Things that are worth fighting for...

Campaign groups are an essential part of modern democracy and they often articulate public demands well before politicians pick up on them. The Taxpayers Alliance is such a campaign group and its main objective is pretty obvious from  its name. Tomorrow the Group with stage a demonstration in front of the Welsh Assembly against the Carrier Bag charge of 5p which has been introduced a couple of months ago. The legislation has meant that all shops had to levy a charge of 5 pence for each carrier bag handed to their customers. All charges collected by retailers in Wales would then be passed on to charities. 

The idea was that charging for plastic bags would reduce the appetite of the public to use such bags and a reduction of plastic bags in circulation would also lead to a reduction of plastic littering on which local authorities spend about 40 million pounds annually to keep them out of gutters, drains and from the coastline. 

As Tony Blair once shrewdly remarked, there are issues worth fighting for and there are those that are not worth that fight. I think repealing the Welsh Assembly legislation on plastic bags is not a fight any campaign group would want to take up, for mainly three reasons. 

First, the legislation has been passed and is on the statute book. Past experience tells us that repealing existing legislation once it has received Royal assent is fiendishly difficult. The reason is simple: asking politicians to repeal legislation is tantamount to asking those who supported it in the first place to stand up and say that they were wrong. That's not something politicians are eager to do. 

Second, politicians love evidence to support a policy. Although much policy is made on the hoof, they prefer to have incontrovertible evidence to present to the public. Where evidence exists to support a policy, the debate often goes in their favour. The plastic bag charge legislation in question commands almost unprecedented robust evidence: since the legislation has been implemented the large retailers in Wales have reported a drop in bag use by about 90%. It is a tall order to argue against that. Even the argument that small retailers have been hit disproportionately by the measure is difficult to sustain. They had to buy and dispense free bags prior to the legislation, now with a drop in the use of bags, their costs may have in fact gone down, rather than up. 

But the argument that clinches it is the last, third, one. The charges are collected and passed on to charities across Wales. They are by now a substantial part of the charities’ revenue. Anybody arguing against the carrier bag charge will be up against charities that, say support poor old ladies who cannot care for themselves anymore in Aberysthwyth, or, arguably worse, charities that shelter homeless pets. That’s not a fight anybody would be spoiling to have. Charities can be fierce opponents in the public debate and it makes people who argue with them look heartless or callous. 

As Tony Blair said, there are things that are worth fighting for and there are others. 

Vote Plaid get Labour!

Today the new leader of the Welsh nationalist party Plaid Cymru reiterated her offer to work with Labour and ruled out any co-operation with the Welsh Conservatives in local councils or in the Welsh Assembly. Leanne Wood, who belongs to the socialist wing of her party, said in an interview with the BBC that co-operation across party political boundaries had to be based on shared values and that Plaid certainly shared many values with the Labour Party. 

Her statement, coming close to the local elections in Wales, will create problems for some local councils where Plaid councillors have been working with their Conservative counterparts to bring about much needed change for local residents. Wood who seemed to categorically forbid Plaid councillors to work with their Conservatives colleagues has thus completed the shift of her party to the extreme left. 

The immediate beneficiary of this move is the Labour Party under Carwin Jones, whose Labour government has failed so far to present a legislative programme and who maintained a low profile since his re-elections last year. Jones, whose party does not have an outright majority in the Welsh Assembly, can now count on Plaid votes in the Assembly without offering the nationalists anything in return. 

As many of Wood's colleagues across Europe can tell her, ruling out political co-operation with specific parties can only reduce the party's flexibility for future party political negotiations and worsen her party's position with the electorate. As Wood makes her party increasingly indistinguishable from the Labour Party, voters across Wales will ask themselves what the point of Plaid really is. 

What shall we do about the Rhondda?

South Wales today is dominated by the services in and around Cardiff and Newport. But that wasn’t always the case. What are large de-industrialised areas now used to be economically vibrant communities up to the 1950s: the valleys. You can detect the signs of former glory everywhere you go. It is not just the industrial landscape that hints at past prosperity, it is above all the sheer number of non-conformist church halls everywhere you look. The valley communities prospered up to the 1950s but suffered enormously as the mining industries declined. 

There is much debate about who should get the blame for the decline of coal mining in the South Wales valleys but the fact is that a whole region depended on a single industry which is never a key to sustainability and long term growth. 

The decline of mining however also brought with it the decline of communities and the statistics bear this out. The Rhondda valley is a region which offers low pay, higher than average unemployment and negative migration patterns, according to the 2006 report of the Welsh Assembly Government. 

Is this decline irreversible? Are the Rhondda bound to be a region of low economic growth where young people struggle to find a future for themselves? 

While Rhondda certainly suffered from a lack of industrial policy in the UK over the last 30 years, perhaps its decline was inevitable given that its ascent was based exclusively on a single product? Yet, paradoxically, the Rhondda is not the only region in Europe (or elsewhere) which suffered the fate of social and economic decline where industrial monocultures collapsed. The Ruhr in Germany experienced a similar period of decay in the 1980s, yet is now a region of stable growth and prosperity. 

So what went wrong in the Rhondda? I recently went up the Rhondda Valley and took the train back to Cardiff. Two things really surprised me: first how steep the hills and mountains are that frame the valley. The potential for tourism is substantial but there is practically no tourism infrastructure. The second aspect that astonished me was how close and yet how far Rhondda is from Cardiff. Close in terms of distance (as the crow flies) which makes it entirely reasonable to commute to Cardiff and back for work (as many people do). 

Yet, it surprised me how far away Rhondda is from the bustling Capital City. This impression of distance is exacerbated by extremely poor public transport. As I was sitting in a delapidated train carriage of the local railways, I struggled to think of trains that are similarly run down and slow even as far away as Bulgaria or Romania which I last visited in the 1980s. True, the railways cut through steep hills and bridge deep gorges at times, which only adds to the picturesque nature of the ride. Yet, the speed of the transport link between the valley heads and Cardiff must be on a par with steam trains of the 19th century. 

So what does this all mean for the Rhondda? There is a broad consensus amongst political parties in the Assembly that the South Wales valleys urgently need development. Yet, equally the billions of pounds that have been poured into the valleys in European aid since 1999 have had little positive effect. In fact, the figures demonstrate that the region is today poorer than before the European payments started. The money was largely used as funding for local authorities to alleviate poverty and engage in so-called development projects; but there is little to show for it. 

In addition, even among the political elite there are few concrete policy proposals. Recently the newly elected leader of Plaid Cymru Leanne Wood, when asked what she would do about the valley economies, pulled a blank. She stammered something about a new economy and people joining Plaid Cymru to revitalise communities. This sort of vacuous rhetoric doesn’t help. 

What may help however is to build effective and 21st century transport links between the valleys and Cardiff. The tracks are already there, and although transport policy is a prerogative of the Westminster government, the Welsh Assembly could, if it was serious about it, finance the electrification of the South Wales valleys railways. This would reduce transport costs and produce significant benefits to the people in the Rhondda. Let’s not wait for Westminster to act. The people in the Rhondda deserve it. 

Plaid heads for Groundhog day

Almost unnoticed by the Westminster village, one of the main political parties in the UK has a new leader. Any guesses? Yes, it is Leanne Wood who has become the leader of the Welsh nationalist party Plaid Cymru. If you thought this is of no importance to UK politics, think again. 

In 2006 Plaid joined Welsh Labour in a coalition government in Cardiff. This is generally regarded as a tragic decision, not helped by the fact that the then party leader of Plaid, the uncharismatic Ieuan Wyn Jones,  acted as deputy first minister of Wales. Going into a coalition with Labour cost Plaid significant number of votes at the next election in 2011. Ever since, Plaid has languished behind Labour and the revitalised Welsh Conservatives who became the second largest party in Wales in 2011. 

So, for Plaid it is all change now. But where will the new leader take the party? There are few continuities with the previous leader. Ieuan Wyn Jones was widely regarded as an ineffectual leader and deputy first minister who struggled to free the party from working in the shadow of the Labour party in Wales. Whilst Plaid is the only openly nationalist party which aspires to take Wales out of the Union, Plaid had considerably moderated its nationalist stance and there was little talk about Welsh independence over the last years. 

This may change with Leanne Wood. During the hustings for the leadership election, the new leader has advocated full independence for Wales, and ruled out any coalition with the second biggest party in Wales, the Welsh Conservatives. She may come to regret this. 

Positioning Plaid in Wales’ political landscape wont be easy. Welsh Labour always haboured distinctly ‘old Labour’ sentiments, favouring a large public sector largely financed by the bloc grant it receives from the Westminster government. Despite some recent pro-business rhetoric, Welsh Labour retains socialist instincts and so do many Plaid voters. Which means Plaid will have to formulate policies that are different to Labour’s policies to set itself apart from Welsh Labour while appealing to roughly the same voting constituency. 

Given the abysmal record of the current Welsh Government (currently a minority administration formed by Welsh Labour only), Labour’s vote is likely to decrease at the next election for the Welsh Assembly and the question for Plaid will be whether it is serious about getting into government. Since even Plaid wont do the same mistake twice, another coalition with Labour is unlikely. And so the only alternative will be a coalition with the LibDems and the Welsh Conservatives. There is much that unites these three parties, not least their determination to call an end to Labour’s (then) 16 years rule in Wales. 

Yet the new leader’s socialist and nationalist rhetoric makes it difficult to conceive of such a coalition. Plaid once again may take the blame for letting Labour stumble on in Cardiff Bay in 2016. 

Are Assembly members bored?

Some people think that tribal politicians are bad. But I think there is a worse kind. I call them ‘entrapment politicians’. They are those who design legislative motions that everyone feels compelled to agree with. Those motions usually have a strong moral undertone, and to reject them is tantamount to being heartless. In most cases, if these motions are passed into law, they linger on the statute book like a festering wound, undermining the notion of law since they often cannot be enforced, or no one really wants to enforce them. They are examples of gesture politics, contrived to ‘entrap’ your political enemy.

Peter Hain is a good example of an ‘entrapment’ politician. I remember when the Welsh Assembly seriously moved to force every house owner to install sprinklers in their homes, and some poor panel member on Question Time gently suggested that there may be more worthwhile issues the Assembly could deal with, Hain shouted: ‘So you want people to die in their homes, do you?’ 

Gesture politics is a corrosive disease in our politics, but it is usually held in check by the tough timetable of the members of parliament in Westminster. The list of pressing problems is long and that has a disciplining effect on all members. That’s different however for the Welsh Assembly. In the Assembly, gesture politics is a popular pastime for some political parties. The reasons for this are not quite clear. After all, the Assembly and the Welsh Government (Labour) has plenty of things it needs to do. Education is in a downward spiral with the gap between Welsh and English GCSE results opening up further by the year and the University of Wales practically closing down in the midst of the worst scandal in higher education in the country. 

The NHS in Wales is heading for a perfect storm created by severe cuts to funding (courtesy of the Labour Government in Cardiff Bay) and a legacy of endless organisational tinkering by the former Health Minister Edwina Hart. Health care remains a festering legislative wound in Wales, mainly because of a lack of courage to drive through effective change that can address the challenges of a rapidly aging and more demanding population. 

And so the list goes on. However, this week the Welsh Assembly has found a topic that is seemingly more important than health, education or the economy. It’s whether or not child smacking should be proscribed by law. Needless to say that this is a prime example of the ‘entrapment’ politics we identified above. Who on earth would want to stand up and reject legislative plans to outlaw such a cruel practice? Politicians may just as well rip up their re-election plans. 

While there were a few brave members of the Assembly (amongst the Conservative and Labour ranks) who disagreed with the proposal, there is, believe it or not, cross-party support for such a motion. Even harder to believe is that, while the Welsh Assembly spends precious time on discussing this legislative nonsense, it may not even have the power to enact a law in this area. Constitutional scholars are split on the issue. If the Welsh Assembly does indeed adopt such a law against child smacking, it may find itself embroiled in a long legal battle with Westminster. 

Yet, the worst aspect of this proposed legislation (which even a straw poll amongst Guardian readers rejected with an overwhelming majority of 75%) is the impression it gives of the Welsh Assembly and its Government. What started out in 1999 as a body with a collaborative spirit focussing on the things it can and should do for the people in Wales, has now become a talking shop at worst, at best a production site for gesture politics, haplessly tossed about by the waves of educational, economic and health crises with a Government that has lost any will to make a real change to the lives of the people in Wales. In the big void that has opened up at the heart of the Welsh Government’s agenda, legislative proposals of infinite irrelevance reflecting increasing tribalism are thrown. It leaves you wondering: Are Assembly members bored?