Principalities and Powers

On a fifty per cent turnout, Wales voted for devolution by the barest of majorities. Three quarters of those who could have voted for it did not do so.

Like the devolved bodies elsewhere, or like the regional assembly had we ever suffered that misfortune and indignity, the Welsh Assembly is stuffed with people of whom local council leaders wanted rid, and that sort of thing. This week, they voted unanimously for a referendum on unspecified extensions of their own powers, including the ability to enact primary legislation.

At Welsh Questions in the House of Commons, there was a question on Caerphilly cheese, but there was none on further devolution or on any referendum. It is simply not on anyone's agenda in the only forum empowered to enact it. There, they have possibly not even heard of any expression of view by people who seek election to a body possessed of no fiscal responsibility whatever, and they are certainly wholly indifferent to any such expression.

Labour, Conservative and Lib Dem activists in Wales are all so angry at this distraction, that they may not turn out to campaign at the forthcoming General Election. As a coalition of Leftist sectarian Welsh language fascists, even Plaid Cymru's activists may very well feel that there are more pressing concerns at the moment. Or, indeed, at any moment.

There would undoubtedly be a No vote in any such referendum, but no legislation to hold one would ever be passed, or even proposed. Wales's Labour MPs, Tory MPs (between 12 and 14 this year, everyone expects) and Lib Dem MPs all have ideological, local and personal reasons to make sure of that, and even Plaid Cymru's are returned by areas where, although there may have been a Yes vote in 1999 (nothing to do with the language, which is a north-south split, whereas the devolution vote was an east-west split), what could politely be called disappointment is very pronounced, and the sense of alienation and remoteness from Cardiff is intense. Wales in being run the bilingual elite in South Wales, the enemy - that is not too strong a word - both of the English-speaking working class in the South, and of the fully formed Welsh-speaking culture and society in the North. Leo Abse was right.

In the coming hung Parliament, Conservative, Lib Dem and indeed Labour MPs from North, Mid and West Wales, as from the Highlands, Islands and Borders of Scotland, will happily accept Westminster's attention to their local communitarian populist causes: "If Cardiff or Holyrood won't deliver, but Westminster will in return for our votes in the tight divisions several times per night, then Westminster is welcome to do so, the Government is therefore welcome to our votes, and Plaid Cymru or the SNP is welcome to try and explain how this is what we have to do in order to get anything done in our localities." In fact, Plaid Cymru might even adopt the same approach. On such a basis, both of its MPs voted against the SNP with a view to saving the Callaghan Government in 1979, just as two Ulster Unionists did, whereas both Irish Nationalists abstained.

Within that, there would probably be majority support, within the minority that would vote at all in any Welsh referendum,for all Westminster legislation to apply automatically in Wales unless specifically disapplied by the Assembly, which would continue to exist for that purpose, and for the purpose of a fortnightly, or if possible weekly, Question Time with the Secretary of State, but for no purpose beyond those two. In fact, rather more people than would otherwise bother might very well turn out specifically to vote for this, at least if it also contained the right to enact subordinate legislation subject to ratification by both Houses of Parliament and Royal Assent, as the General Synod of the Church of England also relates to the Crown in Parliament. Then again, why does this even need a referendum? All it needs is primary legislation. Perhaps it would be worth having the further devolution referendum, in order to enact this on the back of the No vote.

And in Scotland, the devolution legislation presupposes that the Parliament of the United Kingdom will continue to legislate overridingly in all policy areas, if perhaps not quite so frequently. People who think that they were voting for something else in the devolution referendum are like people who think that they were voting for "a free trade area" called "the Common Market". That is simply not what the legislation itself says. So, let that legislation be implemented in full. In the coming hung Parliament, it will be. If you don't like that, then you are like people who do not like the Irish republic's renunciation of any claim to Northern Ireland or the requirement that any change in its status be approved by those defined specifically by their withholding of any such approval: you should have voted No, but I bet you didn't.