Pausing for thought

Only occasional lightening interrupts the ground war

Fighting an election campaign is like being involved in a skirmish on the edge of a battle in a wider war. You’re aware of your immediate surroundings, your friends on either side of you, and your opponents immediately ahead. But as to what is happening overall, who is winning and who is losing, you have little idea.

The circumstances of the present Assembly election only serve to underline this truth. In particular it is being overshadowed by another vote, little more than a month after 5 May – the EU referendum on 23 June. The broadcast news is full of it, giving little space for the Assembly election. UKIP is standing in the Preseli and Carmarthen West and South Pembokeshire constituencies for the first time in an Assembly election. No one believes they can win, but equally no one knows how well they will do and at whose expense.

Walking the streets on Plaid Cymru’s behalf I encounter the occasional UKIP supporter. They rail against what they see as the imposition of rule from Brussels. “Do you realise how much we’re paying them every week,” they demand. There’s no point my responding with a return question, ‘Do you appreciate how much they’re investing in Pembrokeshire, and how much our farmers depend on European subsidies and markets?” They’re just cross.

Media coverage is the air war in the election. Most of it comes from Cardiff or London and barely touches Pembrokeshire. It’s like distant rumblings of thunder with occasional flashes of lightening that momentarily light up the landscape. People are aware of it but don’t take a lot of notice.

Of real importance, however, is the ground war. This is the extent to which the parties can get their message across directly. Leaflets, posters and placards are their ammunition. Social media also count. But most important are the conversations. These have real impact and are capable of changing minds. The trouble is it’s not possible to talk to everybody.

On some occasions voters contact candidates directly. Most days I take a few calls. Standing in the centre of Fishguard I reached for my mobile phone. “I only have one question, what is your position on Trident missiles?” a woman asked. “I’m against them,” I answered. “They’re very expensive and I don’t see what they are defending us against. If you’re worried about defence it would be much better to spend some of the £100 billion or more you could save on conventional forces.”

I get e-mails as well. One asked me whether I had any background in science and engineering and my views on nuclear power. I wrote back that I couldn’t claim to be a scientist though as a journalist I was used to grappling with complex topics. On nuclear power I was conflicted. I could see it was a way of reducing carbon emissions and so was good for tackling climate change. On the other hand there was a huge problem in dealing with nuclear waste, which was also a source for making nuclear weaponry. On the whole I favoured the German approach of concentrating on renewables.

A woman in Milford rang to say that her husband was a lifelong Labour voter, but thinking of changing this time. On the other hand she was a lifelong Conservative supporter. Could I reassure her? Of course I could. At the end I wished her good luck with her forthcoming operation for which she was travelling to Glangwili in Carmarthen.

As I move around the county I’m constantly asked how the campaign is going. The people of Pembrokeshire are thinking, I say.

Seasonal gifts for my political opponents

When I was a young reporter in the 1970s I received a political lesson from Jack, now Lord Brooks of Tremorfa, at the time the Labour leader of South Glamorgan County Council. Taking my arm during a reception in Cardiff City Hall he pointed to one end of the room and said, ‘Now down there John are my political opponents, they’re the Tories.” Turning, he pointed to the other end of the room and added, “Down there are my political enemies, the Labour Party.”

In the spirit of the festive season I shall adopt Jack’s generally non-sectarian approach to politics and offer some suggestions to my political opponents in Wales for the coming year. First on my list is the Welsh Government. It used to have a target of increasing Wales’s economic activity, measured by GVA (gross value added), to 90 per cent of the UK average. It quietly dropped that target as the figure has stayed stubbornly in the low 70s for the 16 years it has been running Wales.

Gerry Holtham - Polo-mint Welsh Government has 'a holein the middle'.

Carwyn Jones should take note of his former advisor the economist Gerald Holtham who back in January wrote a paper for the Wales TUC saying we needed more firmly directed policies. Instead, he said, we continue to have  “Polo-
mint” government - one with a hole in the middle. “There is no substantial First Minister’s department, no strong Cabinet office and no
real Treasury in the Welsh government. There
is no body that is supposed to help frame an overall strategy or to co-ordinate the strategies of different ministries, which all too often operate with detached independence. If the First Minister wants to create an industrial strategy driving
the infrastructure plan and to ensure that the policies of all departments are in harmony with
it, he will have his work cut out. The institutions to help him are not there. You won’t get joined up government if a chunk of the government’s central nervous system is missing.”

Next on my list is the Secretary of State for Wales, Preseli’s Conservative MP Stephen Crabb. In October he published the draft Wales Bill which seeks to increase the powers and legislative authority of the National Assembly. However, it has been criticized on all sides as achieving precisely the opposite. Stephen Crabb should take note of the report on the Bill just published by the Assembly’s cross-party Constitutional and Legislative Affairs Committee, chaired by the Deputy Presiding Officer, Conservative AM David Melding. This has presented Crabb with a sensible list of proposals that would, as Melding says, “deliver the Secretary of State’s aims of a stronger, clearer and fairer devolution settlement for Wales that will stand the test of time.”

As the referendum on whether the UK is to remain in the EU looms ever closer, my next thought is for UKIP. Of all my political opponents they’re the least congenial. All I would say to them is take the next anti-EU speech by Nigel Farrage and simply replace the words ‘Britain’ or ‘United Kingdom’ with ‘Wales’.  Then take a close look at it and decide whether you agree with the sentiments expressed.

As for the Liberal Democrats and Greens what can I say? They’re such nice people. Next year they should undertake what they do best and redouble their efforts to seek cross-party collaboration. Have a happy Christmas one and all.

Stephen Crabb’s devolution dilemma

The Welsh Government runs Wales and the Westminster Government runs the UK. In his role as Secretary of State for Wales Preseli MP Stephen Crabb’s main job is to ensure effective co-operation between the two. At the moment he’s not doing too well.

Last week he published his draft Wales Bill that will devolve some new powers over energy, transport, and the organisation of elections. More importantly, it will fundamentally change the way legislative powers are devolved. Stephen Crabb’s intentions are good. He says he wants “a robust devolution settlement that works for the people of Wales.” So why are the other parties in the Assembly so strongly opposed to his proposals?

First Minster Carwyn Jones says the Bill amounts to an English veto on Welsh laws. He reckons that 14 of the 19 Bills the Assembly has passed since it acquired legislative powers would not have been possible under Stephen Crabb’s proposals. These include the ‘presumed consent’ system for organ donation that comes into force in December. “It means the Assembly not having a free hand in laws that have been devolved, without the consent of a Minister in Whitehall," according to Carwyn Jones. Meanwhile, the Presiding Officer Rosemary Butler has warned that unless the Wales Bill is changed substantially there will be calls for yet another one very soon.

As with most constitutional issues the devil is in the detail. Stephen Crabb describes the current system for devolving powers to the Assembly as “unstable and unclear” and he is right. In Scotland all functions are devolved apart from those that are reserved to Westminster such as defence and foreign affairs. On the other hand the National Assembly can only legislate where powers are specifically devolved. This has led to all manner of disputes about what the Assembly can and cannot do and has led UK Ministers and Welsh Ministers going to the courts on four expensive occasions to decide where power lies. 


Stephen Crabb wants Wales to have the Scottish system and in principle the other parties agree with him. The trouble is the legal processes of England and Wales are so deeply entangled that it is much more difficult to create the clear lines of responsibility that exist between London and Edinburgh. To do so would mean following Scotland by devolving responsibility for criminal and civil justice and creating a distinct legal jurisdiction.

But Stephen Crabb has set his face against this. In an interview with the Institute of Welsh Affairs’ journal Agenda this week he says he changed his mind about devolution as a result of the 2011 referendum, referring specifically his own constituency. "I didn't anticipate that people in Pembrokeshire were going to vote for full law-making powers for the Assembly in quite the way they did,” he said. “What that says is there has been a major shift in Welsh public sentiment about devolution since the first referendum in 1997.” However, it seems the shift is not enough for him to be brave enough to propose the stable and lasting devolution settlement he says he wants.

Topsy turvy world of Welsh politics

Sometimes Welsh politics seem like a topsy turvy world. No so long ago the Conservatives were extremely hostile to the Welsh Assembly set up by Labour in Cardiff Bay. Today, however, it is they rather than Labour who are advocating more powers for the Assembly. Last week the Secretary of State for Wales, Preseli’s Conservative MP Stephen Crabb, said the Assembly should become a Parliament and take on responsibility for raising a significant proportion of the money it spends. “There is no parliament in any other part of the world that doesn’t have responsibility for raising money as well as spending it,” he said.

Stephen Crabb has come full circle on devolution. Writing in 2007 he declared, “Over the last ten years my opposition to devolution in Scotland and Wales has been driven by a belief that, far from satisfying the nationalist tendencies in these countries, devolution would foster and feed an increasingly separatist and socialist discourse in which sensible Conservative policies that could promote national cohesion, economic liberalism and smaller government would find little oxygen for survival.”

So what changed Mr Crabbe’s mind? The crucial factor was witnessing the debates in Scotland’s independence referendum, shortly after he became Secretary of State in July. This is how he explained it in a lecture to the Institute of Welsh Affairs, in Cardiff last November: “During the summer I visited Scotland three times to campaign alongside Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat activists to defend the Union. But I was reminded again on those visits just how far away Westminster is from the lives of most Scots. I stood inside the empty Parliament at Holyrood one afternoon with Ruth Davidson [the Scottish Conservative leader] and it struck me that this is no mere shadow of the Westminster Parliament; this is a full legislature in its own right; it is where Scots increasingly look for answers on so many of the issues they care about; and this Parliament is here to stay. And this growth in legitimacy and competence and authority is now unquestionably the path of our own Assembly – because the people of Wales have destined it to be so. I came away from Scotland on that Wednesday night before the Referendum absolutely certain that whatever the outcome the following night, nothing would ever be the same again in terms of our constitution.”

But the change Mr Crabb wants Wales to embrace is being fiercely resisted. The Welsh Labour Government is fearful that making Wales responsible for raising its own money will undermine the amount of the block grant it receives from London. This sum, it argues, is already inadequate and will be reduced even further by George Osborne’s spending cuts. Welsh Labour is also worried about going into a future election with the Welsh Conservatives promising tax cuts. In future these will be the dividing lines in Welsh politics. But don’t expect them to appear very soon. Before the Welsh Government can raise (or lower) taxation it has to get approval in a referendum.