Rhodri Morgan

Like many others, I was saddened to hear of the death of Rhodri Morgan yesterday. He, more than anyone else, was responsible for our National Assembly becoming widely accepted and respected by the people of Wales, after a rather uncertain start. That's a huge legacy.

     

My condolences to his family and friends.

Leading the Way Out

Rhodri Morgan deserved the honour of leading the way out of the Senedd today carrying the mace. He'd held the office of First Minister with dignity for nearly the whole lifetime of the National Assembly and this was a fitting tribute. I wish him well in his retirement ... although family life may not be as quiet and relaxed as he would like it to be if Julie manages to get elected in Cardiff North.

     

Looking back at his contribution, two things stand out in particular:

•  The first was being seen as a distinctively Welsh First Minister. Alun Michael held the job first, although he called himself the First Secretary. But he was always seen as Tony Blair's poodle, and it was probably a good thing that he lost the vote of no confidence and refocused his attention on Westminster, where he was an still an MP and where he seems to be much more comfortable.

So Rhodri—who was never really liked or thought competent by Tony Blair—assumed the role, and in so doing managed to give the Assembly a more distinctively Welsh character. In my opinion this has been the main reason why public opinion in Wales has come to fully embrace devolution after the very narrow victory in the referendum of 1997.

•  The second thing that marked his tenure was the huge increase in public spending during the period when he was First Minister. This made it easy for him to be seen as a generous and avuncular leader. As the main purpose of the Assembly was to decide how to spend the ever increasing amount of money we received in the form of the block grant, he never had to make any particularly difficult or unpopular decisions.

Of course what most people in Wales didn't realize was that although public spending in Wales was increasing, public spending on the other side of Clawdd Offa was increasing far, far more. As we can see from this graph taken from the Holtham Report, public spending in Wales as a proportion of equivalent public spending in England has fallen from about 126% to 112% since 1999:
 

   

This lower increase in Wales was a consequence of the Barnett formula known as the "Barnett squeeze", and it is for this reason that the money available to Wales is now considerably lower than it would be if we were treated on the same basis as a region of England.

Now of course Rhodri Morgan and his colleagues in the Labour administration knew full well that Wales was progressively losing out throughout the time he was First Minister ... but did absolutely nothing about it. He preferred not to stand up for Wales; perhaps because he felt it was a battle he could not win, but probably because it wasn't in his character to enter the fight and scrap it out with his Labour colleagues in Westminster. Maybe this was why he was never rated very highly as an MP. For in spite of all the talk of "clear red water", Labour in Wales always takes second place to Labour in Westminster.

Wales would not be in the crisis situation it is now in with the scale of public spending cuts if Labour had reformed the Barnett formula when they had the opportunity to do so. This will always stand as a huge black mark against his time as First Minister, and Labour's time in government.

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So one very good thing and one very bad thing. On balance, I think the good of winning over hearts and minds to fully embrace and value the National Assembly outweighs the financial failure. We now believe that we can make decisions that affect Wales in Wales. Next comes the harder task of learning to stand on our own feet financially.

A One-legged Duck

I couldn't help but notice that the portrait of Rhodri Morgan unveiled today shows him holding a wooden duck with one very long leg.

     

Rhodri's absurd non-sequitur

No doubt in an attempt to reduce his high approval ratings and therefore give his potential successors a chance to look better, Rhodri Morgan has come out with a line of thinking that not even I thought him capable of.

     Morgan warns over Tories' MP cuts

He thinks that reducing the number of Welsh MPs would automatically reduce the number of AMs. Of course it wouldn't. If the number of Welsh constituencies was reduced from 40 to say 32 all it would mean is that we would elect 32 AMs from those constituencies, and then either increase the number of regional AMs from 4 per region to 5 or 6 per region or increase the number of regions. In fact this would be good because it would result in a greater degree of proportionality.

The disproportionality of the current 40:20 split between FPTP and regional seats speaks for itself:

Assembly Election 2007, All Seats

Lab ... 32.1% and 29.7% of vote ... 43.3% of seats
Plaid ... 22.6% and 21.0% of vote ... 25.0% of seats
Con ... 22.1% and 21.5% of vote ... 20.0% of seats
LibDem ... 14.8% and 11.75% of vote ... 10.0% of seats

Labour currently get very many more seats than their share of the vote deserves, though it's nowhere near as bad as it would be if we didn't have any regional members:

Assembly Election 2007, FPTP Seats

Lab ... 32.1% of vote ... 60.0% of seats
Plaid ... 22.6% of vote ... 17.5% of seats
Con ... 22.1% of vote ... 12.5% of seats
LibDem ... 14.8% of vote ... 7.5% of seats

A greater proportion of regional seats would make things more proportional. That's why Rhodri is complaining so much. It is Labour that benefits most from the unfairness of the current split ... so Labour will fight tooth and nail to hold on to that unfair advantage.

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But looking at the wider issue, Wales does have more MPs than it should compared with the remainder of the UK. This was quite deliberate, and it was also true for Scotland. However, after the Scottish Parliament was set up, the number of Scottish MPs was reduced from 72 to 59 to reflect the fact that Scotland would now make many of its own laws. The same will happen when the Senedd gains primary lawmaking powers: the number of Welsh constituencies will be reduced to about 32 ... still a little larger than would be strictly proportionate, but reflecting the more sparsely populated nature of much of Wales.

Now perhaps Labour in Wales think they can somehow hold on to forty Welsh constituencies no matter what. That's unreasonable of course, but it does explain why Labour's Welsh MPs are very much more against primary lawmaking powers than their AMs. Simple self-interest, turkeys don't vote for Christmas.

What Labour don't seem to realize is that the Tories have said they are going to reduce the number of MPs no matter what, and that they will even up the size of constituencies over the whole UK. Does anyone think that they will respect the fact that Wales doesn't have primary lawmaking powers? Of course not. It will count for nothing, and Wales will end up with about 30 MPs after the 2014/2015 election no matter how hard Labour shout about it.

The key to defending Welsh interests is not to hold on to a few more MPs in Westminster ... after all what difference can a few MPs ever make to a House of Commons with 646 members? The key to defending Welsh interests is to ensure that we have power to make our own laws irrespective of who holds power at Westminster.