Wales

Tomorrow's Wales (Cardiff): The report in the Western Mail on Friday on Sir Emyr Jones Parry’s call for politicians to give concrete examples of laws they would like to see passed in order to better explain why the Assembly needs primary law-making powers raises some interesting question about what the Convention’s role is and how the case is best made for giving the Assembly primary legislative powers.

Firstly,  politicians obviously have a responsibility to put the case for further powers to the people, and would by necessity have to do so during any referendum campaign. But it is also one of the core purposes of the All Wales Convention, as set out in its terms of reference, to explain to people how moving to primary legislative powers would affect the future governence of Wales. It is rather worrying if the members of the Convention see this as a role for others to fulfil while the Convention sits back and simply assesses the effect of such arguments on public opinion.

John Osmond (Cardiff, Institute of Welsh Affairs): Hints from the Prime Minister on future funding options for the Scottish Parliament are rare and usually Delphic in their meaning. So close attention was paid to Gordon Brown’s relatively unambiguous remarks on the theme in a speech delivered to a CBI Scotland dinner in Glasgow in early September.

Although observing that on the whole devolution had worked pretty well, he said he did see one problem: fiscal accountability. As he put it: “The Scottish Parliament is wholly accountable for the budget it spends but not for the size of its budget. And that budget is not linked to the success of the Scottish economy.

Tom Griffin (London, OK): John Osmond brings us news of the debate in the Senedd that launched the Institute of Welsh Affairs' new book, Politics in 21st Century Wales. He suggests that, given some of the players involved, the event may turn out to be a preview of the coalition negotiations that follow the next Assembly election:

Of course, First Minister Rhodri Morgan won’t be among them after 2011, since he has announced his impending retirement from politics – “he has indicated a wish to stand down as First Minister well before the elections” (according to his biographical note in Politics in 21st Century Wales). However, he prompted the speculation by suggesting in his contribution to the book that Labour should countenance proportional representation in local elections in order to allow a coalition deal to be negotiated with the Liberal Democrats.

It was Plaid Cymru’s Adam Price who suggested somewhat mischievously that this was tantamount to Rhodri revealing ‘a bit of ankle’ to the Lib Dems.

Tom Griffin (London, OK): Labour must renew itself in West Wales, if it is to regain a dominant position in the Cardiff Bay Assembly. That's the message from First Minister Rhodri Morgan in his contribution to a new book from the Institute for Welsh Affairs:

"The reason why I think it absolutely essential that we turn our minds again, as a party, to winning in the west is the simple recognition that, as far as the Assembly is concerned at least, without winning in the west, Labour cannot win Wales.”

The First Minister argues that the impression Labour has sometimes given as being reluctant advocates for the Welsh language, reluctant on more powers for the Assembly, and reluctant exponents of Welsh identity have allowed party to be portrayed as ‘London-dominated’, with the Conservatives, in particular, repositioning themselves as more pro-Welsh than Labour. To rebuild he says Labour should start with creating a platform in local government in west Wales.

Politics in 21st Century Wales also includes contributions from Welsh Conservative leader Nick Bourne, Liberal Democrat Assembly Member Kirsty Williams and Plaid Cymru MP Adam Price.

Tom Griffin (London, OK): The BBC reports on growing tensions in the Welsh Assembly Government over Westminster legislation that would give the assembly new powers on housing:

The order has become a touchstone issue in the increasing tension between Cardiff and Westminster - the presiding officer of the assembly Lord Dafydd Elis Thomas, has accused the MPs on the committee of "anti devolutionist tendencies" over their demand for the order to be redrafted.

While they don't have the power to redraft the legislation, the Welsh secretary Paul Murphy has the power of veto - unless he approves it, it cannot go forward into parliament, become law, and see the powers in this area devolved to the assembly. 

The Western Mail reports the suspicions of some in Plaid Cymru about the crisis:

“It is looking increasingly as if those Welsh Labour MPs who always opposed the coalition with Plaid are trying to manufacture an artificial crisis that will result in the One Wales deal falling apart.

“This isn’t the first time they have tried this, but on previous occasions Rhodri Morgan has been prepared to stand up against them behind the scenes.

Tomorrow's Wales (Cardiff): And so, Obama has been elected President of the United States. But does the success of his campaign hold any lessons for us here in Wales? In particular, can we learn from the success of his movement for change as we seek our own change to a law-making Parliament for Wales?

The idea that the young have become disinterested in politics is one that has become increasingly accepted as truth over recent years. However, Obama’s success in persuading young people to go out and vote shows that the young are interested in politics if they are inspired, and that their mobilisation can be key in securing change.

One of the findings of the recent research conducted by the Institute of Welsh Politics on behalf of the National Assembly for Wales was that young people are much more pre-devolution that the older generation. The results for the constitutional preference question, when broken down into age groups were as follows:

Tom Griffin (London, OK): The Independent Commission set up to examine the funding of the Welsh Assembly Government began its work this week.

The Commission's call for evidence from interested parties comes as rising inflation is forcing the Government to dip into its reserves to cover its spending plans.

It will take over £200m from reserves, cutting them to 1% of the total budget, as spending rises to £15.2bn.

The money released will fund priorities including £60m over two years for the Foundation Phase education for three-to-seven-year-olds.

But opposition parties said local government was being "clobbered".

Over at the Institute of Welsh Affairs blog, James Foreman-Peck of Cardiff Business School argues that the Commission should consider the option of greater borrowing powers:

Devolving borrowing powers will be resisted by the Treasury on the grounds that there is an implicit Treasury guarantee to such borrowing although they cannot control the amount. The UK central government would be obliged to pick up the tab if the Welsh Assembly Government defaulted. But are we not seeing something like this for our big commercial banks at the moment? Anyway the Treasury’s point will need addressing in any recommendation for greater powers.

Geraint Talfan Davies (Institute of Welsh Affairs, Wales Watch): The more you look at Ofcom’s proposals for reducing ITV’s programming for the nations and the regions of the UK, the more you sense that the endgame for ITV is approaching. And it’s happening just when the clouds are gathering over our newspapers, too. These are unprecedented crisis years for the media in Wales.

Braced for some months past for a reduction in general programming from four hours a week to three hours in January 2009, shocked ITV Wales staff at Ofcom’s press conference in Cardiff last week were desperate to know when the decision was taken to reduce the requirement still further to one and a half hours. According to the Ofcom team it was ‘within the last six weeks’.

Tom Griffin (London, The Green Ribbon): Most Welsh Assembly members want the same law-making powers as the Scottish Parliament, a new poll has found. The survey for the Western Mail comes ahead of today's inaugural meeting of the All Wales Convention, which will examine the case for further devolution.

A survey of AMs found 90% were convinced the Assembly was ready for an increase in powers, with 82% calling for the same law-making capabilities enjoyed by politicians in Scotland.

This was the opinion of all Plaid Cymru and Liberal Democrat AMs, three-quarters of those in the Labour group and 67% of Conservatives.

Tom Griffin (London, The Green Ribbon): A report from the Commons Welsh Affairs Committee looked at one of the most sensitive aspects of devolution this week, the impact on NHS services that have traditionally straddled the English/Welsh border.

As a consequence of the tensions over diverging funding regimes in Wales and England, evidence suggests that there is a perception that the English NHS is subsidising the Welsh NHS. Evidence also suggests that Welsh patients perceive that they are being treated as second-class citizens within the National Health Service. Both suggestions should be addressed immediately by the Department of Health, the Welsh ssembly Government and health service providers to ensure that patients receiving treatment on both sides of the Welsh-English border are treated fairly and equally, and that they believe this to be the case.

In evidence to the Committee, First Minister Rhodri Morgan explained why North Wales in particular is still heavily reliant on specialist services based in England:

The population of North Wales is one thirteenth of the population of the North-West of England, therefore the relationship with even the small/medium centres, like Chester, but certainly with Merseyside and Greater Manchester in the provision of health services is totally different from the relationship between South Wales, which as two million people, and the greater Bristol areas, which would also have about two million people.

Tom Griffin (London, The Green Ribbon): The Welsh Assembly Government marked the first anniversary of the Labour-Plaid Cymru One Wales Agreement today by announcing new details of the Commision that will look at the principality's tax and spending arrangements.

Tom Griffin (London, The Green Ribbon): The executive committee for the All Wales Convention was announced on Thursday, ahead of the body's first meeting on 14 July.

The Constitution Unit has this week produced two new contributions to its invaluable series of devolution monitoring reports.

Akash Paun and Edward Calow provide a good one-stop overview of the state of devolution across the UK:

Bethan Jenkins (Neath, Plaid AM): It is somwhat timely for me to be writing about the Conservatives and their attitudes towards Welsh devolution in the week that Professor Richard Wyn Jones, Director of the Institute of Welsh Politics at Aberystwyth University, has written an open letter to David Cameron emphasising the fact that Cameron "cannot afford to avoid" Welsh devolution and its future progression -
especially as he will, more than likely, be the next Prime Minister of the UK. 

Daniel G. Williams reviews Raymond Williams: A Warrior’s Tale by Dai Smith.

(Williams, Parthian Books, 2008, 514pp)

Theodor Adorno’s statement that ‘the past life of the émigré is, as we know, annulled’ once seemed particularly apt when considering Raymond Williams (1921-1988). Williams, the most influential socialist writer and thinker in post-war Britain, an innovator in adult education, a pre-eminent member of the English Faculty at Cambridge, and doyen of the New Left, will be of primary relevance to readers of Our Kingdom for two reasons. First, his careful attachment to issues of democracy and to socialism as a means of emancipation that had to be cultural as well economic and political. Second, for his engagement with the national question from the 1970s onwards and his reiterated argument that ‘we cannot live very much longer under the confusion of the existing “international economy” and the existing “nation state”…These are political forms that now limit, subordinate and destroy people. We have to begin again with people and build new political forms’. In this review of an important biography, I want to look at the second aspect, for Dai Smith’s study reveals the deep consequences of Williams’s national formation as a Welshman, born in the border village of Pandy.

Fred Inglis, in his biography of 1995, was typical of many in finding it difficult to take what he saw as Williams’s “late-come Welshness” seriously, dismissing it as “a fit of the kind of fervour which overcame Williams several times in later life”. Stefan Collini admired the way Inglis “made no pretence at writing like a visiting anthropologist” for biographer and subject were members of the same “tribe” of intellectuals on the English Left. The view from Wales itself was rather different. Ned Thomas, amongst others, asked rhetorically whether it mattered that Inglis’s biography “often seems to get things wrong when it talks about Wales”. The errors, argued Thomas, were not due to a ‘moral shortcoming’ but an “objective one”.

"Colonials often know more about the metropolis than metropolitans themselves. Metropolitans perceive the colonials (if at all) in single and stereotyped terms…If and when Dai Smith’s biography appears, we shall expect a more comprehensive treatment, because the Welsh world and the world of the English Left will equally be open to him."

Twelve years later, Dai Smith has indeed produced a seminal biography. And the success of the work is partly due to the fact that the Rhondda born, Balliol educated, Professor at Swansea University, is able to analyse, sympathise, and engage, simultaneously, with the very different networks of loyalty to which Williams belonged. In A Warrior’s Tale, Williams’s formative experiences on the Welsh border become the crucial viewfinder for bringing the later life into focus.

Guy Aitchison (London, OK): There has been an extraordinary transformation in Tory attitudes to devolution in Wales. Around 40% of Welsh Tory voters now want the country to have a Parliament with law-making powers. Support for the status quo among Tory voters is at 26% and 27% want no devolution at all. The surprising figures are revealed in data from the Welsh Election Survey 2007 presented by Richard Wyn Jones and Roger Scully in today’s Western Mail. The popularity of this constitutional option amongst Tory voters mirrors the position of a majority of the party’s Assembly Members, including their leader Nicholas Bourne.

It’s worth reflecting on what a remarkable change of attitudes this has been, illustrating that devolution is, as Ron Davies used to say, “path dependent”- once devolved institutions are created there’s no going back and the dynamics at work support demands for ever-more powers. Back in 1997 when the referendum was held on a Welsh Assembly, Tory voters opposed devolution by a massive margin of 9:1. As recently as 2005 the party’s manifesto for the UK general election was promising Welsh voters a referendum on the abolition of the Assembly. Now, it seems, not only have Welsh Tories come to accept Wales’s new democratic institutions - they want them to have more power.

Moderator: Cross posted from Normal Mouth's blog.

Normal Mouth (Rhondda, blogger): A fortnight ago Sir David Varney published the second instalment of his review into Northern Ireland's competitiveness. The first drew comment from a Welsh perspective only from Adam Price and me - suprising given that the review's remit was to investigate whether a lower rate of corporation tax would boost a part of the UK economy that has historically lagged behind others.

A breakdown of the local election results in Wales which were catastrophic for Labour.

(This is a revised post reporting the corrected results. Thanks to those who pointed this out in the comments on the original post.)

John Osmond (Cardiff, IWA): Labour's near century-long domination of Welsh local politics came to an end on May Day 2008. In a set of poor results for the party it lost a swathe of seats and control of six councils, confirming a trend of secular decline that has been underway for the better part of a decade.

Tom Griffin (London, The Green Ribbon) Scotland's Finance Minister, John Swinney, came in for sustained criticism last week, when he published the responses to the consultation on his proposed Scottish Futures Trust. Several respondents suggested that his plan to replace the Private Finance Initiative left key questions unaddressed:

Normal Mouth (Rhondda, blogger): Alex Salmond has been in the USA this week quoting Thomas Jefferson. Fortunately for English sensibilities he did not invoke the great man’s suggestion that “the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” but chose instead the rather more anodyne “we are a people capable of self-government, and worthy of it.”