John Osmond (Cardiff): As Gordon Brown starts his six week wait for the highest office is Camaroon Toryism about to beat him to it and enjoy its first taste of Ministerial power? Tony Blair’s claim that the Welsh Assembly election results on 3 May marked another four years of his Party’s rule in Cardiff, is unraveling in less than two weeks. Labour won just 32 per cent of the vote on 3 May, its worst result in Wales since 1918, and 26 seats, five short of a majority. It had assumed it could form a pact with the Welsh Liberal Democrats, maybe short of a full-blown coalition, but enough to keep it in power. One Labour source declared: “We’ll hug the Lib Dems so close we’ll squeeze the life out of them.” Such hubris has proved counter-productive. Meeting with their national executive in Llandrindod (ancient graveyard of Welsh aspirations) on Thursday night the 6 Lib Dem Assembly Members (AMs) resolved to shelve negotiations with Labour and open talks with Plaid Cymru and the Tories. They will explore the so-called ‘rainbow’ coalition. This would involve a deal between the 15 Plaid, 12 Tories, and 6 Lib Dem AMs. The Cabinet would be made up of 4 Plaid, 3 Tories and 2 Lib Dem Ministers. Intense negotiations over a common programme are predicted for this weekend. Ieuan Wyn Jones has set next Wednesday as a final deadline for a deal to be put to his national executive. It sounds surprising but there is a good deal of common ground in this unlikely line-up: keeping the NHS local, lower class sizes, affordable homes in rural Wales, and a new Welsh Language Act for starters. The Lib Dem demand for STV in local elections in Wales is likely to be agreed. The Tories may even support the cross-party Richard Commission proposals for full legislative powers on Scottish lines, plus 80 members elected by STV, for the Welsh National Assembly. This could go to a referendum by perhaps 2010, in time for a new constitution for Wales to be in place before the next elections, in May 2011.
Any such alliance would make Plaid Cymru’s leader Ieuan Wyn Jones First Minister of Wales. He’d thereby join with Alex Salmond in Scotland and, in a twist to this prospect, Ulster’s First Minister the Rev Ian Paisley, who has stated that he looks forward to working closely with the leaders of Wales and Scotland to “take on” Whitehall.
