Reach Far And Wide

Here:

Though we have about 1000 days until the next election, Plaid Cymru have offered the Labour party a deal by way of a strategy should we find ourselves with a hung parliament in 2015.

Jonathan Edwards, MP for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr and a key advisor to Plaid Cymru’s leader Leanne Wood, said: “We would be interested in offering a supply and confidence (not voting down budgets or supporting no confidence motions) arrangement for a non-Tory government.”

This is a sign to Labour that it will offer more than just numbers for a majority, but proactive support.

However Labour must submit to policies which Edwards has said will contribute to a “great reformist programme” distinct from “Tory-lite” politics “that belong to the past.”

Edwards’ ideal policies would need the following:

• A tax system based on the reforms of France’s President François Hollande – 75% tax on incomes above £1m;
• Splitting retail and investment banking activity and the introduction of community banking models;
• Unilateral introduction of the proposed levy on financial transactions known as the Robin Hood tax;
• A fund and other incentives to allow the economies of the different parts of the UK to converge;
• Devolution of powers to the Welsh Government in areas including energy, broadcasting, policing, and the creation of a separate legal jurisdiction;
• Scrapping of the Barnett formula used to allocate Treasury cash to the Welsh Government and the introduction of a fairer funding mechanism;
• Measures to recognise English political identity;
• Nationalisation of the railways.

Though Labour will go out to win the next election, it is something of a relief that such contingency plans are already being made. It certainly shows how anxious people are to get rid of the coalition government.

But is Edwards’ programme of bones something that the Labour party could put meat to? Do we think Ed Miliband has come that far yet? Or do we think rhetoric like this could give Ed and Labour the confidence to reach far and wide for a progressive programme set to outflank the regressive politics of the current administration? What do you think?

• A tax system based on the reforms of France’s President François Hollande – 75% tax on incomes above £1m; Yes, although there are better ways of going about this.
• Splitting retail and investment banking activity and the introduction of community banking models; Yes.
• Unilateral introduction of the proposed levy on financial transactions known as the Robin Hood tax; Yes.
• A fund and other incentives to allow the economies of the different parts of the UK to converge; Yes, although what follows would be directly inimical to that.
• Devolution of powers to the Welsh Government in areas including energy, broadcasting, policing, and the creation of a separate legal jurisdiction; No.
• Scrapping of the Barnett formula used to allocate Treasury cash to the Welsh Government and the introduction of a fairer funding mechanism; Depends: Each of the present or, where they have been abolished in the rush to unitary local government, the previous city, borough and district council areas in each of the nine regions must be twinned with a demographically comparable one (though not defined in terms of comparable affluence) in Scotland, in Wales, in Northern Ireland, and in each of the other English regions. Across each of the key indicators – health, education, housing, transport, and so on – both expenditure and outcomes in each English area, responsibility for such matters being devolved elsewhere, would have to equal or exceed those in each of its twins. Or else the relevant Ministers’ salaries would be docked by the percentage in question. By definition that would always include the Prime Minister.
• Measures to recognise English political identity; Depends: In any policy area devolved to Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, no legislation must apply in any of the English regions unless supported at Third Reading by the majority of MPs from that region. Since such legislative chaos would rightly be unconscionable, any Bill would in practice require such a consensus before being permitted to proceed at a much earlier stage of its parliamentary progress.
• Nationalisation of the railways. Yes.

Plaid Cymru is the keeper of the rural Radicalism that was largely allowed to die of neglect in England and Scotland after the First World War, and especially after the Second, as well as being the organ of the Welsh peace tradition. Both of its MPs voted to save the Labour Government in 1979, in very stark contrast to the behaviour of the SNP.

Therefore, would Plaid Cymru be prepared to accept fairer funding and the recognition of English identity in the above terms, and the role of Labour, the unions and the co-operatives as the guardians of the Union in Wales such as to preclude any compromise on further devolution, still less on the creation of a separate legal jurisdiction?

Or would that be too high a price to pay for what would therefore be its manifestly lower priorities of fair taxation, splitting retail and investment banking, introducing community banking models, levying the Robin Hood tax, enabling regional economic convergence (as Unionist an aspiration as one could possibly imagine), renationalising the railways (as Unionist a measure as one could possibly imagine), and, mysteriously missing from this list, cancelling Trident and abandoning the neoconservative war agenda?

It is David Cameron who has repeatedly professed himself indifferent as to the constitutional future of Wales, and it is very likely that the position of Secretary of State is about to be given to one of the several separatist sympathisers among his MPs, whose sympathies are not remotely shared by most people in Wales.