Unity of purpose

Tweet In his visit to Wales yesterday, Labour’s new leader said that his party was united, a statement which has caused some raised eyebrows, given the recent shenanigans within the parliamentary party.  But in one important sense, he’s right.  There is a high degree of unity within the Labour Party in wishing to win elections and form the next government.  The only areas of disagreement are about how they will achieve that and what they will actually do if they achieve it.  In the grand scheme of what politics has become, those are only minor little matters.  Aren’t they?

Comrades in arms?

Tweet The report that Wales’ First Minister will no longer be extending an invitation to base the Trident nuclear weapons submarines in Wales is welcome, albeit belated.  It’s not entirely clear whether his change of heart is a reflection of the views of his new boss, or merely a recognition that an off-the-cuff remark in a debate in the Senedd, intended merely to score a political point in debate, came to look rather silly after the event.  It always looked more like a case of foot-in-mouth disease than a thought-through policy pronouncement.

At UK level, the Labour Party is still struggling with the whole issue.  Silly and wholly uncomradely remarks made by Ken Livingstone didn’t help, of course.  But some of the Labour Party’s own MPs have succeeded in giving the impression that they are quite happy to have a review of the party’s policy as long as the review is conducted only by people who agree with the current policy and doesn’t include anyone who might actually want to question it.  Sir Humphrey would be proud of them.

Whilst Livingstone’s comments were quite rightly turned upon, his silliness and his subsequent apology have unfortunately diverted attention away from the substance of the views being put forward by the MP he attacked, Kevan Jones.  As the BBC reported, Mr Jones said “I'm not sure Ken knows anything about defence.  It will only damage our credibility amongst those that do and who care about defence”.

Whilst he did not deserve the personal attack to which he was subjected, his view does need to be challenged.  It’s a very dismissive view to adopt towards any alternative viewpoint – in effect, he’s saying that ‘credibility’ means agreeing with him.  It’s a classic example of the way in which conservative politicians of all parties attempt to close down debate and restrict the range of opinion which can be discussed – and it avoids the substance of the issue completely.

Looking for needles in haystacks

Tweet One of the more inevitable responses to terrorist attacks has been to talk about reintroducing border controls.  It is, it has been said, too easy for determined people to obtain weapons in one part of the EU and travel across the whole of Europe without ever being challenged, whereas with border controls, there would be more chance of stopping people sooner.  It’s a viewpoint which is not without a degree of logic, but it is far too simplistic, and I suspect that it hides a rather different motivation.

It is, of course, true that the shorter the distance between borders and checkpoints, the harder it would become for people to carry weapons and explosives from one end of the continent to the other.  But it is equally true that having border checks on every county boundary – or even every parish/community boundary – would provide even more security.  Nobody – at least, as far as I’m aware – is proposing either of those suggestions; it is only ‘state’ boundaries which some would like to see closed.

And that tells us something about the mindset of those calling for reintroduction of stronger border controls across Europe.  Whatever their motivation is, it really is not about finding the most effective way of controlling the movement of terrorists.  Some European Union members have small land masses, but others are very much larger.  Merely imposing controls on one arbitrarily selected set of lines on a map regardless of the size of the territories included within those lines doesn’t look like a targeted response to a problem.  Controlling the movement of millions to try and identify the tens doesn’t look like a terribly efficient approach either, even assuming that it could actually succeed in identifying all the ‘targets’.

So what’s it really about?  It looks like a knee-jerk reaction that ‘something must be done’ and the something that is proposed just happens to fit with the existing prejudices of those proposing it.  The concept of ‘open internal borders’ is one of the achievements of the European project, although sadly the UK chose to opt out.  Demands for the rest of Europe to follow the UK lead look more like an attempt to justify the UK’s stance than a rational response to a particular problem.

Open borders do not come without problems, of course.  But a state the size of the US manages without any internal border controls – why should they be needed in Europe?

Nuclear chickens and eggs

Tweet Yesterday, Baron Kinnock demonstrated his commitment to internal Labour Party democracy by telling the party’s duly elected leader that he will never win power promising unilateral nuclear disarmament.  Three things struck me about this.

In the first place, there is a serious question as to whether it’s actually true.  It’s one of those things that can never be known until it’s tested; so I can no more be certain that it isn’t true than he can be certain that it is.  I do seem to recall, however, that there is some empirical evidence to the contrary, albeit a long time ago.  I’m sure that the Labour Government elected in 1964 had a manifesto pledge to scrap Trident – it was one of the things that excited me at the time about the possibility of a Labour Government.

(They didn’t actually implement the promise of course.  But whether any government would ever implement such a promise is a rather different question from the one which Kinnock has raised.)

Secondly, even supposing that it were true, what does it really tells us?  At best it would tell us that if leaders of all the three major parties reiterate consistently and in unison for fifty years (with one brief, minor – albeit welcome – aberration under Michael Foot) that possession of nuclear weapons is essential, and manage to convince the electorate that it's true, then it’s unlikely that the public will change its opinion overnight.  That wouldn’t be an unreasonable conclusion to draw, but it’s a long way short of what he said.  Which came first - public opinion or the insistence of politicians?

There’s a fundamental logic flaw in the conclusion that he did draw, namely that no party can ever propose scrapping nuclear weapons because of the climate of opinion which politicians like himself have done so much to normalise.  It amounts to little more than saying that after telling people one thing for fifty years, you can’t simply tell them that it wasn’t actually true, and must continue to peddle the same line indefinitely, because you can only be elected by telling the same old lie. 

And thirdly, he didn’t even mention the question of whether the UK needs or should have nuclear weapons at all.  It’s as if that is entirely a secondary question to the Labour Party’s need to win elections.  Still, I suppose that saying we must build new nuclear weapons so that Labour can win the election is at least a bit more honest than the Labour Party’s official position, which is, if I understand it correctly:

1.    Nuclear weapons are bad

2.    No country which doesn’t currently possess them must be allowed to develop them

3.    Those countries which do possess them must negotiate to get rid of them

4.    The UK needs to spend £100billion on new nuclear weapons so that it has something which it can negotiate to get rid of

Trident renewal is thus either a £100 billion fling to get Labour elected, or else it’s a very expensive bargaining chip.  Or maybe both.  It’s a depressing lack of leadership and vision, an inability to imagine that politicians might have any responsibility to lead rather than follow.  And the issue is a classic example of what went wrong for Labour as a would-be party of peace, progress and justice.

It's NOT the economy that matters

Tweet According to this report in today’s Western Mail, Cardiff Professor Patrick Minford is telling a House of Commons committee that leaving the EU will not lead to the economic disaster which many politicians are claiming.  Whilst I don’t agree with everything that he says, I do agree with his basic message.

Whether an EU exit would leave Wales much better off as he claims is another question entirely – that depends on a lot more than the simple decision to leave, including the not insignificant question about the regional policy which any UK government would follow in those circumstances. But in essence, the economy of the UK in general, including Wales, would adapt over time to the new circumstances.  That’s what economies do.

I find it strange at times that some of those who claim to believe that Wales could and would adapt to life outside the UK are so reluctant to accept that the same is true for the UK vis-à-vis the EU.  In principle, it looks like a very similar argument to me.  In both cases, there would be a period of transition as changes are made; but in both cases, all the experience of others suggests that the economy would adapt.

It underlines the dangers, yet again, of an argument for and against EU membership based first and foremost on economics.  Such an argument is essentially unwinnable for either side.  Those for staying in are forced to resort to the sort of scare tactics used by Project Fear in Scotland, and those for coming out are forced to make untestable assumptions about the policy decisions which would follow and their consequences.  Voters end up having to decide whose set of assumptions to believe – or else make their decision on the basis of other factors.

And that’s the real point here.  The UK’s continued membership of the EU is fundamentally a political decision, not an economic one.  It’s about the role we see for the UK in the wider world; and from a Welsh perspective, it’s about how we see the future development of Wales in either scenario.  We can and will adapt economically to either future path, but they represent two very different futures.  We can choose to be part of a multinational Europe-wide project or part of an isolationist UK.  And that choice has very little to do with mere economics.

By accident, not design

Tweet In the wake of the UK Government’s defeat in the House of Lords last week, there has been plenty of comment as to whether the behaviour of the lords is or is not in line with what the lords are ‘meant’ to do.  The implication is that the second chamber has a clearly defined role and purpose as a revising chamber.  That is, of course, complete nonsense; its current role was never ‘designed’ by anyone.

The original intention was that the chamber was there to represent a particular class interest, and to have at least equal power with the chamber representing the rest of society.  Indeed, at the outset, it was the more powerful of the two houses – it isn’t referred to as the ‘upper’ house for nothing.  Over a period, that power has been whittled away, piece by piece, as the elected chamber asserted its authority, and placed ever more restrictions on what the unelected lords could do.

It now has a role as a revising chamber not because anyone ever sat down and thought about whether we really need a second chamber or what its role should be, but simply because revising and delaying are the only powers which haven’t yet been stripped from it.  I’m far from convinced that any rational process for designing a parliamentary system would ever produce anything remotely resembling the House of Lords, nor assign to it the curious vestige of powers which it exercises.

The problem with all proposals for reform is that they never start from first principles; the innate conservatism of the UK state means that they all start from what is and try to propose different combinations of roles, responsibilities and methods of selection.  The very existence of the second chamber is rarely challenged.

It should be.  The most rational way of dealing with the House of Lords is to strip it of all its remaining powers.  Plenty of countries manage with unicameral parliaments, and there’s absolutely no reason why the UK couldn’t do the same. 

Creating bigger problems

Tweet One of the recurrent themes of the whole process of devolution has been the ‘quick fix’.  Time and again, the politicians responsible for taking decisions have taken a decision which ‘solves’ the immediate problem, with very little consideration being given to the new problems which will be created as a result.

The statement by the UK and Scottish leaders of the Labour Party over the weekend looks like yet another in a long line of poorly thought-through changes.  The problem that it seeks to address is clear enough, and that is that Labour in Scotland is perceived as being subordinate to Labour in London.  I can’t put that any better than a former leader of the party in Scotland, who said that the Scottish party was being treated like a “branch office”.  At a time when even many of those Scots not yet convinced by the arguments for independence are seeking a strengthening of the Scottish dimension in politics, this has been a major handicap.

The solution proposed is that the Labour Party will become more of a federal party, with the party in Scotland free to determine its own policies.  It sounds like a simple and obvious solution, but it raises more questions than it resolves.  It’s easy to see how the Scottish party could hold different views on devolved issues discussed in the Scottish parliament.  Having English MPs in Westminster saying one thing whilst Scottish MSPs in Edinburgh say the opposite may not be an overly elegant approach, but it could probably be made to work.

The problem arises however with any Labour MPs who are elected in Scotland.  Currently, with only one of them and no immediate prospect of that changing, it’s probably not an issue.  But since the intention of the proposed change is, I assume, to secure the election of more Labour MPs from Scotland, we should at least consider the theoretical possibility that the electoral results might be as the party desires.

So would Labour candidates standing for election in Scotland be standing on the Westminster party’s manifesto or the Scottish one?  In the first case, they could find themselves saying the opposite of their own party’s members in the Scottish Parliament; and in the other, how could they then be whipped into supporting the Westminster leadership’s programme?

The proposal may yet, of course, come to nothing.  It certainly seems as though many of the Labour party’s centralists are up in arms at the idea and will do what they can to block it – although making such a proposal and then not following it through is probably just about the worst possible outcome for Scottish Labour.

A federal party can work in organisational terms; but I find it hard to see how it can work in policy terms if the policies ever diverge to any significant extent.  Perhaps what the Labour party needs isn’t a federal structure, but a sister party with a much looser relationship.  It’s something that works for them with the SDLP in the north of Ireland.  The SDLP is a completely autonomous party, Irish nationalist in outlook, which shares some of the values espoused by Labour and can work with them in loose alliance on some UK wide issues.  I wonder how such an arrangement might be arrived at in Scotland?

Not as different as they sound

Tweet Sometimes, the MP for Monmouth makes it too easy for people to treat what he says as something of a joke.  His comment yesterday, talking about the publication of the draft of the latest Wales Bill and saying that Wales is edging towards independence fits into that category.  I wish it were true, of course; but the idea that this paltry concoction is any sort of a step towards independence is laughable.

Some of his other comments need to be taken a bit more seriously however.  For too many of those for whom the establishment of the Assembly is an unchallengeable given, his comment that devolution is a one-way street and that “No-one is talking about taking powers away from the Welsh government in areas where it is performing badly” may be dismissed in the same way. 

But, thinking about it, is this attitude of an MP towards the Assembly so very different from the attitude of many AMs towards local councils in Wales?  Much of what our AMs say about local councils seems to be predicated on the assumption that ‘if they don’t do as we tell them, we’ll take the power away from them’, because they see local councils as being simply agents of government rather than having any real mandate of their own.  The two positions sound very similar to me.

Both are, ultimately, based on a very simple premise – that there’s a ‘right’ place for power to live, and any power exercised at a 'lower' level exists solely with the consent of that ‘right’ place.  I don’t doubt that many nationalists and devolutionists would argue that there’s a difference, but I’m not sure that there is.  And constitutionally, David Davies is right – the UK constitution quite clearly defines power as being in the gift of the centre, acting on behalf of the monarch whose power was bestowed on her by God.

At the very heart of Davies’ comments is an axiomatic belief about the right of those who hold power to retain it.  It’s a belief shared by many of those who are only really disagreeing with the way he applies it.  Anybody who wants to disagree with him needs to start by accepting that power belongs to the people, not the centre, and that the people have the right to decide where it should be exercised.  Merely moving the ‘right’ place for power to reside from London to Cardiff will never be enough.

More centralism

Tweet There has been mixed reaction to the about turn by Plaid Cymru yesterday, in deciding to back Labour’s bill on local government reform after all. The Tories' simplistic approach is to slam Plaid for criticising Labour on the issue just a few days ago, and then supporting them yesterday.  Whether that’s a far criticism or not depends on what, if anything, changed in the interim.  The Lib Dems’ spokesman, Peter Black, claims that Plaid got nothing at all in return for their change of heart, whereas Plaid claims major concessions.

As ever, it’s hard to distinguish the hard truth amongst the spin and invective, let alone work out whether anything will really change as a result.  It does appear that Plaid has gained agreement from Labour on only one real issue, and that’s the question of timing.  Even if the bill is passed, nothing can now happen until after next May’s Assembly elections.  To dismiss that as a complete sell-out is a little unfair, but that’s not the same as saying that it’s a major gain.  Since no-one really expects any party other than Labour to be leading the next Welsh Government, and the bill will already be an act by the time that government takes office, it means that the legislative framework for Labour to plough ahead with this will be in place well in advance. 

Any changes to Labour’s proposals will now come about only if Labour does not gain an absolute majority; and will then be a result of horse-trading between parties.  Perhaps the optimism of the opposition parties about denying Labour a majority is justified, perhaps not.  In the first case, it means that there is some possibility of change after the event, in the second, it means that the changes have merely been delayed by a few months.

But one of the other points about Plaid’s statement struck me as rather more significant.  What exactly is the party’s vision for local government in Wales?  According to Leanne Wood’s statement, Plaid’s vision is now about “retaining the existing 22 Local Authorities making them work together as combined regional authorities”.  I’m not convinced that that is very different in its effect from the centralising agenda of Labour.

In the first place, there’s something deeply conservative, small c, about simply retaining the existing structure of 22 councils, which was something of an arbitrary creation in the first place.  Just as Labour seem to have a fixed idea about the right number being smaller than 22, Plaid’s proposal seems to start from a fixed idea that whatever currently exists is the right number, they just need to be forced to work differently.  I really don’t know what the ‘right’ number is – for me the question starts by asking what the role of local government is rather than what the boundaries should be.  That’s a question which none of the parties are asking, except by default – and that ‘default’ is effectively that they’re there to do whatever central government tells them to do.

And that’s the part which really disappoints me more than the innate conservatism of sticking to 22, and more than whether any deals done in Cardiff Bay are worthwhile or not.  Because this is centralism pretending to be support for local democracy.  There is no vision coming from any of the parties about meaningful internal devolution within Wales to strong local government which has its own democratic mandate through the election of councillors; all of them are simply looking at which structures will enable the most efficient implementation of national policy.

It’s a long way from the internal discussions that I remember in the 1970s about empowering local government.

No change there, then

Tweet If I understand the proposed timetable for the new Wales Bill correctly, the plan is to publish a draft of the bill tomorrow, then to hold a consultation on that draft before publishing the final version in February 2016, with the intention that the bill will become law in 2017.

I think that I also understand the political differences about the content of the bill.  Pro-devolutionists are seeking a clearer definition of the reserved powers model which does not take any powers back from Wales, and the instinctive anti-devolutionists, largely amongst the Tories, are trying to find a way of honouring previous commitments with minimum change.  (Speaking personally, when the proponents of the bill talk about giving the Assembly power to change its name as one of the main changes, it simply makes me deeply sceptical about whether the changes are worth the effort.)

What I find much harder to understand is the political statements being made around the bill.

For reasons which escape me completely, the First Minister is arguing that this is rushing things through.  But if he thinks that a two and a half year timetable for something which has been long discussed is a rush, I hate to think what slow might look like.

The Secretary of State’s position is no more logical.  He won’t delay it because that would merely allow Labour to make an issue of it in the run up to next year’s Assembly elections.  So publishing a draft in October, and a final version in February with the legislation therefore under discussion one way another for the whole period between now and next May’s Assembly elections means that it won’t be an issue?

What should have been an opportunity to put the clarity of a reserved powers model in place of the often vague definitions which currently exist has become just another front in the yah boo politics of Labour and the Tories.  I suppose we should never have expected anything else.