The referendum that never was

Still on the subject of the highly unlikely referendum on further powers, I find myself – somewhat unusually – in agreement to some extent with both Peter Black and Glyn Davies. (Well, there’s a first time for everything - but it is only a partial agreement!)

Glyn Davies says that “…I believe there to be no longer any intention to hold such a referendum before 2011”. If he hadn’t included the words "no longer", I’d be able to agree with this statement 100%; but I simply don’t believe that Labour ever had any intention of holding a referendum before 2011, so there is no change in the position, in my view.

Peter Black suggests “if Labour and Plaid are determined to lock themselves in a dark room and pretend that it will all come good on the night, no matter what the evidence to the contrary, then I fear that a referendum cannot be won in the short-term”. I cannot but agree with these sentiments as well. There will be no ‘yes’ vote without a campaign to persuade people of its merits, and it really does appear as if both the One Wales partners are studiously avoiding the issue completely.

Welsh Ramblings seems to suggest that this is not complacency, it is a deliberate ploy by Labour and Plaid to wait until the Tories declare their hand more openly. He also suggests that secret talks are already under way. I suspect that this is no more than wishful thinking on his part, I’m afraid.

This is where I think the four parties actually are on the issue:

The Tories will only decide what position to adopt when Cameron has decided what will play best for them in order to win the General Election. He will leave it as late as he can, as he has done with all policy issues, because he's trying not to say anything firm on any topic. Their position then will depend on what Cameron sees as most likely to maximise the Tory vote in England, knowing that he can’t win in Wales whatever he says. It is almost certain that, whatever a small number of them might be saying now, the party will end up opposing further powers in the immediate future. Bourne and Co. at the Assembly will make their excuses, but they’ll end up following Cameron’s line.

Labour will do everything that they can to avoid holding a referendum at all, since it will inevitably cause them major problems with their own unity. They invented the Convention, and they invented it to give them a reason to postpone a referendum indefinitely, not as a means to holding it. They want – and I think can now reasonably expect – the Convention to say that there is no overwhelming appetite for further progress. And for them, the best way of achieving that result is to let the nay-sayers campaign openly whilst remaining silent themselves, and allowing - nay encouraging, as Glyn and Edna Mopbucket suggest - the Convention to take as long as possible, whilst doing as little as possible.

Plaid’s members believe that there is a commitment to holding a referendum before 2011, but the leadership know it isn’t going to happen; the Convention was just a convenient cover to enable them to get their hands on some of the levers of power. The leaders therefore need the same result from the Convention as Labour, but can’t and won’t admit it. Don’t expect them to initiate a yes campaign any time soon.

The Lib Dems are largely irrelevant, on this as on everything else. They would join a cross-party yes campaign if there was one, but are not about to go out on a limb and start a campaign all by themselves.

The outcome of all the posturing and manoeuvring will be that there will be no referendum for several years to come, but there will be no announcement of that fact until Labour and Plaid are happy that they’ve done enough (or rather deliberately done nothing for long enough) to ensure that the vote cannot be won, making it a self-fulfilling prophesy.

Where do the interests of Wales come in all this? Don’t ask irrelevant questions.

Llwyd's Last Stand?

Today’s Western Mail article made me realise just how little public attention has been paid to Plaid’s internal election for a President. I suspect that most observers feel that it will make very little difference to Welsh politics; and reading today’s article certainly left me wondering why on earth the election is taking place. There certainly doesn’t seem to be any hint of a real political or philosophical debate going on.

Belying the title given to the Western Mail article, the substance of the debate, such as it is, seems to be that Llwyd will demand a trebling of the membership (typical of an MP to believe that decreeing something to be so makes it happen!), whilst Iwan will embrace new technology methods of campaigning.

If there’s no real debate about direction, I’m not sure that there’s any real contest taking place in electoral terms either. A quick look at both contenders’ websites suggests that Iwan has the endorsement of just about every significant figure in the party, whereas Llwyd has the other two MPs (well, they could hardly refuse to support their leader without fatally damaging his campaign, could they?), and Cynog Dafis. He also claims the leader of another party (Alex Salmond), and an ex-member of Plaid (Robyn Lewis) as supporters, although since neither of them has a vote, it doesn’t actually mean a lot.

A quick sample of Plaid acquaintances suggests that the result will be a walk-over for Iwan, and that, for me, is where an otherwise boring election starts to get interesting. Just what are the implications if Plaid’s parliamentary leader is heavily defeated in an election which he himself forced upon his party for reasons which remain entirely unclear to most? How wide does the margin of defeat need to be before his position becomes untenable?

There is an obvious successor in the shape of Adam Price. It strikes me that Llwyd’s last stand could actually bring about a bigger change in Welsh politics than might at first sight appear – albeit not the one he intended - as an entirely accidental by-product. I really love the law of unintended consequences.

Unity of Purpose

Sometimes, it's not easy to tell how united any party is. There is, however, one obvious giveaway. When prominent figures in a party start to call for unity, you know that there is a problem.

In the case of the Labour Party recently, the number of calls for unity only serves to highlight the extent of the problem that they face. Splits within Plaid haven't been that obvious to me; but might there be some that are not so obvious? According to Richard Wyn Jones (translated here and here by Ordovicius), two very prominent members of the party (Adam Price and Alun Ffred Jones) have recently been warning against division.

Jones suggests that the danger of splits is always going to be there when a party which has been in opposition for a long time finds itself in government. For the first time ever, it has to take some difficult decisions and weigh up priorities rather than just blaming the government. I'd be inclined to accept Jones' argument on that point.

Jones also suggests that the oft-repeated claims of a huge gulf in the party between 'cultural' and 'political' nationalists are nowhere near as great as some would claim. I'd agree with that as well; attempts to define Plaid as two wings in that fashion are about as meaningful as claiming that Labour has a 'unionist' and a 'nationalist' wing. Both analyses are attempts to define the respective parties from an outsider's perspective, and both fail to understand the underlying agreements, which far outweigh the disagreements.

Having said that, it seems to me that there are some potential tensions building up within Plaid. Hence, from the point of view of the 'leadership', it might look as though there is a need to make members more aware of the problems of government; more aware of the need to accept some limitations. As Jones points out, 83 years is a long time for a party to dream of change with no power to bring it about, and the intrusion of harsh reality can be unsettling.

At the same time, however, the 'leadership' need to remember that it was those dreams which kept members and activists motivated and involved for 83 years; through the bad times and the worse times. The real danger comes if those activists think that they are being asked to show blind loyalty when the dreams are being betrayed. That's how I interpret the nub of Jones' article – as a very clear warning to Plaid's leaders.

I think he takes too narrow a view, however, in restricting his analysis to those issues in One Wales which concern the future of the language. There are some real pitfalls ahead over the language LCO; and I think Jones' assessment of the probable outcome is a reasonable one. The elephant in the room, however, is the question of a referendum on further powers. If, as seems to be increasingly likely, the Convention has been skilfully used by Labour to pin Plaid's leader into a corner where a referendum in the agreed timescale becomes impossible, then I suspect that loyalty will break down.

The grey man

It’s interesting that Plaid seem to be facing one of their most significant internal debates for many a year by holding an election for the rather meaningless post of party president. The party isn’t even sure what the job is, if it exists at all (I think Bethan Jenkins is suggesting that it doesn’t). Penderyn sets out a number of possible options as to what the job actually comprises, which I suppose is as good a place as any to start. After all, if the members don’t know what the job is for, how are they to judge who’s the best person to fill it?

The big question, as Dafydd Iwan himself is asking (according to the Western Mail) is why has Elfyn Llwyd decided to stand and force an election? Llwyd himself is being less than clear in spelling out his reasons, leaving anonymous ‘sources’ to mutter darkly in reporters’ ears.

The first reason suggested is that this has something to do with the Gwynedd schools issue. Not very credible to me – Iwan wasn’t the author of the policy, he’s already lost his council seat, and the policy has to all intents and purposes been scrapped. What is the value in removing him from a non-job as well?

Secondly, there are some carefully worded suggestions that Iwan says things that others don’t like. Referring to Independence seems to be one of his sins – it is a word that has rarely, if ever, passed the lips of party leader, Ieuan Wyn Jones. Again, not really credible when one of Llwyd’s prominent backers, Adam Price, has himself been using the I-word extensively this week.

Suggestions that Iwan has a different view from the party’s elected members on issues such as St Athan might be closer to the truth, although I don’t recall Iwan actually saying anything on that (and on my reading of Plaid’s traditional response to military installations in Wales, even if he had, he would have been closer to the party’s core values on this issue. If anyone is out of line, it’s the party’s elected members, many of whom gave strong support to the scheme).

I think Betsan Powys was closest to the real issue in her post, with her implicit suggestion that Plaid’s leader wants to be allowed to ‘get on with the job’ with no danger of being criticised when he makes ‘difficult’ (i.e. contrary to the party’s policy/ values) decisions.

The key to decoding the statements being made revolves around the talk of ‘professionalising’ Plaid, in my view. The party’s unpaid officers are not subject to the control of the party leader. That makes them dangerous; far better for all the main posts to be in the hands of elected members who will do as the leader says. Iwan is the first one to be targeted and the most prominent; but other national officers who are not currently elected public representatives might want to watch their backs.

So, for what it’s worth, my take on this is that this is really a battle to determine whether the future strategy, direction and policies of Plaid Cymru are determined by the membership as a whole, or only by the leader and elected politicians who will follow his line. It mirrors the changes which the Labour Party has been through, which ended up with a nominally democratic party being run autocratically by the leader alone. Are Plaid about to follow the same path?

Convention Clues

With the recruitment process for the Executive of the Convention now in progress (soporific, claims Ordovicius), we will presumably soon know who the four parties are to appoint as their nominees. For all the talk about involvement and participation, the final decision will be a political one, and these four appointments are critical in determining whether the parties do, or do not, sign up to the inevitable decision to postpone the referendum.

With the obvious splits in their ranks, Labour will do whatever they can to avoid having a referendum in the agreed timescale, so will be looking for a nominee who can make the right noises about wanting to move ahead, but mutter darkly about the timing.

One might naturally expect Plaid to appoint the most bullish member of the Convention, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see them appointing someone who will be willing to back-pedal and agree with Labour, for the sake of avoiding any tension in the coalition. Indeed, that’s precisely what I expect to happen.

The Lib Dems’ appointment will be, like his or her party, largely irrelevant to the process.

The Tory appointment will be perhaps the most interesting of all. Freed of any need for democratic input into the appointment, this appointment will be made by Bourne, and Bourne alone. Despite the opposition to devolution from most of his party and all of his MPs, it is not inconceivable that Bourne will sense that Labour and Plaid are ready to renege on their promise and that could allow him to seize the opportunity to appoint the most enthusiastic devolutionist that he can find.

After all, the Tories won’t have to deliver on any commitment to a referendum – the coalition leaders have already decided that it won’t happen. But it would enable Bourne to outflank Plaid on a key issue. And in terms of positioning for the future, disillusioned Plaid voters are exactly what Bourne is looking for.

What Do They Expect (2)?

There has been a lot of adverse reaction from supporters of a Welsh-language newspaper to the lack of funds being provided by the One Wales government. But what do they expect?

It was surely obvious to anyone reading the One Wales agreement that it contained more commitments than would actually get funded in what was inevitably going to be a tight spending round. And if some didn't see it in the agreement itself, than surely the way in which the budget was deliberately made obscure indicated an attempt to hide a funding problem.

From some reactions, it is clear that some people thought that the very fact of having Plaid members in government would somehow change the way things worked - that everything listed in One Wales would actually be delivered. That was never going to happen; the only questions were how soon that would become obvious, and which particular items would cause the rosy tint to start fading.

I don’t think the coalition is in any danger – yet. Plaid members’ traditional loyalty to their leadership has some way to run at present. But if the members start to believe, en masse, the suggestion put forward by Vaughan Roderick, that the leadership is deliberately abandoning any attempt to maintain the idea that Plaid is just the political wing of a wider movement, then a day of reckoning will come at some point.

What Do They Expect (1)?

Seems that the Labour Party are a little upset about Plaid’s website assisting trade unionists to stop donating to the Labour Party – but what do they expect? Of course it was a stunt in advance of the Labour conference, but after his little effort at least year’s Plaid Conference, Martin Eaglestone’s complaints look more than a little hollow.

The extent to which Plaid have cosied up to Labour in the Assembly, and agreed with them on everything, even to the extent of trashing their own previous statements, has been a source of bafflement to myself and others for months.

The reaction of the Tories and Lib Dems is predictable, even if completely contrary to what they were saying last week. Last week, Plaid were betraying their principles by supporting Labour on everything; this week, they're putting cracks in the coalition by seeking to undermine Labour Party funding. I had a lot more sympathy with last week's position than this week's.

What we all need to get used to is the idea that there will be coalitions between different parties at different times and at different levels. Coalitions do not mean mergers, and they need not lead to any abandoning of previous policy positions. What they do mean is clear agreement on short term programmes, and complete support from the signatories for those programmes. Outside those agreements, it is, or should be, ‘business as usual’. And that means parties putting their own views and promoting themselves to the electorate.

Labour need to accept that as a fact, rather than get upset – and Plaid need to move beyond stunts, and extend the war with Labour to anything not specifically included in ‘One Wales'.