Time for Labour to come round

When it comes to the referendum, we know that if the decision were simply up to AMs we would easily get the two thirds majority required to trigger a referendum. In fact, if Nick Bourne is able to hold his party together, there is a fair chance of the Senedd passing it unanimously.

That's not where the debate lies. What matters—and it is the only thing that matters—is how the wider Labour Party in Wales party react to Sir Emyr's report and its recommendations. They have to take the next few days or weeks to work out their response. They need to think clearly.

Although Labour's AMs are in favour, their MPs are divided. Some are absolutely against having a referendum, unless it is in several years' time. It's pointless naming names, I'm sure most of us know who they are anyway. Some are and always have been unequivocally in favour of a referendum ... but most are somewhere in the middle.

 
     

I have always said that the main purpose of the All Wales Convention has been to give Labour time to make up their minds about whether and when to hold the referendum. After the One Wales government was formed, the AWC was a very expedient way of giving everyone a good reason not to speak out on the issue. Expediency is vitally important in politics, because once a politician has been put on the spot and forced to declare their views on a particular matter, it becomes very difficult for them to later change their minds when circumstances change.

If anyone needs an illustration of this, just think of the promises given about the EU Constitution that was and the Lisbon Treaty that is. Both Labour and the Tories made firm promises, but then had to back away from them. Both parties could with some justification use the line that "circumstances had changed" ... but did that stop other parties making political capital out of it? Of course not. Politics is for grown ups.

Yes, there will always be outspoken politicians who can't help but make their own opinions public on every occasion. Every party has its sprinkling of those. But the majority of politicians learn when it is best to be vocal, and when it is best to keep quiet ... to wait and see how things pan out. If you can do that, you won't look a prize fool when circumstances change.

That is why the AWC was such a good idea. It gave the more sensible politicians a perfect opportunity to say that they would wait to see what the report recommended before taking a position. And in practical terms, it left them to get on with the day to day business of politics rather than be sidetracked onto constitutional issues by reporters anxious to create a battle for the sake of "newsworthiness".

 
     

That was back in 2007. It is now late 2009 ... and guess what? Circumstances have changed. When the AWC was set up, there was every chance that Labour would win the next Westminster election (few doubt that Gordon Brown would have won a general election if he had called it back in 2007). Even fewer of us were thinking about any sort of banking crisis and such massive public borrowing. And no MP thought their expense claims would be made so public.

The political landscape has been turned upside down in the past two years.

And that, for Labour, means that they now look unlikely (to put it at its mildest) to win the General Election in May 2010. Of course that won't, and shouldn't, stop them fighting as hard as they can against the Tories. And perhaps some miracle will happen. But even the most optimistic Labour MP must know that the prognosis is not good.

What the AWC's report has demonstrated is that—even if the LCO system is working better than it used to—the rate of progress is almost entirely determined by the Secretary of State for Wales, who has an effective veto. It can only work if the party in power in Westminster is favourably disposed to the legislation being proposed. At another level, Westminster currently makes extensive use of Framework legislation (because it's so much easier and simpler than the LCO system) ... but most of that has been used to confer powers on Welsh ministers directly rather than legislative power to the Assembly. Think, what Tory in their right mind would simply hand over more power to a Labour minister in Wales?

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Now that the report has been published, there is no need for any division between Labour's AMs and MPs in Wales. Surely you all want what is best for Wales? True, your idea of "best" may not be the same as ours in Plaid, but they're close enough for us to be able to work together in a common programme for government in Wales. Of course it would be better to have a Labour than a Tory government in Westminster ... but with only 40 MPs out of more than 600, Wales doesn't get to have much of a say in the outcome of the Westminster election, does it?

For the past two years you've been able to work with "Plan A" ... but now it's time to dust off "Plan B". Plan B is to make sure that even if you lose power at Westminster, you can still carry though a radical programme of government in Wales. It really is a no-brainer.

 
     

Sadly some of your more outspoken MPs have made their opposition to lawmaking powers so obvious that they can't change their minds now. But most of you—all but a small handful of you—have been wise enough to keep your head down on the issue, to see how things would work out.

The AWC has now given you overwhelmingly positive evidence that we should move to a referendum of primary lawmaking powers. The public is in favour of the move by a margin of 10 percentage points. You can properly say that circumstances have changed to the point where the move is desirable, practical, and above all achievable. It's the only way of protecting Wales from the Tories. The public, whose opinion of you is what matters, will wear it.

So join your AMs and make sure it happens. If you can come together and present a united position, the referendum will be won easily. And if that means sidelining a handful of refuseniks, so be it. They will come round simply because it is more important for the party to remain united. Don't allow a small tail to wag the dog.

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The name of the game is simple. You must set the terms of the referendum while you still can. The exact date, the exact form of the question, are important. You cannot safely leave any of that to the Tories. You don't trust them on anything else, so why take the risk of trusting them on this? You do not have the luxury of leaving it until June, you need to get it through Westminster before you leave office in May.

The referendum itself can be any time from Autumn 2010 to Spring 2011. You don't have to think about fighting the public campaign until the general election is over.

Neither do you have to make a decision right now. Don't panic. Wait until you have your new leader. Wait until he or she has reshuffled the cabinet over the Christmas break. Talk it through with other party leaders. Persuade Rhodri to lead the Yes Campaign as a well-deserved final chapter in his service to Wales.

Then come to the Assembly united and ready to put things into gear in January. Aim to get it through Westminster by the end of March, so that you still have a bit of leeway on the date of the General Election.

Labour doesn't understand Welsh

It's been quite amazing to see the reaction to Martin Shipton's story in the Western Mail today. I thought I'd wait until I'd actually seen the programme before commenting, although what John Dixon said this morning turned out to be just right.

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The first and most obvious thing to note is that this was all sparked by what Betty Williams said. She is currently the Labour MP for Conwy ... although she will step down at the next election, to coincide with the boundary changes that will put the western half of the constituency into Arfon. She said that speaking Welsh was the reason why she was supporting Carwyn Jones.

That seems a fairly insignificant reason for supporting him rather than one of the other two candidates. I would have thought that his policy ideas and his ability to deliver them, his ability as leader of the party, and his appeal to the people of Wales at the next election should all have ranked more highly than whether or not he could speak both Welsh and English.

But Betty Williams obviously doesn't. Perhaps she thinks (and this is the kindest interpretation I can put on it) that Labour needs to do more to connect with their lost voters in the western half of Wales, and that this is what will do it. But if so, I believe she has very much misjudged the way people think. On that basis, people might just as well vote for a Tory—or even someone from the BNP—just because he or she can speak Welsh! To me, that speaks volumes about how disconnected Labour have become from what really matters to people. What matters is policy and how well you are able to deliver what you promise ... not the language in which you make those promises.

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But that said, Edwina Hart rose to the bait in a completely disproportionate way. This is all the more surprising because any fool could have told her that sooner or later someone would question her about the fact that Carwyn Jones could speak Welsh, but that neither she nor Huw Lewis could.

As Mercher said on the WalesOnline forum:

To come out it smelling of daffodils rather than leeks she might, rather than dismiss any importance the ability to speak Welsh has to the job, have said:

1. She didn't get the opportunity to learn when she was young but thankfully things are different for children today.

2. That she has tried but with work commitments it is very difficult as many other people in Wales will know from personal experience.

3. Confirm that Welsh is an asset to the job but that her commitment to bilingualism is actually more important than her ability.

But instead, her reaction can only cast even greater uncertainty about what her rather strange manifesto statement about Welsh-medium education actually means. She prides herself on being straight-talking, but straight talk is about saying what you mean in a simple, straightforward way. It is not about taking umbrage at the question and snapping some sort of angry answer. She is normally very good at being direct: her one word "No" to an enquiry about the allegation that £1bn of the NHS budget was being misspent is a good example of it, and her decision over the location of neurosurgery in both Cardiff and Swansea is another. So why does it all fly out of the pram when it comes to Welsh?

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Perhaps it can all be best understood in the context of the audience she is playing to. This is an internal Labour leadership election, and she is therefore saying only what she thinks will go down well with those whose votes she needs to win it. But that brings us right back to Betty Williams, though from the other direction. One of them thinks that being bilingual is what Labour needs to win votes ... the other thinks that pointedly justifying not being bilingual is what will win her and her party votes.

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Both attitudes are wrong. What matters to people who speak Welsh is that they have the right to use it—and receive the same level of service as is available in English—when dealing with the types of organization that provide the services we all must use. What matters to those who want to see Welsh flourish (and that is the vast majority of people in Wales, by a margin of 81% to 7%) is that their children and grandchildren are fully bilingual by the time they leave school.

These are the lessons about Welsh that Labour clearly still needs to learn, irrespective of which of the three candidates gets to be their leader. If Labour continues to be half-hearted—or to send out ambiguous messages—on these two issues, then it won't actually matter one bit whether their new leader can speak Welsh or not. It isn't as easy for "old dogs" to learn new tricks, so it will be perfectly understandable if Hart or Lewis don't manage it. But it will be impossible for voters to understand or tolerate a party that fails to ensure that our "young dogs" learn these skills while they are at an age to ...

     

... soak it up!

 
Update - 18:00 Tuesday

I thought it would be a good idea to show the programme itself. There aren't any subtitles, but two of the interviews are in English.

     

Essential reading

The All Wales Convention will present its long-awaited report and recommendations on Wednesday, and every blog and media outlet in Wales will of course have something to say about it.

I'm quite sure none of us would want to have an uniformed view of the constitutional situation of either Wales or of the UK as a whole, so to put things into some sort of overall context I'd like to recommend a little light reading for the weekend. Just click on this picture:

   

And if my recommendation isn't enough, this is what some others have said about it:

Democratic Audit’s spoof constitution is very funny on the way we are governed until you realise with a shiver just how real it all is. Those of us who wish to improve and deepen our democracy must find ways of doing so in the face of the major obstacles that this satirical document all too clearly identifies.

Hilary Wainwright, editor of Red Pepper

This is a brilliant document — and a searing lampoon of the ridiculous state of our political arrangements. It exposes all the glaring faults and the silent assumptions that deform our system, preventing it from ever functioning in a way that we, the people, deserve.

Helena Kennedy QC, member of the unreformed House of Lords

It is difficult not to read this brilliant exposé of the traditions of cant, deception and arrogance that serve as Britain’s constitution without feeling admiration for the authors and a profound anger for the self-perpetuating political classes that continue to rule.

Henry Porter, political columnist and novelist

For centuries, the UK state simultaneously ran a despotic empire overseas and a liberal constitutional polity at home. Democratic Audit’s spoof constitution brilliantly captures how the constitutional schizophrenia this induced in our governing elite continues to shape the fabric of modern British politics and to undermine the lives and liberty of every citizen.

Professor Patrick Dunleavy, London School of Economics

To echo the first quote, let's not fail to take the opportunity this referendum will give us to, if only in a small way, "improve and deepen our democracy" in Wales.

Short-changed on stations

Network Rail have today announced that they are going to spend £85m over the next five years on improvement works to more than 120 stations in Wales.

     £85m plan to revamp rail stations

Great news, it's badly needed. But look at the last paragraph of the story:

The firm has announced £3.25bn spending over five years on 2,000 stations across Britain.

Now do the maths. £85m is just 2.62% of the total investment. By share of population Wales should be getting 5% ... which would work out at just over £160m.

Where's the other £75m?

Liberal Democrat Heaven

The LibDems came nowhere (sixth) in Glasgow North East, and it would be cruel to say that's because they don't have any particularly relevant political policies. But the one thing they are consistently good at is pressing for electoral reform, and STV in particular. They deserve praise for that.

I watched the coverage of the Glasgow NE by-election last night on the other STV. Scottish Television's coverage was very good, and the delay in announcing the result meant that the discussion became quite wide-ranging. It eventually got round to the subject of electoral reform and my title comes from this quote:

This is just Liberal Democrat heaven ... I mean, talking about proportional representation at half-past-one in the morning.

This is what we live for!

As we've had a few discussions about how STV would work in Wales in the past week, I thought it would be good to show an extract of that part of the discussion. It's particularly relevant to Scotland since they have four different electoral systems—First-Past-The-Post for Westminster, a National List for Europe, an Additional Member System for Holyrood, and Single Transferable Vote for local elections—and therefore have some first hand experience from which to speak.

As not many people will recognize all the faces, the four politicians are, from left to right:

     • Bill Aitken, MSP - Conservative
     • Alex Neil, MSP - SNP
     • Iain Gray, MSP - no excuses for not recognizing the Scottish Labour leader
     • Willie Rennie, MP - LibDem

     Bernard Ponsonby was in the chair and the anorak was Prof Bill Miller.

     

A couple of things I would pick up on are what Iain Gray said about grouping of candidates from the same party on the ballot paper, and that the order should be randomized so that no party or person is alphabetically disadvantaged. These are things that I agree with completely and mentioned in the previous post. You will note that Mr Aitken disagreed, but I think (at least I hope) it was meant humorously. I was saddened that Iain Gray said that these proposals had been rejected by the other parties.

I also agree with what Alex Neil said regarding a possible referendum on the Alternative Vote system for Westminster, namely that it should include options such as STV as well.

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Yet I can't help but be cynical enough to think that by the time a politician is in a position of power, his or her views on the merits of various options for electoral reform are shaped more by which one is likely to be most beneficial for their own party than by what is fair.

And that perhaps explains why the LibDems are so consistently right on the issue of electoral reform. They never get into power, so they are never tempted to compromise the impartiality of their position by manipulating the system so as to keep them in power.

I only hope that my own party—now that we are at last in government, and looking likely to increase our share of the vote—never compromises its position on STV.

Separado!

I've just read this bizarre film preview in the Guardian. Here are a couple of quotes from it:

When I was a kid, I used to watch this guy on television wearing a cape, riding a horse, and singing Welsh in a strange accent. I asked my grandmother who he was and she said, "That's your uncle."

"It's remarkable that I can play a gig of Welsh language songs in South America and they understand what I'm singing about, even if they find the music a bit suspect," says Rhys, failing to mention that he performed much of it in a red spaceman's helmet while singing into an orange plastic cup.

These are the words of Gruff Rhys, of the Super Furry Animals ... and this is a still from the film, just to give some idea of what he failed to mention:

     

I guess we'll have to imagine the orange plastic cup.

It confirms what we all know: Wales is the strangest of places ... though we seem to have exported it with remarkable success.

If you think—using the words of another of our exports—that it's not unusual, Separado gets its first showing in Cineworld, Cardiff on 19 November. There might be some tickets left.

Sounds impressive, doesn't it?

A story from the Business section of yesterday's Western Mail caught my eye:

Biggest carbon capture test planned for Aberthaw Power Station
By Aled Blake

Aberthaw Power Station could host the UK’s biggest carbon dioxide capture pilot project connected to a working power station.

RWE, the power station’s owner, has applied for planning permission to construct a plant capable of testing the capture process on emissions direct from the power station.

At 3 MW in size the plant will be at least eight times the size of existing post-combustion projects in the UK and will operate for twice as long. It will be capable of capturing up to 50 metric tonnes of CO2 per day.

Western Mail, 10 November 2009

Impressive, eh? Well, that's obviously what RWE would like you to think. All you need to say is "Wales leads the world" and a tame reporter from the local rag (sorry, the National Newspaper of Wales) will lap it up unquestioningly. Aled Blake certainly seems to have re-worked their press release without thinking to put these figures into any sort of perspective.

But as he might not accept it from me, I'll let his fellow reporter Lisa Jones do it instead:

Aberthaw is Wales’ biggest polluter
By Lisa Jones

A power station in the Vale of Glamorgan has been revealed as Wales’ biggest polluter.

Aberthaw Power Station tops the league tables of the 10 dirtiest sites in Wales, based on Environment Agency information.

Last year the coastal power station between Barry and Llantwit Major pumped out more than 7.4 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, the gas which is a major contributor to climate change.

It also belched out 28,325 tonnes of nitrogen dioxide and 30,953 tonnes of sulphur dioxide – both gases which help to create acid rain.

South Wales Echo, 8 December 2007

We can all do the maths for ourselves. Aberthaw produces over 20,000 tonnes of CO2 per day. This new plant will collect less than a quarter of one percent of it!

This should act as a sobering reminder that the words "clean coal" are, in any practical terms, just gobbledygook. They sound impressive, but will not deliver.

That's not to say that it can't be done. It can be done, but it requires a different approach. What RWE are proposing is to retrofit a post-combustion capture plant. This will be almost useless.

The problem is that, at present, the UK government seems to think that it is possible to retrofit post-combustion capture to any new plant, such as Kingsnorth, by allowing space for it at the design stage. That is not quite as misleading, but nearly as much so. At full scale I'm sure it will capture more than 0.25% ... but still not nearly enough to make a significant difference.

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In my opinion the only way to really make clean coal work is with pre-combustion capture: a process in which the coal is first gassified, the CO2 separated from the resulting syngas, and the hydrogen which remains burnt in very much the same way as natural gas but without producing CO2. Doing it this way also makes the power plant very much more flexible, because the output of electricity can be tailored to suit variations in demand. Burning coal directly only works well for continuous base load generation.

This means that power stations like Aberthaw are hopelessly doomed (it's had a good run for its money, but needs to be put out of its misery sooner rather than later) ... but it also means that new coal power stations such as the one proposed for Kingsnorth are fatally flawed from the outset.

By diverting money into projects of this nature the UK Government is failing to put sufficient emphasis on developing the sorts of technologies that will make a big difference, most notably tidal energy. We in Wales can produce all the electricity we need from renewable sources, but the Assembly can't develop it on any scale because it is not a devolved matter. Instead we are locked into an agenda that suits England's energy needs rather than our own.