From
Single Issues and Double Standards
by Patrick McGuinness, Planet 166

New Labour, Welsh Labour, and the case of the disappearing Red Water.

Observers of the Welsh Labour conference in Llandudno in 2004 were treated to a classic piece of goalpost shifting. The Regional Lists system that was endorsed by the party in Llandudno in 1997 as a way of ensuring that every vote counts and that the diversity of political opinion in Wales is represented was rejected on the grounds that it... er... makes every vote count and represents the diversity of Welsh political opinion. A delegate from Rhondda Cynon Taf, Kevin Morgan, attacked the PR system for “giving a platform for opposition parties,” while Huw Lewis, a politician with little profile beyond his hostility to Welsh and for whom political discourse is largely synonymous with abuse, elaborated: “Let’s dump the list system that half-fills the Assembly with time-serving drones.” (The ratio is actually 40/20, so a quick maths refresher course for this former chemistry teacher might be in order.) Outside politburo circles the practice of giving a platform to opposition parties is better known as democracy, an innovation that has been catching on in the West for the last 200 or so years — indeed it’s so popular these days that it’s deemed worth invading other countries for. Not so in Transport House, apparently, where rather than aiming to gain more votes on the system they themselves set out (unanimously), the favoured tactic now seems to be to change the system. Because if New Labour, with its massive power, entrenched establishment and financial backing — according to a Guardian report earlier this year, Labour now receives more in donations from rich individuals and business interests than even the Tories — if New Labour isn’t getting an outright majority then the problem clearly lies not with the party or its policies, but with the way votes are calculated. Never mind the fact that the list system is used by our European neighbours, what these “internationalists” really want is a mini-Westminster where they can debate such burning questions as the Assembly seating plan with a tribalist ferocity proportionate only to the triviality of the issue. Fifty per cent of the seats on 40 per cent of the votes seems rather a good result, especially on a turnout of barely 40 per cent. With 60 per cent of the population not bothering to vote in the first place, it looks like first past the post will in any case be usurped by first past caring. Depressed by devolution? You will be by the time this lot are through.

Rhodri Morgan has an unenviable job ahead, but it looks like he’s already given up. Having welcomed the Richard report enthusiastically in March, Morgan has now hinted that he won’t seek the implementation of primary powers, presumably after being leaned on by Peter Hain and a rump of MPs. This cave-in to the anti-devolution lobby is being spun as an intelligent compromise. It isn’t — it’s a direct rejection of Richard and the most serious threat to the success of devolution Wales has yet faced. To be sure, Morgan and the progressives in Welsh Labour have an uphill struggle both to appease those members of the party hostile to devolution, and second to build a consensus across the political spectrum to take devolution forward. But it must be done, because their future is also bound up in whether devolution succeeds or fails, whether devolution is or isn’t.This is the main task, for surely what Wales needs most now is, to coin a much-demeaned phrase, “a coalition of the willing” to make devolution work. This is unlikely to happen, as Welsh Labour comes in three parts: one is implacably opposed to devolution; another only wants devolution if it can guarantee Labour another level of control (as distinct from allowing Wales to formulate its own policies); a third, represented by the likes of Rhodri Morgan and Carwyn Jones, wants to bring into existence a consensus-based left-of-centre democracy with real powers. Which group wins out is an issue for the whole country, not just for the party, even if the interests of Wales and the interests of Welsh Labour are largely considered the same thing by its apparatchiks and power barons.

One way of looking at Richard is to think of it as our last chance in Wales to get a centre-left government, as distinct from the centre-right government we have at Westminster. To move, as Rhodri seems to have done, from full endorsement of Richard to a timid suggestion about reviewing legislation passed at Westminster is little more than pre-emptive surrender.

Read the rest of the article in Planet 166, available online.