Archive for November 6th, 2007
6th November 2007
Between the idea and the reality
When I joined Plaid Cymru back in 1984 in the middle of the Miners’ Strike it was borne more out of a feeling of political exasperation than any sense that we are about to form a government: there wasn’t even a Welsh government to form. If there was to be a long march through the institutions, it was a going to be a very long march indeed because we didn’t even have the institutions.
Well, it has taken us a quarter of a century but Wales finally got the kind of Welsh socialist government of which my alienated adolescent self would sometimes dream. Yesterday’s budget was a balanced budget in fiscal terms (there’s not many governments in the western world that could claim that at the moment) but it was also balanced socially and economically, between the needs of different generations and the different parts of Wales; money for a Children’s bond but also the council tax rebate for pensioners; urban Wales continues to have deprivation and regeneration funding, but farmers get £27m to help to eradicate bovine TB, and there’s a young entrants scheme for the industry for the very first time (an idea first floated by Cynog Dafis in the 1992 Ceredigion campaign).
A century after other nations built their institutions, Wales is to get a national science academy, a national theatre for those that speak English and a national university for those who speak Welsh. We are embarking on a period of nation-building as intense as the period that gave us the national library and national museum a hundred years ago. But this time we won’t just be recording our history, we’ll be making it. Ourselves, alone.
It is particularly gratifying to see so many of our key transformational ideas making the transition from manifesto pledge to Government policy. Universal childcare gets £120m; business rates will be cut next year, and corporation tax may follow once the commission reports; a new community health service is being created with a nurse in every secondary school and wellbeing centres being rolled throughout Wales.
It is frustrating that we cannot do more at the moment than a pilot programme on laptops and first home grants. There are perhaps a number of reasons for this: the worst financial settlement since devolution began and the £1 billion siphoned off by the London Labour government in creative accounting through shifting the baseline and hiding behind the Olympics; the fact we are in Coalition, inevitably means give-and-take - Labour’s memorably alliterative pledges, mobile mamas and tidy towns, have also fallen by the way-side.
There is perhaps a deeper reason, which is the small ‘c’ conservatism of Welsh political culture and policy debate where anything new is routinely condemned as a gimmick. Groupthink in Welsh politics meant that it was always going to be difficult to get some of our more innovative ideas accepted whatever the colours of the Coalition we joined - the Tories and the Lib Dems, in particular, hated first time buyer grants and laptops and would have done everything in their power to strangle them at birth if the All-Wales Accord had gone beyond the drawing board. There is a not-invented here syndrome in Welsh politics; Welsh solutions to Welsh problems is an important counter-weight to London-centricity. But we need to look - in that hackneyed phrase - at ‘global best practice’ if we are to transform Wales in the future. That’s what we did through 7 4 07 - from Scandinavian childcare to Cuban polyclinics to Maine’s laptops progamme to Australia’s first home grants. We are less than half the Government, so to get half our ideas implemented in full is pretty impressive. and yes, half a programme is better than none.
But if we want this transformation to go further and faster in the future we will need a new political culture where ideas flourish. Delivery is vital. But we need inspiration too. Not bread and butter, but bread and roses.
So if you haven’t already done so, join IWA and the Bevan Foundation. And when Plaid Cymru sets up a think-tank early next year, join that too. It’s your patriotic duty!
Labour listens
Peter Hain’s clarification of his referendum stance, tucked away on the inside pages of the Wales On Sunday at the weekend, was timely, welcome and significant. It will, I am sure, go a long way to calm nationalist nerves. Progressives can sleep more calmly in their beds knowing that the leadership of both parties can recognise a potential crisis when they see one, and know how to avert it. In an ideal world we would have liked the statement to go further - though it did effectively rule out a Wales Office veto - but as Ceredig, with characteristic acuity has noted, the fact that the statement was made was itself a confirmation of Labour leadership’s commitment to One Wales.
There are two lessons to be learned. Firstly, both parties must show sensitivity and understanding as to the tensions and pressures which exist within each. Secondly, the debates and disagreements we may have between us on the issue of timing, the scope of the Convention etc are best conducted face-to-face through the Working Group of MPs and AMs rather than aired through the media, new or old. The Convention has a budget now and a chair, but it has no membership and no remit because we are yet to write it. This vacuum is being exploited by the opponents of democratic devolution on all sides. Let’s bring forward the Working Group meeting and, on this issue, even at Westminster, see if we can work together as one for Wales.