Wednesday 4 August 2010

Forward Wales?

The Conservative Party's Welsh Assembly candidate for Wrexham is to be John Marek, who was fiercely anti-monarchist and anti-hunting while Labour MP for Wrexham, and who went on to become the founder and only ever Leader of Forward Wales, a Welsh separatist, Welsh-speaking supremacist, economically Hard Left, unyieldingly Politically Correct, Tommy Sheridan-endorsed, RMT-funded party which was only dissolved in January of this year.

Will Cameron also recruit, if he has not already done so, Marek's fellow founder-members of Forward Wales: Ron Davies, one of the very few former Cabinet Ministers without a seat in either House, and a noted campaigner both against shooting and for the abolition of the monarchy, recalling Marek's own parliamentary question to Tony Blair requesting that the Oath of Allegiance be replaced with something acceptable to anti-monarchists; Graeme Beard, a former Plaid Cymru councillor in Caerphilly; and Klaus Armstrong-Braun, who in his time on Flintshire County Council was the only Green Party member ever elected at county level in Wales?

Cameron has already signed up Mohammad Asghar, a Member of the Welsh Assembly who has moved seamlessly from Plaid Cymru to the Cameroons, having presumably given up his former party's more noble features (it also has thoroughly ignoble ones) as a voice of the rural Radicalism that survived in Wales, unlike in England, after the First World War, and as a vehicle for Wales's very strong tradition of peace activism, such that Plaid has consistently opposed the war in Afghanistan.

It is not as if the Conservative Party needs to do this in Wales, if it needs to do it anywhere. First Past The Post or no First Past The Post, the Conservatives have always taken between a quarter and a third of the Welsh vote. Last year, they topped the poll there in the European Elections, the only election at which Wales functions as a single unit. They have just made significant Welsh gains at Westminster.

Probably half of those Labour supporters who voted No to devolution and so very nearly defeated it are now resigned to it, though certainly not to anything further. But practically all of those Conservative supporters who did so, themselves practically all of the large number of Conservative supporters in Wales, have not even reconciled themselves to what there already is. Yet Cameron wants further devolution and has bizarrely expressed himself indifferent as to the constitutional status of Wales, while every one of his party's members at Cardiff voted in favour of a resolution calling for a referendum on further devolution, with no mention of parliamentary safeguards.

The Lib Dems have never won a Strasbourg seat in Wales. But last time, UKIP did. Cameron would do well to keep that in mind. And the next Labour Leader would do well to state, perfectly accurately, that acceptance of the present level of devolution does not translate into support for anything further, and that, at the very least, any primary legislation enacted by the Welsh Assembly must have effect only if approved by the majority of MPs from Wales, by a resolution of the House of Commons if revenue is to be raised, by resolutions of both Houses of Parliament in other cases, and by means of Royal Assent. There are votes to be had. Including on the Conservative back benches.

The next Labour Leader should also make it clear that his party is neither anti-monarchist, nor Welsh separatist, nor Welsh-speaking supremacist, nor economically Hard Left, nor unyieldingly Politically Correct, nor Tommy Sheridan-endorsed, nor RMT-funded. Unlike the Conservative Party.

6 comments:

  1. Here is a challenge. Why don't you run on an anti-devolution platform in both Scotland and Wales at the devolved elections next year.

    If there is so much support for your beliefs as you claim then you will be elected and can claim to be vindicated.

    On the other hand I do not think you will as you will bottle it like you did this year for Westminster and for the Euro elections last year.

    That is because you are a loudmouthed moral coward.

    ReplyDelete
  2. "And the next Labour Leader would do well to state, perfectly accurately, that acceptance of the present level of devolution does not translate into support for anything further"

    The UKIP vote at the European Elections in Wales, and at least to a considerable extent the poll-topping Conservative vote, gave more than an insight into popular feeling there, especially considering that the Lib Dems once again failed to win a seat.

    When it comes to opposition to further devolution (and no great enthusiasm, to say the least, for what there already is), a vote for almost any sitting Labour MP in either Scotland or Wales is a vote for someone who strongly holds exactly that view. The results speak for themselves, not least when contrasted with the results for the SNP.

    The Constitution is a reserved matter, so elections to Holyrood or Cardiff are immaterial to it, and should be treated accordingly by those who are responsible for it. Under Labour, they were and they would be.

    Why they are not under this lot, in which the junior partner has never held office at Cardiff and the senior partner has never held office either there or at Holyrood, I honestly do not know.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hmm, the first paragraph sort of contradicts what the Milibands and Burnham have been saying about Scotland. Calmann needs to be implemented etc.

    Also Balls and Abbot spoke out in favour of devolution at the Glasgow hustings.

    The four male contestants have all called for the Scottish leader to have an automatic seat on the party's NEC.

    Obviously devolution is so unpopular in the Scottish party then they are morons for using these pitches.

    Or you are fantasist who is bottling it. Again.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Well, of course they say such things now. But judge whichever one wins by what he (it probably will be he) does once confronted both with his MPs from Scotland in full cry out of sight of the cameras, and with the possibility of embarrassing the Government on the floor of the House. And then there is Wales...

    The Constitution is none of either Holyrood's or Cardiff's business. That is a fact. So elections to them are wholly immaterial to it. That is also a fact. You don't have to take my word for that. You don't even have to ask Labour MPs from Scotland or Wales, although they would tell you in the strongest possible terms. You only need to ask Plaid Cymru or, especially, the SNP, who have learned it from bitter, bitter experience.

    There might be further Welsh devolution with the sort of safeguards that I set out, although don't hold your breath for it. But Scottish devolution can be depicted with absolute consistency as having reached its natural limit by those who enacted it in its current form. Never mind by those who opposed even that at the time. And then there are those who until very recently thought that they would never hold office at Westminster, but who now find that they do.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Don't forget our MPs in Wales too. One of them unseated Lembit Opik. They and huge numbers of our MPs in England are ready to rebel if the Official Opposition organises itself properly.

    Your idea for Westminster safeguards would be superb if the Assembly had to have primary law-making and tax-raising powers at all, but the main thing is to stop that from happening

    You are correct that Labour, having brought in the present arrangements, would be totally consistent if they opposed anything more. That was supposed to be the point back in 97, in Wales and in Scotland. Tory MPs are waiting for the Opposition amendments to vote for if further devolution is proposed.

    Labour has already given up on AV to make trouble for the Coalition and Labour caused merry hell over Maastricht when most of their MPs were in favour of it. This is another such opportunity.

    You have quite a few readers west of Offa's Dyke, you know. You are one of very few commentators east of Offa's Dyke who pays any serious attention to what is happening here. In fact I cannot think of another one. They very occasionally make jokey references to knowing nothing about Wales and that is it. But not you. Keep at it.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Very many thanks. I certainly will.

    John Smith eventually came to be convinced by his own arguments over Maastricht, and Gordon Brown ended up having no time whatever either for the EU or for devolution. He inherited the Lisbon Treaty process from Blair, but on both issues it otherwise strictly a case of "thus far and no further", and only thus far because he was stuck with it.

    Ed Balls and Ed Miliband are chips of that old block. One of them is certainly not going to become Leader of the Opposition. But the other one could. Therefore, things being as they are rather as one might wish them to be, he must.

    ReplyDelete