Bad reporting from the Guardian

Yes, from the headline, I guess most of you will have thought that I was referring to this article yesterday on Ysgol Llangennech and Welsh-medium education generally.

However what I had in mind was this report on a poll commissioned by Chatham House on what position the EU should take in Brexit negotiations. The Guardian's headline reads:

Two-thirds of Europeans believe EU should take hard line on Brexit – poll

But look more closely at this graphic from the article:

   

Yes, it is technically true that two-thirds of those outside the UK said that the EU should not compromise its core principles ... but what about the additional 20% who said that the EU should not compromise at all?

Do the maths. The truth is that more than 80% of those questioned think that the EU should not compromise over its core principles. In fact, even a majority in the UK think that the EU should not compromise its core principles. If we needed proof that the UK government is not going to get the outcome it says it wants, this survey should add to it. Twenty-seven democratically elected governments are not going to ignore such overwhelming strength of opinion in their respective countries.

So what are we to make of such reporting? Is it sloppiness? Maybe. Or is it that the Guardian, like every other media outlet, is inclined to write stories that support its own agenda, or (being more charitable) has an inbuilt, unconscious bias that it simply isn't aware of?

I don't share the general anger that I can see in many of the pro-Welsh-language comments on the Guardian's Llangennech article. I think it would be better to accept that every news outlet operates this way, and to filter what any article says accordingly. I'm glad the Guardian wrote what it did, simply because exposing such bias (whether intended or unconscious) is the best way of dealing with it.

The DUP save our bacon

The result of yesterday's election wasn't too far away from what I expected. I had put the Tories on 310 and Labour on 275. So I'm disappointed to some extent, but I can see a bright side.

In the Six Counties, two things coincided to produce a perfect storm. The first was that the DUP did well in the Unionist community, gaining two seats, but the second was that Sinn Féin did even better in the Republican community, gaining three seats and wiping out the SDLP. Because Sinn Féin do not take their seats in Westminster, the result is a solid block of MPs who are prepared to support the Tories, and who have just come to a deal to keep Theresa May in a weak and wobbly position of power. The SDLP would, of course, have opposed the Tories.

There is only one thing that the DUP really want from this deal, which is that the Six Counties are not treated in any way differently from the rest of the UK. If the DUP were not in such a pivotal position, I would have put money on the eventual solution to the problem of the border between the Six Counties and the Twenty-six being that the effective border between the EU and UK post-Brexit would be the Irish Sea, and that customs and immigration checks would have been carried out at the ports and airports rather than at the land border. Logistically, that is by far the best way of handling things because the tickets of any people or goods would have to be checked anyway when they boarded the ferries or planes to cross the Irish Sea, so discretely checking their customs/immigration documents at the same time as their tickets would result in no additional inconvenience.

However this arrangement is the one thing that the DUP will absolutely oppose, because in the event of a hard Brexit it will make the Six Counties—in practice if not in name—part of the EU single market and customs union and therefore economically, as opposed to politically, part of a united Ireland.

The only alternative to this is for the UK as a whole to remain part of the EU single market and customs union. And for me this now looks to be the most likely outcome. Essentially, the UK will have a similar relationship with the EU as Norway, and the border between the Six and Twenty-six counties will become as irrelevant for day-to-day purposes as the border between Norway and Sweden. Such an arrangement will also solve the problem of the border between Gibraltar and Spain, allowing Gibraltar to remain British without taking a massive financial hit from the loss of thousands of workers who make the daily commute from Spain.

Those who wanted a hard Brexit (UKIP and the Tory hardliners) were well and truly defeated in yesterday's election, so the UK having a Norway-style relationship with the EU can now be politically justified. And the Tories, if they have any sense, will grasp the fig leaf of spinning this compromise as the only practical way of ensuring that their precious UK stays together and that Gibraltar remains British.

The huge benefit for people in the UK is that we will remain part of the EU for economic purposes, and will only have opted out politically. It means that when Wales and Scotland become independent, we only need make the political decision whether we want to be part of the EU, because there will be hardly any economic consequences either way.

If I'm right in this analysis, the DUP have saved our bacon.

Now for those of you who will argue that this means that the UK will have to continue paying money to the EU, my answer is that we would always have had to do this if we wanted seamless access to the EU single market. We were fooling ourselves if we thought the EU27 would allow us any other deal.

Reaping the whirlwind

I was going to write a post on some of the strange things that have happened elsewhere in the world over the past year, but having started with the EU, it might be better to stay on the subject.

The obvious question is what relationship the UK should seek, or expect, to have with the EU.

For me, the starting point is to look at the options that were presented as being available before the referendum last June. Although these options weren't on any ballot paper, the media and the Leave campaign presented us with about four or five alternative options if we chose not to remain in the EU. For example here and here.

I don't want to go into the merits of the different options, but only want to make this point. 51.9% of the vote was to leave and 48.1% to remain. For me, it is impossible to imagine less than 2% of that 51.9% would have wanted us to have a similar relationship to the EU as the ones that Norway and Switzerland have, i.e. to remain an integral part of the single market, paying a fair fee to be part of it and accepting its four freedoms. In other words, I'm quite sure that a majority of those who voted in the referendum would have been in favour of the UK remaining in the EU single market.

In my opinion, what should have happened after the referendum was for David Cameron to have remained as Prime Minister and negotiate for that sort of model. The UK's model wouldn't have needed to be exactly the same as that of either Norway or Switerland, but either would have been a good starting point. But he didn't, even though he could easily have claimed a mandate for doing so on the basis I've just outlined. Instead, he chickened out, leaving the hard-liners in the Tory party who wanted a more extreme form of Brexit to fill the vacuum he left.

Sadly, Labour did not argue for that alternative either. So we got to a position where there was no effective opposition to a hard Brexit, even though there could easily have been one if the Labour, SNP and Tory MPs who wanted us to remain in the single market had come together to vote for it as a pre-condition for triggering Article 50.

Under a scenario where Cameron had not resigned, he would have been in a fairly similar position to that of the Norwegian government following their similarly narrow vote to stay out of the EU in 1994 (they, like him, wanted to their country to a be a full member of the EU). I am sure that the other EU member state goverments would have looked favourably on such an approach and granted the UK that sort of arrangement.

-

But we now have to accept that this isn't going to happen. The UK government has chosen to confront the other 27, rather than co-operate. And there are no prizes for predicting the outcome: whether you look at it as 27 states against 1, or 450 million people against 65 million, the EU will get its way because it is in a much stronger position. Anyone who thinks "they need us more than we need them" is deluded.

The UK government (aided by the lack of any concerted opposition in Westminster) has led the people of the UK into a hopeless position where there is no chance of getting a deal with the EU that is anywhere near as good as the one we have now. To be honest, I think the Tories realize this, and that they've called the general election on 8 June as a smokescreen to mask a different agenda. For even if, as they hope, they get an increased majority, it is not going to make the slightest bit of difference to the other members of the EU. Their negotiating position will, obviously, be based on their interests.

So what, then, is the real reason behind calling this general election? I believe that it is to give Theresa May a mandate for creating a radically different type of UK. In order to survive economically outside the EU, the UK is going to have to be much more aggressive in the way it seeks to trade with other countries. As they hinted at before, it means reducing workers' wages and workers' rights in order to make UK goods cheaper, so that companies can still sell them after tariffs have been applied. It also means getting rid of environmental protections because, in the same way, it's cheaper for companies not to bother about polution and greenhouse gas emissions.

The EU is based on the European values and standards that a vast majority of European countries share, including at least one (if not more) of the countries that currently make up the UK. Trying to undercut these values in the hope of giving your country a competitive edge is a cheap, tawdry thing to do, and the pursuit of this sort of UK will inevitably result in the disintegration of the UK.

If you reap the wind, you sow the whirlwind.

What a year!

It would probably be a good idea to make some sort of comment on what has been an extraordinary year in politics. So I'll start with the European Union.

I don't suppose anyone will be surprised to learn that I voted for the UK to remain a member of the EU. On balance I think the EU is a good thing, and in particular good for its member states ... although not so good for those countries who deal with it from the outside. It is protectionist in nature and, as a block of half a billion people in some of the richest countries in the world, it can afford to be.

But I wasn't totally surprised at the outcome of the EU referendum. The state of politics in the UK, and perhaps in the West as a whole, has reached a low ebb in which reasonable debate and discussion is drowned out by slogans, soundbites and personalities. In these circumstances politicians can get away with telling more blatant lies than they would usually be able to get away with. That was true on both sides. But the main factor was that the ground for Brexit had been carefully cultivated for decades, in particular by the media. However the media aren't to blame for pushing any particular agenda. If people on this island choose to pull the wool over their own eyes, then we have no-one to blame but ourselves for the outcome.

-

Talking of "big picture" things; until the EU referendum campaign I used to think that the ever-rightward shift in political opinion that we've seen in the UK over the past thirty or forty years was primarily the legacy of Margaret Thatcher and her heir, Tony Blair. Now I'm more inclined to think that it is just as much to do with our membership of what is now the EU. In particular the move away from the state being a major player in economic activity in favour of the private sector. It's not hard to see why. For the EU to operate properly as a single market, to the extent that a member state of the EU is involved in economic activity, it becomes very hard to separate what the proper boundaries of such involvement should be, and it is all too easy for it to cross the line (wherever that line is) and become state aid. The denationalization of our state-owned industries and mass privatization of state assets owes as much to the EU as it does to Thatcher and Blair. In fact the two go hand-in-hand. We shouldn't forget that Thatcher was ardently pro-EU, and one of the main drivers of the move to create the EU single market.

It might also be worth saying that, so far as the EU is concerned, it has never "imposed its will" on us. The EU is much more of a democracy than the UK has ever been. Its policies are decided by the governments of each member state in the Council of Ministers, by the Commissioners that each government appoints, and by its citizens through those we elect to the European Parliament. I'm sure most people reading this will know that already.

I'm definitely on the left in terms of my politics and I listened carefully to, and had quite a bit of sympathy towards, the argument made by some on the left that if the UK left the EU, we would be able to do things that we would not currently be able to do as EU members: such as renationalize the railways or the power companies. But in the end I was much more persuaded by the arguments of people like Yanis Varoufakis and DiEM 25 that it is better for us to reform the EU through its democratic institutions than to walk away from it. Equally, if you agree with me that the EU treated countries like Greece shamefully, the way to change such policies is from within.

-

But all that is water under the bridge. The UK did vote to leave, and that decision should be respected. I do not have a lot of time for the position that we should have another referendum to decide whether we want to accept the terms of any settlement of agreement. For any that do, I would simply ask whether you would want the same two-stage procedure to apply to a positive vote in a future referendum on Welsh or Scottish independence. It isn't right to change the rules half-way through. If, say, Scottish independence were to be subject to a two-stage vote from the outset, it seems clear to me that a large majority would vote for independence at the first stage in order to see what sort of constitution and institutions Scotland would have, and what sort of settlement could be negotiated with the RUK ... knowing full well that the only vote that really mattered would be the second. The whole exercise would just be a waste of time, effort and resources for all concerned.

That said, I would certainly not rule out another "straight" referendum on EU membership, if it became clear in future through opinion polls or general elections that enough people wanted to rejoin. It might be two years away, or ten years away, or never. In other words, I reject the idea of a two-stage vote, but don't object to another vote. That's democracy. In case anybody thinks I'm being inconsistent, I would apply the same principle to independence. I would have no objection to people in an independent country voting to rejoin the country from which they gained their independence ... but I would note that none of the 54 countries that have gained independence from rule by Westminster has shown any interest in doing that.

-

I don't think it is likely that the UK will ever vote to rejoin the EU. But please don't think I'm being pessimist. Quite the contrary, it won't happen because I don't think the UK will exist (at least in its present form) for much longer. Scotland will be independent and Ireland will be reunited. I believe both of these events have always been inevitable, but the EU referendum will act as a catalyst to make both happen sooner rather than later.

This is the silver lining to the dark cloud of collective stupidity and self-harm called Brexit.

Perhaps an England whose leaders have finally been disabused of the idea that it is entitled to greater privileges than other countries will come to its senses and rejoin its neighbours. I hope so ... but that will be up to England. It's up to us in Wales whether we are content to go along with whatever England decides to do, or make our own decision as an independent country.

Freedom of Movement

On the subject of freedom of movement, one of the mantras of those campaigning to leave the EU was to "take back control". The question they were not asked was: "Take back control from whom?" And because that question was not asked, people were left with the impression that bureaucrats in Brussels were in control.

In fact neither bureaucrats in Brussels nor politicians in any member state of the EU are in control. We as EU citizens, at least for now, are the ones in control of our own choices about where we live and work. We can work in Berlin, retire to Spain, or bum around in Greece as we want, and no government anywhere in the EU can deny us that freedom.

If the UK leaves the EU without signing up to the four freedoms of movement (with a similar status to countries like Norway) control will be taken away from us as individuals and handed to governments instead.

We can decide for ourselves whether this is a good or bad thing. However I find it odd that those on the right of the political spectrum, who in all other circumstances think that government control over citizens is a bad thing, are the ones who think that taking this freedom from us as individuals and putting politicians in control is a now good thing.

Slow progress on renewable energy

Back in 2009, all EU member states committed themselves to a binding agreement that at least 20% of the EU's total energy consumption should come from renewable sources by 2020.

In addition to this overall figure, each individual member had its own particular target, reflecting the fact that each country was starting form a different base. At the top of the tree was Sweden, already producing just under 40% in 2005, and agreeing to a target of 49% – and at the bottom (excluding only Malta) was the UK, with only 1.3% of its energy consumption coming from renewables in 2005, and agreeing to a target of 15%.

There are biennual progress reports, and the 2014 figures were published last week. It looks like the target is going to be met.

     

However, when it come to the progress of individual member states, the picture is quite varied. Nine have got there aleady: Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Lithuania, Czechia, Italy, Croatia, Bulgaria and Romania. Denmark and Austria are almost there. But at the bottom of the pile, four member states are a long way behind: France, the Netherlands, the UK and Ireland.

     

Once again, the UK shows that it is not particularly good at keeping its end of the bargain when it comes to the agreements it makes as an EU member state. We need to catch up fast, even if the UK were to meet the 2020 target, the agreed overall figure for 2030 is at least 27%.

Carpe DiEM

So far as I can see, there has been nothing in the mainstream media (except RT) about the launch last night in Berlin of a new political movement to democratize the EU, the Democracy in Europe Movement, DiEM ... or DiEM25, as they reckon we must achieve this by 2025 or see the EU disintegrate.

If you have the time for it, there's a six hour long live stream available here. But I don't, so here's the glossy launch video instead.

     

The thinking behind the movement is outlined in their manifesto, which comes in both a long and short version. Here are some quotes from it:

     

For all their concerns with global competitiveness, migration and terrorism, only one prospect truly terrifies the Powers of Europe: Democracy!

They speak in democracy’s name but only to deny, exorcise and suppress it in practice. They seek to co-opt, evade, corrupt, mystify, usurp and manipulate democracy in order to break its energy and arrest its possibilities. For rule by Europe’s peoples, government by the demos, is their nightmare.

At the heart of our disintegrating EU there lies a guilty deceit: A highly political, top-down, opaque decision-making process is presented as ‘apolitical’, ‘technical’, ‘procedural’ and ‘neutral’. Its purpose is to prevent Europeans from exercising democratic control over their money, communities, working conditions and environment.

The price of this deceit is not merely the end of democracy but also the dream of shared prosperity:

• The Eurozone economies are being marched off the cliff of competitive austerity, resulting in permanent recession in the weaker countries and low investment in the core countries

• EU member-states outside the Eurozone are alienated, seeking inspiration and partners in suspect quarters

• Unprecedented inequality, declining hope and misanthropy flourish throughout Europe

The more they asphyxiate democracy, the less legitimate their political authority becomes, the stronger the forces of economic recession, and the greater their need for further authoritarianism. Thus democracy’s enemies gather renewed power while losing legitimacy and confining hope and prosperity to the very few (who may only enjoy it behind the gates and the fences needed to shield them from the rest of society).

That sort of agenda certainly appeals to me, though we have yet to see exactly what those behind this launch actually plan on doing to achieve it. I believe it is not enough to say—as most political parties in Wales are saying—that the EU isn't perfect and needs reform, without having a clear idea of what we want to reform and what we want the EU to become. Yet when called on to give examples of what we want to reform we focus on tiny, almost petty, details that we don't like while ignoring the bigger picture. Do we want to focus on whether the deckchairs are arranged in rows or groups, or do we want to stop the EU sinking?

One of the main figures behind DiEM25 is Yanis Varoufakis, and he features in this hour-long discussion ... even quoting Tony Benn!

     

Cameron on benefits

I haven't written much before now on the upcoming EU referendum because the focus of debate—at least, as framed by the Tories—centres on matters which are of very little concern to me. Indeed, I think that by focusing on these things rather than matters which should be of much more fundamental concern about what the EU is doing, or shows every sign of doing in the near future, we are actually reducing the chances of getting the EU reforms we really need.

Here is a short clip from last night's news which shows the hypocrisy behind David Cameron's stance on immigrants receiving in-work benefits.

     

Anyone who gives the matter any thought at all will be able to see the fundamental flaw in his argument. Our system is set up in such a way that every single non-immigrant will, as he puts it, "get benefits out of the system" before we put a single penny into the system. A very great deal of benefits, in fact.

Everyone who has grown up in the UK will have benefitted from years of completely free education and health care provided by the state; and will almost certainly have made use of free social services and facilities provided by local authorities. On top of this, the government will have made direct cash payments for each child while they are growing up.

Looked at in broad terms, a person will only start "paying into the system" when they start work (apart from paying a little tax in the form of VAT on purchases) and it will probably take twenty years or so before the taxes they've paid into the UK system balance the benefits they took out of the system while they were growing up. On average, a person will probably "break even" in their forties; then for the next twenty years or so they will be net contributors to the benefits system; then they will retire and take money out of they system again in pension payments and increased health and social care. In round terms: 20 years of taking from the system, 20 years of paying it off, 20 years of being a net contributor to the system, 20 years to get it back again.

-

Now consider the position of a newly-arrived immigrant working in the UK. From the very first day they will be a net contributor to the UK system because of the tax and national insurance they pay.

That is why it is utterly offensive for Cameron to suggest that we should stop immigrants receiving in-work benefits for any amount of time, let alone four years. An immigrant receiving in-work benefits is certainly not getting "something for nothing". In fact, they will be anything up to 20 years ahead of the average UK citizen in terms of paying into our system.

-

Looking at the bigger picture, if there is any issue that should be addressed, it is the fact that the UK is benefitting from the education and expertise of immigrants at the expense of the country they have come from. It should be a very major source of concern that the UK encourages, for example, qualified doctors, nurses and other health professionals to work in our national health services. This holds true for all immigration, not just immigration from within the EU. Indeed, as has been said many times by many people, our NHSs wouldn't survive without them.

Misunderstanding the Dublin Regulation

Having just watched the BBC News, I was appalled at their sloppy reporting about refugees in Europe.

They repeated the old canard that refugees had a duty, as part of the Dublin Regulation, to claim asylum in the first EU member state they reached. And they repeat it several times in the online version of the story as well, for example they say that the EU:

"... wants to scrap the rule that means they [refugees] must claim asylum in the first country they arrive in and introduce a new dispersal scheme."

and

"... wants to scrap what is known as the Dublin agreement, which dictates refugees must claim asylum in the "first country of entry".

BBC, 20 January 2016

The Dublin Regulation places no such duty on refugees, nor can it. Instead it places a duty on member states to process the claims of asylum seekers.

The fundamental flaw with the system is that it has never been in the self-interest of member states to process those claims for refugees who, if left to their own devices, would simply pass through their territory in order to claim asylum elsewhere. It is easier to turn a blind eye and leave it to the next member state, or the next, or the next, to deal with them instead.

European elections in other stateless nations

I thought it would be good to look at how other stateless nations on the path to independence voted in the European Parliament elections yesterday.

 
Catalunya

The big news in Catalunya is that the ERC, the Catalan Republican Left, has topped the poll in Catalunya for the first time in the post-Franco era, pushing CiU into second place.

     

On the right of the political spectrum, the Catalan nationalist (although only recently pro-independence) CiU has always been comfortably ahead of the Spanish nationalist PP. But on the left of the political spectrum ERC has generally played second fiddle to the Spanish nationalist PSC. Although they narrowly beat the PSC in the last Catalan parliament election, they came second to CiU.

So things still look good for the independence referendum on 9 November.

This is a picture of what I would like to see happen in Wales. Plaid Cymru, the Welsh nationalist left, is in a similar position to that which ERC used to hold: always playing second fiddle to Labour, the British nationalist left. Things have now swung the other way in Catalunya, and the same could happen in Wales with Plaid.

 
Euskadi

In the three provinces of the Basque Autonomous Community, the picture is similar, but with left and right reversed. The EAJ-PNV, the Basque nationalist right traditionally outperforms the Spanish nationalist right of the PP, and has done so again by 27% to 10%. It is only in the past few years that the pro-independence left has got its act together (under various names) but the current EH Bildu has comfortably outperformed the PSOE by 23% to 13%.

     

So things also look good for Basque independence, however I don't expect much to happen in the immediate future. It's probably best for the Basques not to make waves and wait to see what happens in Catalunya. But, besides that, it might well be counter-productive for the three provinces to make any move without first re-uniting with Nafarroa.

In Nafarroa, the fourth Basque province south of the Pyrenees, EH Bildu have done remarkably well with 20% of the vote. The Basque nationalist right in Nafarroa has never been particularly well-established, tending to be allied with the PP when not part of it, and preferring to paint itself as Nafarroan rather than Basque (the situation is similar in Galicia, Valencia and the Balearics). The EAJ-PNV did stand but only got 2% of the vote.

 
The Spanish State

In terms of these European elections, the Spanish State elects on the basis of a single list, therefore the situation is complicated by alliances that tend to change at each European election. But this is what happened this time round:

     

•  The ERC stood with other pro-self-determination parties of the left in Catalunya as L'Esquerra pel Dret a Decidir, and won 2 seats.

•  The Catalan and Basque nationalist parties of the right, CiU and EAJ-PNV stood as Coalición por Europa, and won 3 seats.

•  EH Bildu turned to BNG, the Galician nationalist left, to stand as Los Pueblos Deciden, and won 1 seat.

6 nationalist seats out of 54 in total is actually a very good performance; perhaps 7 if Primavera Europea, which includes Compromís, the small and relatively new Valencian nationalist party, is counted. This is much better than Plaid Cymru and the SNP's combined total of 3 out of 70 ... or 4 out of 73 if we include Sinn Féin's win in the Six Counties.

 
Flanders

There were federal, regional and European elections in Belgium yesterday. The Flemish nationalist party, N-VA, did exceptionally well in all three. They got 32.6% of the Federal Parliament vote (up 4.4%), 31.9% of the Flemish Parliament vote (up 18.8%) and 26.7% (up 16.8%) of the European Parliament vote.

     

     

     

After the last federal elections in 2010 there was an impasse lasting 541 days before a federal government could be formed ... something which only went to show that Belgium doesn't really need a federal government to function, because so much of the real power is already exercised at regional level.

In the end, the N-VA, even though it was the largest party in 2010, was squeezed out of power by a coalition of nearly all the other parties. The N-VA took the view that it was better not to compromise on the more substantial constitutional reform they wanted, and let the other parties implement a modest sixth round of reform. Bart de Wever's stance appears to have been vindicated, and their success now will inevitably lead to a stronger seventh round of constitutional reforms which will further increase Flemish autonomy and weaken Belgium as a political entity. The idea is that, "Slowly but surely, Belgium will very gently disappear."

Constitutional reform (the N-VA's bottom line in forming a federal government) should be quicker this time round, not so much because other parties will be any more willing to work with the N-VA, but because they probably only need to hammer out a package with a couple of other parties, rather than with half a dozen of them.

-

We should bear in mind that although the N-VA is a nationalist party which wants to see the break up of Belgium, it is unashamedly a party of the right. So I support the first aim, even though I don't support the policies they would implement if they were in government in an independent Flanders. But that's democracy.

Perhaps the best way to illustrate the gulf is to watch the video below.

     

Pass the sick bucket, please. Bart de Wever is pretty chummy with David Cameron too.

     

I wonder if the Tories realize the inconsistency of supporting the party which wants independence for Flanders and the break up of Belgium, while at the very same time being against independence for Wales and Scotland and the break up of the UK?

Actually, I'm sure they do; but reckon on nobody in the mainstream media being willing to hold them to account for it.

Relief

The overwhelming feeling, both for me and for most people who support Plaid Cymru, after the announcement of the European Parliament election result will be relief that Jill Evans managed to hold on to her seat.

Plaid lost a lot of their support and were in a fairly miserable fourth place. In the end Jill's seat was saved by Labour's failure ... and by UKIP's success.

-

In the Welsh Political Barometer in February and YouGov poll in April, Labour were at 39% (details here) and in last week's Wales Political Barometer they were at 33% (details here). These percentages would easily have given Labour two seats. But in the end, Labour only managed to get 28.15% of the vote. This fall in support for Labour, and this alone, enabled Jill to squeeze in with 15.26%. If Labour had managed to get 30.6% of the vote, they would have won the fourth Welsh seat by getting more than twice Plaid's vote.

-

Looking back at the campaign, Labour did themselves no favours by not really contesting these elections. They kept a low profile, not really engaging in the fight in any meaningful way; probably thinking that this election didn't really matter and keeping their resources safe for fighting the 2015 Westminster election instead. So they've only got themselves to blame for not getting two Welsh seats.

The second factor was that UKIP did much better than even I imagined they would do. They were never in any danger of not winning a seat in Wales, but they probably picked up enough votes from people in Wales who would otherwise vote Labour to keep Labour below the magic 30.6% that would have squeezed Plaid out. Mark Hutchings tweeted it right: UKIP saved Plaid's bacon.

So Plaid owes UKIP a rather large thank you. Quite ironic really, as Plaid's main tactic in this election had been to single out UKIP for attack.

European Free Alliance election video

This is a video by the EFA, the European Free Alliance, for the upcoming elections to the European Parliament.

     

As this is an EU election, it's perhaps good to remind ourselves of the big picture issues to do with the nature of what the EU is, and the relationship of our countries to it. For me, the big picture is whether we want Wales to be an independent sovereign state with our own place at the table of the EU.

It is about whether countries like Wales, Scotland, Catalunya, Euskadi and Galicia are able to speak for ourselves, or whether we have no voice at all because the United Kingdom and Spain make decisions for us. This issue is now coming to a head with referendums in Scotland and Catalunya this year, and this will certainly be followed by feverish activity in the EU about exactly how to accommodate new members through internal enlargement.

This next few years will therefore be absolutely crucial in determining the shape of the EU. And although the EU Parliament probably won't have as much of a role to play as the governments of member states through the Council of Ministers, it is the only democratic institution in the EU where our voice and the voices of other stateless nations can currently be heard ... because the governments of the UK and Spain will be trying to hold on to a model that suits them rather than move on to a model where all the nations of Europe have an equal voice.

Plaid Cymru needs to change tack

On Thursday, Roger Scully was kind enough to post an advance copy of the latest YouGov poll on voting intentions in Wales, based on fieldwork conducted between 11 and 22 April.

With less than a month to go before the elections to the European Parliament, I'd like to concentrate on the figures for that election.

YouGov Poll, April 2014

Labour ... 39% (no change)
UKIP ... 20% (+2%)
Conservative ... 18% (+1%)
Plaid Cymru ... 11% (-1%)
LibDems ... 7% (no change)

Wales Political Barometer, February 2014

Labour ... 39% (-2%)
UKIP ... 18% (+5%)
Conservative ... 17% (-3%)
Plaid Cymru ... 12% (-1%)
LibDems ... 7% (-5%)

Wales Political Barometer, February 2014

This is how the four Welsh seats would be distributed, based on the latest poll:

First seat ... Labour ... 39%
Second seat ... UKIP ... 20%
Third seat ... Labour ... 19.5%
Fourth seat ... Conservative ... 18%

Notional fifth seat ... Labour ... 13%
Notional sixth seat ... Plaid Cymru ... 11%
Notional seventh seat ... UKIP ... 10%
Notional eighth seat ... Labour ... 9.75%
Notional ninth seat ... Conservative ... 9%
Notional tenth seat ... Labour ... 7.8%
Notional eleventh seat ... LibDems ... 7%

I commented in some detail on the previous figures in this post last month, following Leanne Wood's attack on UKIP at the Plaid Cymru spring conference. These latest figures from YouGov simply confirm the points I made at the time: namely that if Jill Evans is to have any hope of holding on to her seat, the party that Plaid needs to beat in the election is in fact the Conservatives, not UKIP. This is because UKIP are ahead of the Tories, and the gap between them is growing. As Labour are all but certain to win two seats, it is a three-way contest between the Conservatives, UKIP and ourselves for the remaining two seats.

In tactical terms, Plaid needs to pick off the weaker of those two parties. It was therefore a mistake to concentrate our attack on UKIP. It was as if we were basing our tactics on the last European Parliament elections, when UKIP only got 12.8% of the vote and the Tories topped the poll with 21.2% ... but things have changed a lot over the past five years.

I had hoped that the party leadership would realize this and change tack (after all, that was the point of writing what I did) but I have to say that I have not seen any sign of that. Asking around within the party, it would appear that we are instead relying on getting our "core vote" out and hoping that will be enough. I wasn't convinced by that way of thinking before, and I'm even less convinced by it now that these new figures have been published. In the February poll Plaid was at 12%, 5% behind the Tories on 17%; but the latest poll shows that our support has dropped to 11% and that the gap has now widened to 7%. It should therefore be obvious that we need to change our tactics.

     

I am not particularly convinced by the idea that any party should primarily base its tactics on attacking other parties. But to the extent that we do (and I believe we should always be careful to attack performance and policies rather than characterize a whole party and those who vote for them as being "against Wales") we need to focus our attack on the Tories rather than UKIP. That really shouldn't be too difficult, as the performance and policies of the Tory-led govermnent at Westminster over the last four years have provided us with ample ammunition to use against them.

The second thing that we need to do is to highlight our own policies ... or, at the very least, not be ashamed of them. One thing Leanne said in her speech is that she hoped Greens and Liberal Democrats would vote for Plaid. That definitely is a good, and in fact necessary, thing to aim for; but we can only have any hope of getting them to vote for Plaid on the basis of our policies, not out of any sense of loyalty to us. However, one thing that is certainly fundamental to Green voters is our position on nuclear power, and there is probably a large percentage of LibDems who are disguntled about the way their party recently changed its policy on the issue.

In the past, I too have urged Green Party supporters in Wales to vote for Plaid—for example this is what I wrote before the last European election in 2009—but I can't, in good conscience, ask or expect anyone who votes Green to vote for Plaid Cymru now. This is because Plaid's leadership has completely turned its back on our policy of opposition to the construction of any new nuclear power stations in Wales, including Wylfa B. Our leaders have sat on their hands and done absolutely nothing to correct the lies and misinformation about our policy that have been put out by a few prominent members of the party such as Elfyn Llwyd, Bob Parry, Dafydd Elis-Thomas and, most recently, by Rhun ap Iorwerth.

Make no mistake, Plaid's poor position in these polls means that support from the Greens and from LibDems who are unhappy with their party's U-turn on nuclear power is going to make all the difference between Jill keeping her seat and losing it. But Jill, even though I know she is against nuclear power, has been effectively silenced by those in positions of power within Plaid Cymru who will not let her, nor our spokesman on energy Llyr Gruffydd, nor even Leanne herself as our leader speak out for what we stand for. This silence is deafening and needs to be broken. Unless we as a party learn to be honest with the Welsh electorate about our policies, we cannot hope to win support from others.

     

But we face a more serious problem than that. As I noted above, the message that is being put out is that Plaid will be alright if we get our "core vote" out. But why on earth should we expect this "core vote" to turn out? One of Plaid Cymru's great strengths is that it is meant to be a transparent and democratic party in which policies are decided by members at conference. But how can we expect our supporters to turn out and vote for Plaid unless our leaders are prepared to stand up for these policies? Instead what we have is a group of people in positions of power in the party who seem determined to ignore policies that ordinary members have voted for and keep voting for. A party which treats its ordinary members and supporters with such contempt will, as sure as night follows day, see that contempt reflected in a loss of support in the ballot box.

We made the mistake of allowing Rhun ap Iorwerth to misrepresent our policies to the electorate, presumably because those in positions of power within the party thought that it would make it easier to win the Ynys Môn by-election last summer. I warned them at the time that it was a miscalculation: first because it was a safe seat at Assembly level anyway and therefore we didn't need to do it; but second, and more importantly, because it would cost us support across Wales as a whole in future elections. I was one of the few people in the party who stood up and said it at the time, because I realized the danger of the party being seen as two-faced. It is not a matter of nuclear power per se, as if this particular policy is somehow more important than any other. It is a matter of being honest with our supporters across Wales as a whole, rather than pandering to narrow-interest groups within the party. It is a matter of consistency, credibility and trust with the electorate ... for, without that, we have no right to expect people to turn out and vote for us.

     

In truth, it really didn't matter whether we won the Ynys Môn by-election last summer by a margin of 9,000 or a margin of 3,000 votes, so we threw away our reputation for honesty for nothing. The tragedy is that we have let nine months pass without doing a single thing to try and reclaim it.

But does matter very much if we lose our seat in the European Parliament. To put it bluntly, it will be a disaster for Plaid Cymru if we do. This poll from YouGov shows beyond any doubt that we are going to lose it unless we change tack. So we need to stop focusing on UKIP and turn our attention to the party that we really need to beat in this election, which is the Tories. And our leaders need to find their backbone and reaffirm support for the policies, like our opposition to building new nuclear power stations, that members across Wales have voted for time and again. Mark my words; if we don't do this we will not only alienate much of our own core vote, but will be throwing away any hope of people who would otherwise vote Green or LibDem voting for us instead.

Attacking UKIP

I have to say that I was a little surprised by the way that Leanne focused on UKIP at Plaid Cymru's spring conference last weekend. It goes without saying that UKIP is a party which fully deserves criticism for its anti-EU and anti-immigration policies, but I wondered why we would want to single them out for criticism.

Fairly obviously, the context for Leanne's concern is the European Parliament election which is now only a couple of months away on 22 May. The last European election was in 2009 and, as a reminder, these were the results for Wales:

Conservative ... 21.2%
Labour ... 20.3%
Plaid Cymru ... 18.5%
UKIP ... 12.8%
LibDems ... 10.7%
Greens ... 5.6%

BBC, 2009 European Election Results

It seems hard to believe that Labour could do quite so badly in any election in Wales, but these were the dire days immediately following the 2008 banking collapse, and the Labour government in Westminster was all but dead on its feet.

Now, after nearly four years of the Tories and LibDems in power at Westminster, and with UKIP playing a political tune that both the Tories and Labour seem more than willing to dance to, the polls are indicating a very different result. This is from the YouGov ITV Wales political barometer, with the changes from the December poll in brackets:

Labour ... 39% (-2%)
UKIP ... 18% (+5%)
Conservative ... 17% (-3%)
Plaid Cymru ... 12% (-1%)
LibDems ... 7% (-5%)

Wales Political Barometer, February 2014

If this poll is anywhere near accurate, then the chances of Jill Evans retaining her seat look very bleak. This is how the seats would be distributed:

First seat ... Labour ... 39%
Second seat ... Labour ... 19.5%
Third seat ... UKIP ... 18%
Fourth seat ... Conservative ... 17%

Notional fifth seat ... Labour ... 13%
Notional sixth seat ... Plaid Cymru ... 12%
Notional seventh seat ... Labour ... 9.75%
Notional eighth seat ... UKIP ... 9%
Notional ninth seat ... Conservative ... 8.5%
Notional tenth seat ... Labour ... 7.8%
Notional eleventh seat ... LibDems ... 7%

There are, of course, only four Welsh seats available, but I've gone down the list to show how the voting system works. We in Plaid might comfort ourselves by thinking we are fourth in the polls and are therefore in with a shout for the fourth seat, and the LibDems might comfort themselves by saying they are fifth. But for the LibDems it is such a poor fifth place that they would only win a seat if Wales had eleven seats, and Plaid would only win a seat if Wales had six seats.

So in practical terms we can forget about the LibDems because they don't stand any chance of winning a seat. However there is a chance that Plaid can hold onto a seat, but only if we understand what we need to do to win and, in particular, where to target our attack.

-

The overall picture is that Labour are way out in front, and there is probably very little that will prevent them from easily topping the poll in Wales. There is also very little doubt that Plaid are not doing too well in the polls, for both UKIP and the Tories are ahead of us. In order to hold on to our seat, we must therefore do two things:

     Ensure that Labour don't get more than three times as many votes as Plaid
     Get more votes than either the Tories or UKIP

The first is not so big an ask. At 12%, Plaid are only marginally short of a third of Labour's share of the vote at 39%. We only have to up our share of the vote by a couple of percentage points to do it.

But the second is more problematic. It involves making the right tactical judgement about whether we need to beat the Tories or UKIP. In my opinion we should be aiming to beat the Tories rather than UKIP.

We should be under no illusion about UKIP's popularity. They are doing better in the polls than they have ever done before, and they always do better in European elections than they do in any other elections. For what it's worth, I think that UKIP are quite likely to top the poll in England, although I think they might fall short of topping the poll in the UK as a whole. Compared with the December poll, UKIP are already up 5% points ... and I think that rise will continue. When Nigel Farage has his big TV showdown with Nick Clegg on 2 April, is anyone in any doubt who will come out on top? Not even the Guardian is in any doubt about it. That's not because Farage will win the argument, but because UKIP have only two, simple points to make (anti-EU and anti-immigration) and he will just hammer them home relentlessly.

Plaid's tacticians therefore need to make this judgement. If UKIP's popularity is on the rise, then it is the Tories that we should be turning our fire on, not UKIP. At present, we seem to be focusing our attack on the wrong target.

-

To put things into perspective, we need to understand where UKIP's vote comes from. Helpfully, YouGov have just conducted a poll to ask this very question. The details are here, but in general those who are most likely to vote UKIP are very or fairly right wing, working class Tories, men over 60, and readers of the Daily Express or Daily Mail. No big surprise.
 

     

 
In terms of previous political affiliation, UKIP draw the majority of their new support from those who used to vote Tory. Disaffected Tory defectors to UKIP outnumber LibDem defectors by three to one, and Labour defectors by four to one.
 

     

 
These figures are important for this reason. Let's assume that potential UKIP voters take notice of Plaid's attack and decide to change their vote in May because of it. Who will they vote for instead? Very clearly, most of them will vote Tory. People primarily vote for UKIP because they are strongly anti-EU, so if they don't vote UKIP most of them will probably vote for the party that is the next most Euro-sceptic ... the Tories. But it is the Tories that we need to beat for Jill Evans to retain her seat. Therefore concentrating our attack on UKIP is in fact counterproductive. We can see this from the February Political Barometer: UKIP have risen 5% points since December, and that increase was primarily at the expense of the Tories, who lost 3% points.

As I see it, this is the sort of result we should be looking for:

Labour ... 36%
UKIP ... 23%
Plaid Cymru ... 15%
Conservative ... 14%
LibDems ... 6%

First seat ... Labour ... 36%
Second seat ... UKIP ... 23%
Third seat ... Labour ... 18%
Fourth seat ... Plaid Cymru ... 15%

Notional fifth seat ... Conservative ... 14%

This simply requires the same 5% point increase in UKIP's share of the vote as we have seen since December, coupled with the same 3% fall in the Tory share of the vote in the same period. All we then need to do is pick up a few percentage points on our own merits to just beat the Tories to the fourth seat. It's tight, but it can be done.

If it seems unlikely that the Tories should slip from topping the poll in Wales 2009 with 21.2% to losing their seat only five years later, the explanation is almost entirely to do with who is in power at Westminster. Labour, with Gordon Brown as Prime Minister and with an economy in freefall, were terribly unpopular in 2009 ... and a good part of the Labour-Tory floating vote went to the Tories as part of the normal Labour-Tory swing. Now the pendulum has swung the other way and the Tories (with their LibDem little helpers) are unpopular after four years of austerity for the poor and tax breaks for the well off. So of course the Tories are likely to lose support in Wales.

-

To be clear, I'm certainly not saying that Leanne was wrong to attack UKIP last weekend. UKIP's policies are diametrically opposite to those of Plaid, so of course we need to speak out against them. But what surprised me was that we should focus an attack on UKIP, but not put anywhere near the same effort into attacking Labour and, especially, the Tories.

With Labour so far out in front and all but guaranteed to win two seats in May, we need to beat either the Tories or UKIP in order for Jill to keep her seat. In this particular election there is no doubt that UKIP will do better than the Tories ... even in Wales. It therefore makes more tactical sense to concentrate our attack to pick off the weaker party rather than the stronger one.

Conference on Catalan self-determination

A couple of months ago I attended a conference on the self-determination process in Catalunya, organized by DiploCAT and hosted by University College London.

It was well worth it, and I came away with so much infomation that I wasn't able to condense it into a blog post, even though that had been my intention at the time. Thankfully, the feeling of guilt that has nagged me since then has now been assuaged, because I've just found out that the whole thing has been put up on the web for everyone to see.

So if anyone finds themselves with a few hours to spare over the Christmas holiday, I'd recommend it. Highly. I can't think of a better, more complete picture of what has been happening and is happening there, or a better analysis of the political, diplomatic and legal issues involved ... not just for Catalunya, but also for Scotland, particularly with respect to the EU. Just click the image below:

 
     
 

Misdirecting EU funds away from Wales

Last week, WalesOnline carried a story in which Jill Evans drew attention to Wales being omitted from a map of critical EU transport routes. She also wrote about it on her blog, here.

     

The map in question shows the main connexion between Britain and Ireland as being between Liverpool and Dublin. At first I wondered whether this was just a graphical error, so I decided to look at the actual document itself, which is here.

The document identifies nine critical Core Network Corridors, and Britain and Ireland form the northern part of the North Sea-Mediterranean Corridor. This map from the document shows things in more detail:

     

From this more detailed map, it should be obvious that the main link between England and the Irish Republic is across north Wales and from the port of Holyhead. Yet, incredibly, Holyhead is not even marked as a port, even though Liverpool is. To demonstrate how ridiculous this is, these are the latest figures for sea passenger traffic between Britain and the Republic of Ireland:

Sea Passenger Traffic, 2012

Holyhead-Dublin ... 1,709,000
Holyhead-Dun Laoghaire ... 189,000
Fishguard-Rosslare ... 364,000
Pembroke-Rosslare ... 329,000
Liverpool-Dublin ... 121,000

Sea Passenger Statistics, 2012 – Data Table spas0102.csv

The combined total for Holyhead is 1,898,000 ... this means that it is more than 15 times more significant than Liverpool as a port for traffic to and from Ireland.

-

The reason for the EU's TEN-T project is outlined in the foreword to the document I linked to:

... experience shows that planning and budgets from a national perspective do not give a sufficiently high priority to multi-national cross-border investments to equip the single market with the infrastructure it needs. This is one more example of the added value of the EU budget. With the Connecting Europe Facility, it can secure funding for the pan-European projects that connect the centre and the periphery, to the benefit of all.

Parts of these corridors already exist, building on the success stories of the past TEN-T policy. But essential missing links, especially cross-border links, East-West connections, still need to be joined up.

In other words, this EU funding is meant to be specifically allocated to facilitate those projects which a member state's government does not consider to be in its immediate national interest to develop, but which are of significance in terms of linking member states. It is therefore of very great concern that the UK Government identifies these as the specific, pre-identified, projects to receive this EU funding:

Belfast ... Port, multimodal connections
Upgrading

Glasgow-Edinburgh ... Rail
Upgrading

Manchester-Liverpool ... Rail
Upgrading and electrification, including Northern Hub

Birmingham-Reading-Southampton ... Rail
Upgrading of the freight line

Dublin, Cork, Southampton ... Ports, Rail
Studies and works on port capacity, MoS and interconnections

Felixstowe-Midlands ... Rail, port, multimodal platforms
Rail upgrading, interconnections, port and multimodal platforms

The only one of these projects in the immediate area is upgrading and electrifying the Liverpool-Manchester rail link and creating a Northern Hub. This is, of course, a worthy project in and of itself ... but it is already budgeted for and set to go ahead, and has very little (if anything at all) to do with improving the transport links between two EU member states. It therefore seems clear to me that the UKG is attempting to divert EU funds specifically designed for another purpose towards an internal project that it has already allocated funds for.

This new EU funding would be far better directed at upgrading and electrifying the line between Crewe and Holyhead as part of the essential rail corridor to Ireland, a project that is still very much in the balance. In fact this EU funding could make all the difference to whether it happens any time soon or not.

So what is now required is concerted action to make sure this new EU money is used for the purpose for which it is intended, rather than diverted to subsidize a project which has already been budgeted for. The Welsh Government needs to make this point, and so does the Secretary of State for Wales. After all, David Jones is on record as wanting to make the case for electrification of the north Wales main line. A fair share of the €26bn of EU funds on offer will probably make all the difference to the business case for it.

Rod and Emu

Rod Richards is a fairly regular contributor to programmes like CF99, and even though he's lost none of his ability to make people laugh, I never figured out why he dropped Emu from his act.

     

But all has now been revealed.

According to this story in today's Western Mail, Rod has now joined UKIP ... and no member of UKIP could be seen to have anything to do with Emu.

But what about Wales, Paul?

I thought this snippet from WalesOnline yesterday was particularly enlightening:

Asked if he believed that Wales would be worse off if the UK voted to withdraw [from the EU], Mr Davies said:

"No, I don’t. I don’t believe that. Quite clearly if you look at the EU, at the moment we have a trade deficit of some 50bn euros, that's not to our advantage. And of course we pay £8-9bn a year into the European Union, and there are arguments against leaving the European Union as well, in its current form."

Wales Online, 14 May 2013

Those who are more financially astute will of course realize that Wales doesn't have a trade deficit of some €50bn, nor do we pay £8-9bn a year into the EU.

So why did Daul Davies answer the question in the way he did? I think he simply had no idea about whether Wales would be better or worse off ... even though he is, believe it or not, meant to be the Shadow Finance Minister in our National Assembly.

-

In case anybody is in any doubt, the answer is that Wales would be financially worse off outside the EU, as Jill Evans conclusively demonstrated last November in the two documents that can be downloaded from this page.

Imbalances

The EU has just published a further review into the serious macroeconomic imbalances in a number of member states; but what I found more interesting were the imbalances in the way it was reported.

On the BBC website the emphasis was, perhaps rightly, on the worrying situations in Spain and Slovenia; but right at the end they did say that the situation was also serious in eleven other member states, including the UK. What made the reporting bad was that the page carries some prominent red squares about the "Eurozone crisis", yet five of the member states criticized—Bulgaria, Denmark, Hungary, Sweden and the UK—are not even in the Eurozone.

The report was handled even more badly by Reuters. They produced a "factbox" which rightly headlined that the EU report was on thirteen member states, and provided a summary of some of the key points relating to each country. The problem is that they only did this for twelve of the thirteen. The one they conveniently "forgot" to include was the UK. And because Reuters is a news agency, a large number of newspapers and other news media have reproduced the Reuters story almost word for word, therefore perpetuating the imbalance.

For those who are interested enough to get the news from the horse's mouth, the EU report is available from this page, together with in-depth reviews for each of the member states investigated.

-

One of the things that has particularly struck me over than last few years is the way in which the mainstream media have consistently reported what is essentially a debt crisis as a "Eurozone crisis", as if they have a deliberate agenda to present it as a problem which affects "them" rather than "us". This just isn't true. It's the ugly face of a UK isolationism that has become almost endemic. The UK has enormous levels of debt, and while it is true that UK government debt is bad but not as bad as elsewhere, private debt is very much larger making the overall situation in the UK worse than it is for any other large economy. This graphic from Bloomberg Businessweek is about eighteen months old, but it illustrates the scale of the UK's problem relative to other economies.

Not an awful lot has changed since then, and the UK's precarious level of overall debt is one of the main points in the EU report. It's worth noting that government debt is continuing to rise because the deficit between the UK government's income and expenditure has not been brought under control. The UK goverment is certainly cutting public spending with a vengance, but the other side of the equation is income from taxation. While I accept that lowering the tax burden at the bottom end of the scale is a good thing because it means that people have more money to spend on basic consumer goods and services, it doesn't apply to people on middle and high incomes because they will always have enough money to spend on basic goods and services. Fear of properly taxing those on middle incomes is the main reason why the UK is making no headway in reducing its debt.

A second point that is worth noting from the report is that the massive devaluation of the pound since 2008 has only had a very limited effect in boosting exports. One point that most economic commentators in the mainstream media have made ad nauseam over the last few years is that being "tied to the euro" means that the traditional route of currency devaluation is not available, and that countries with a debt problem should therefore get out of the euro and revert to their old currencies so that they can solve their debt problem by devaluation. The idea is that it boost exports by making them cheaper and reduces imports by making them more expensive, allowing the country to trade back into health in the long term. However it certainly isn't having that effect for the UK, and that should put a question mark over whether it would work anywhere else. I suspect their real agenda is to break up the eurozone and, with a bit of luck (from their perspective), bring down the euro itself. I think that's always been a forlorn hope.

-

But I want to end on a positive note. From Wales' perspective, I think it would be worth noting this part of the EU's in-depth review for the UK:

As regards the challenge of increasing external competitiveness, many of the drivers of the UK's persistent trade deficit relate to structural weaknesses that disproportionately impact upon capital-intensive sectors and goods' producers.

Firstly, the competitiveness of the UK economy could be boosted by addressing shortages in airport and seaport capacity, by tackling road congestion and by upgrading the rail network. This would entail meeting the substantial transport infrastructure investment needs indicated in the National Infrastructure Plan 2011, much of which is currently unfunded, by identifying additional sources of funding, addressing high unit costs in transport, and removing regulatory barriers to investment.

Secondly, industrial producers require a labour force with the correct advanced and intermediate technical skills, an area where evidence suggests that gaps and recruitment difficulties persist. Ensuring that the National Apprenticeship Programme effectively equips participants with the professional and technical skills demanded by the tradable sectors of the economy can contribute to closing the skills gap and fostering export performance.

Finally, access to finance is crucial for UK firms seeking to enter, or expand in, exporting sectors. Difficulties in accessing finance are a cross-cutting problem at the current juncture, particularly for smaller and younger companies. It is important that they be addressed at an economy-wide level as well as through specific financing instruments for exporting companies.

UK in-depth review, p4-5

What is true on a UK scale is just as true for Wales. For if the main problem with the UK economy is over-reliance on services at the expense of investment and producing goods, then a smart Welsh government would be able to put Wales ahead of the other countries in the UK by concentrating on these things.

European GDP figures for Wales

When the EU figures for regional GDP are published each spring, the headline is usually that parts of Wales are poorer than some far-flung parts of eastern Europe. True, but somewhat selective. So I thought I'd present a fuller picture.

Wales is divided into two NUTS 2 regions: East Wales, and West Wales and the Valleys. In the first map, the regions that are poorer than West Wales and the Valleys are in green and the regions that are richer are in yellow, adjusted for relative purchasing power between member states, though not within them. The images and data are from here.

     

As we can see, it's bad. Apart from a handful of poor regions in Spain, Portugal and southern Italy, West Wales and the Valleys is the poorest region in the whole of Western Europe.

But the picture for East Wales is quite different. In the second map, the regions that are poorer than East Wales are in green and the regions that are richer are in yellow. East Wales sits comfortably in the middle.

     

Perhaps it's more informative to zoom in and look at the position of East Wales within the UK.

     

East Wales has a higher GDP per head than any part of northern England or the Midlands, with the sole exceptions of Cheshire (which is greyed out in the image, but should be yellow) and Leicestershire/Rutland/Northamptonshire. East Wales ranks above Manchester and Birmingham, and also above Kent, Essex and outer London. These are the figures:

GDP per capita in euros, PPS

Inner London ... 80,300
North Eastern Scotland ... 39,500
Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire ... 34,900
Cheshire ... 28,800
Gloucestershire, Wiltshire and Bristol/Bath area ... 28,200
Surrey, East and West Sussex ... 27,900
Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire ... 27,500
Hampshire and Isle of Wight ... 26,700
Eastern Scotland ... 26,600
Leicestershire, Rutland and Northamptonshire ... 25,400
East Wales ... 24,600
East Anglia ... 24,500
South Western Scotland ... 24,300
Greater Manchester ... 23,500
Outer London ...23,400
West Midlands ... 23,300
West Yorkshire ... 23,300
Cumbria ... 23,000
Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Warwickshire ... 23,000
North Yorkshire ... 22,800
Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire ... 22,500
Dorset and Somerset ... 22,500
Kent ... 22,000
Essex ... 21,800
Northumberland and Tyne and Wear ... 21,500
Devon ... 21,400
Highlands and Islands ... 21,400
Northern Ireland ... 21,000
Lancashire ... 20,400
East Yorkshire and Northern Lincolnshire ... 19,900
Shropshire and Staffordshire ... 19,900
South Yorkshire ... 19,900
Merseyside ... 19,800
Lincolnshire ... 19,100
Tees Valley and Durham ... 18,900
Cornwall and Isles of Scilly ...17,600
West Wales and The Valleys ... 17,200

PDF version

Statistics can be used to say almost anything, for Wales as a whole is still poorer than any other NUTS 1 region of the UK. The demarcation between East Wales and West Wales and the Valleys is contrived, to say the least. It doesn't follow any natural boundary, but was deliberately chosen so as to make West Wales and the Valleys as poor as possible relative to the rest of Wales in order to maximize the chances of obtaining EU structural and convergence funding. That stroke of genius has resulted in us getting billions of euros more than we would otherwise have got from the EU over the years ... I only wish the same genius had been around when it came to spending it.