have no doubt that Cameron, Clegg, and Miliband are all, in effect, saying that there are circumstances in which they would indeed be prepared to give that order, even if it meant killing millions of civilians whose only crime was to live in a particular place.

The comparison between the jobs provided by Trident and those provided at Auschwitz which was used by Dafydd Wigley earlier today was unfortunate, for a number of reasons.  The comparison is far from being a direct one and the timing on the day after the 70^th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz was awful.  It has also helped enable the cheer leaders for Trident to divert attention away from the morality of the possession of nuclear weapons and on to ground on which they feel more secure – criticising the poor choice of words of a political opponent.

Of course there's a huge difference between the actual deaths of the 6 million Jews slaughtered under Hitler’s orders, and the potential slaughter which would result from the use of nuclear weapons.  One is very real, it actually happened; the other is merely a potential scenario for the future.  But in the knowledge of the horrors of the past, the fact that any politician could seriously consider that it is ever right to threaten to unleash death and destruction on the scale of a nuclear war certainly makes me wonder whether we have really learned anything from the past.

Trident is more than just a technical matter; for many of us it is, at heart, a moral issue.  And I hope that those opposing it will continue to make that point, even if they need to choose their words with a little more care.

Nods, winks, and peers of the realm

Tweet I find it hard to believe that Elfyn Llwyd’s call last week for Plaid to have more peers was preceded by a great deal of consultation with his party’s leader, Leanne Wood.  Given her long-standing opposition to the nomination of peers, Elfyn’s call looks a little incongruous to say the least.  Still, not even Elfyn’s best friends or biggest fans would say that always being “on message” was one of his fortes. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing depends on your perspective, I suppose.  For party managers, being “off message” is always likely to be a problem, but for most others it probably depends on whether you agree with what he’s saying or not.

Personally, I agree with Elfyn and think Leanne is wrong on this one.  A party like Plaid has to choose between engaging with the institutions of the state and keeping them at arm’s length.  There are sound arguments for abstentionism, which was long a popular position amongst Irish nationalists.  However, there is little history of abstentionism in Wales, and it seems to me that if you’re going to engage with some institutions of the state you may as well engage with all of them and exercise as much influence as you possibly can.

On the substance of the critique of the existence and nature of the House of Lords itself  however, it would be hard to find any difference between Leanne and myself.  The fear is that appointing members serves to legitimise the institution, but a party which claims only to enter the House of Commons in order to secure Wales’ withdrawal from it can surely apply exactly the same argument to any other institution.  

Whatever, the real question which I wish to address here is the mysterious way in which the institutions of the British establishment work when it comes to the appointment of peers of the realm.

When Plaid chose three nominees for peerages (Dafydd Wigley, Eurfyl ap Gwilym, and Janet Davies), their details were passed through the murky “usual channels” to number 10 - and the then prime minister studiously ignored them.  That was, for a while, the end of the story.  I – and I think many others – believed that we had made our nominations, and that Brown was simply blocking them.

It turned out that we hadn’t actually “nominated” anyone at all; the PM was not ignoring our nominations because there were no nominations to ignore.  This only became clear after the election of Cameron as Prime Minister. 

Shortly after Cameron came to power, Ieuan Wyn Jones had an opportunity to lobby him for the appointment of Dafydd Wigley to the House of Lords.  (Although of course Dafydd had by then withdrawn his name, and was no longer one of Plaid’s nominees – but that’s another story).  Nods were nodded, winks were winked, it was made clear that the party would be allowed to submit one nomination, and in June 2010 I found myself presented with a nomination paper to complete and sign (political nominations have to be completed by party chairs - a revelation to me).

I really hadn’t realised that there was a formal channel available for submitting nominations to an allegedly independent panel.  Perhaps I should have known that – it would be a fair criticism of me that I hadn’t even made the effort to identify whether there was a formal process – but I’ll admit that I didn’t.

Anyway, after a brief hiatus while the NEC agreed to reinstate Dafydd Wigley as a party nominee - a precondition to my signing any nomination - the form was duly completed and submitted and, hey presto, three months later Dafydd’s peerage was duly confirmed after the said “independent panel” had given it their careful consideration.  In essence, despite the lengthy period which appeared to be passing from a public perspective, the actual period between formal nomination and appointment was a very short one.

It neatly illustrates the difference between the written-down formal process - which is the submission of a form, consideration by an independent panel, and appointment or rejection; and the actual process – which depends on a series of nods and winks from the right people before you even get to the starting block. 

Perhaps we should have challenged that more strongly at the time.  With the benefit of hindsight – and hindsight is always a wonderful thing – I think we should have accepted the nod and the wink, but pushed the boundaries by making three nominations at that point rather than just the one.  That would really have forced the establishment to either accept or else formally reject our nominations, rather than two of them remaining in a strange and continuing sort of limbo.

However we did not do that, and unless the other two nominations have been formally submitted since I stood down as Plaid’s chair in July 2010 (completing Wigley’s nomination was one of my final acts), I suspect that the party has only ever nominated one candidate.  So whilst I agree with the substance of what Elfyn says, in that Plaid should be more strongly represented in the second chamber, I’m not convinced that Plaid itself could not do more to achieve that if it really wanted to.  But that probably takes us right back to the question of whether Elfyn was speaking for his leader or not…

Sixes and sevens

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Even more ado about less

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I once met Lord Tebbit, albeit only in passing.  I was with Dafydd Wigley in the underground labyrinth which gives the basement of the Palace of Westminster the feel of a giant public convenience.  We were probably somewhere between ‘this house’ and ‘the other place’, when Tebbit appeared suddenly out of a side tunnel beaming from ear to ear.  He was regaling all and sundry (including Dafydd) with the news that their lordships had just inflicted a defeat on the (Tory) government of the day.

I can’t remember exactly what the subject was, but I have a vague recollection that it was a minor amendment to an obscure clause in some European legislation.  Oh, and that the government (as governments are wont to do) reversed the defeat in the Commons in due course.  It was a useful lesson in the way that some elected (or in this case, even unelected) members can get so institutionalised in the procedures and debates that they imbue the minutiae with a sense of importance which completely passes most of us by.  And they generally have difficulty understanding why the rest of us don’t care.

The incident came to mind in recent days during the reporting of discussions on the Welsh budget.  It’s another case of much ado about not very much at all.

We now know that the concessions secured by the Lib Dems amount to less than 0.2% of the entire Welsh budget, and that those demanded by Plaid amounted to somewhat less than 0.5% of the same budget.  We don’t really know what percentage change would have been needed to satisfy the Tories, but that doesn’t really matter.  Both Labour and Tory parties are far too tribal to have ever come to a deal with each other, even if it were to have been the cheapest deal of all.

I’m sure that the insignificance of the sums involved compared to the overall totals reflects a realistic and pragmatic approach to what was actually possible, and I don’t blame the Lib Dems (any more than I would have blamed Plaid) for accepting such a small change as the price for their support.  What I do blame all the opposition parties for, however, is the rhetoric in advance.

When they were telling us that they thought the budget was unacceptable, and that it didn’t meet the priorities of Wales it seems that what they really meant was that they thought the budget was over 99.5% acceptable and largely met the priorities of Wales.  It’s rather a different proposition.

It also highlights the real problem facing Welsh politics.  A budget isn’t the same as a programme, of course; but one would surely expect any radically different programme for government to come with much more significant budgetary differences than 0.5%.  In effect, during all the headline grabbing and posturing of the budget discussions, no party has put forward an alternative programme which is at odds in any major way with what Labour are planning to deliver. 

It seems that the smaller are the differences between them, the more attention gets drawn to them.  I’d sooner see less attention-grabbing and more real differences.