A wolf in sheep's clothing

With apologies to the predominantly Scottish readership but there's some more news from Wales which I've found interesting (and, which has potential relevance to Scotland as well).  And it's this:  How much are the Tories about to royally shaft Labour?

I shall, perhaps, have to put that in a slightly more socially acceptable format should it ever grace the pages of an academic journal, but I felt the terminology apt.  Basically, I'm thinking about David Cameron's (and, to be fair, Nick Clegg's) plans to reduce the number of MPs from 650 to 600 and ensure constituencies of roughly equal numbers (75,000 voters).

The reason I'm interested?  The reduction of Welsh representation at Westminster by a QUARTER - or from 40 seats at present to 30 after the reduction.  In actual fact, Wales is, and has been for some time, over-represented at Westminster, so this would really be a simple bringing them into line with the rest of the UK in terms of representation.  As far as I understand, Scotland would be in line to lose 6 or 7 seats while Northern Ireland would lose 3 and the remainder would come from England.

Anyway, three knock-on effects (identified by John Osmond as "unintended consequences") resulting from the changes.  Firstly, the constituencies for the Welsh Assembly are tied to those for Westminster - meaning any reduction in seats for the House of Commons means a corresponding reduction in Cardiff Bay.  If nothing is done to change that then Wales would have an Assembly of just 50 members - 30 constituency and 20 regional list.  And given there are discussions at the moment to increase its powers (and the Richard Commission recommended in 2004 to increase members to 80) that might cause a re-think there.  

Secondly, they could de-couple the constituencies.  There is precedent here - Scotland's were tied too, but an amendment to the Scotland Act allowed us to maintain 73 Holyrood constituencies when we reduced the Westminster ones in 2005 to 59.  However, Welsh Tories aren't keen on the idea - the Welsh Assembly already suffers from a lack of electorate enthusiasm, and confusing the constituencies may make that apathy worse.  Which means that to maintain numbers, they could have an extra 10 list members, which would increase the proportionality of the system (and, one would think, the outcome of elections, the last of which was less proportional than the English local elections).

Thirdly, were the Assembly elected more by PR (with less reliance on FPTP) it would hurt Labour more, as they have benefited most from the only 1/3rd PR element - though, as I noted last week, their vote has been diminishing in Wales for the last decade.  Wales remains the last of the devolved administrations led by a Labour figure - with Carwyn Jones, as Welsh First Minister, the highest elected Labour official in the country.  It appears as though that position is under threat, as with diminishing vote numbers and a potential reduction in MPs, Labour's position as the dominant party in Wales is no longer guaranteed.  In short, the institution which they delivered in 1997 in  the expectation that they'd be governing - individually - for the subsequent two decades looks like it may end up as a further harbinger of doom for the party.

A final thought on that.  In 1997, the Conservatives opposed devolution.  Now, 13 years on, they've found ways to work with it and adapt the system to how it suits them after a damning defeat.  PR, a system which they are not fond of, has saved them electorally in Wales and, ironically, might be the system that secures their position and weakens Labour further.  Sea change indeed, and change that is fuelled by pragmatism on their part.  

A little pragmatism goes a long way - a lesson the Tories have learnt the hard way.  The question is - will Labour?

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Nat Gain?

Here's a thought for you: can you imagine Jim Murphy deciding that Labour don't quite cut it any more and standing for the SNP at the Scottish election next year?  No? No, probably not.  Perhaps he's not a good example to use for this.  What about previous Scottish Secretaries - Des Browne, Douglas Alexander, Alistair Darling, Helen Liddell, John Reid?  Any of those aspiring Nats do you you think?  No?

Why do I ask anyway?

Well, it seems that former Secretary of State for Wales (and, indeed, architect of Welsh devolution it would appear) Ron Davies HAS decided that.  Indeed, he decided that Labour weren't very good six years ago and joined Forward Wales, a now-disbanded left-of-centre Welsh regionalist party.  Well, he has now gone further, and after campaigning for Plaid at the UK election in May, he is now the only nominee for the party to contest the Caerphilly seat in the Assembly election next year.

I'm not sure what to make of this.  Of course the comparison with Scotland is crude, and doesn't work on any level.  Each of the living former Labour Scottish Secretaries are still active in Labour politics, have recently retired from the Commons or are in the Lords.  And none of them resigned from office in disgrace after a "moment of madness" on Clapham Common.  And I suppose the best comparison (in terms of the person who steered devolution on the Labour benches in Scotland) would be Donald Dewar, and he is no longer with us (and, perhaps, even less likely to join the SNP than any of the aforementioned Labourites were he still alive).

But what is interesting, particularly for folk like me with more than a passing interest in Welsh devolution is the fact that the guy who practically designed devolution in Wales now wants more.  And though that is a fairly common view among the Assembly politicians - they voted unanimously to move to a referendum on the topic - it is not exactly popular among current and former Welsh MPs.  The fact that Ron Davies is ready to stake his political future on it by standing for Plaid - in the seat he held as a Labour MP and AM from 1983 until 2003 - made me think a little harder about it.

On the other hand, relations between Labour and Plaid are much more amicable than those between the SNP and Labour.  They have to be, for the sake of the coalition.  And in spite of tensions here, former Labour First Minister Henry McLeish has readily offered his support to the SNP on issues where he agrees with them while Susan Deacon has recently taken on a role in the SNP Government advising on Children and Early Years education.  However, I would hazard that neither will be campaigning - or standing - for the party next year.

Of interest to electoral anoraks is if he wins.  He'd have represented the constituency for two different parties if he did so.  Betsan Powys points out that his former colleague in Forward Wales, John Marek could do the same, and represent 3 parties - he's just joined the Tories, having represented Wrexham for Labour between 1999 and 2003 and the John Marek Independent Party from 2003 to 2007.

Anyway, I'm not sure I can add much more to the analysis.  Just interesting stuff.

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The end of hegemony?

I was reading an interesting article by Richard Wyn Jones and Roger Scully today (it is this one here, though you'll have to pay to read it - I was at the National Library).  Anyway, the article was entitled "The end of one-partyism" and looked at the electoral performance of Labour in Wales between 1997 and 2005.

I wanted to extend it and look at 2010 as well, and performance in Scotland and England too.  So here's the info:

In Wales, Labour polled 54.7% of the vote in 1997.  In 2005, that figure was 42.7% - a massive 12% fall.  In 2010 they polled 36.2% of the vote - down a further 6.5%.  Of course we have to recognise that 1997 was a high watermark, even for Labour in Wales, but in 13 years of government - which included delivering a form of decision-making to Cardiff - their vote has fallen by 18.5%.  (Incidentally, despite being one of Labour's worst election results by share of the vote since 1918 in Wales, they still won 26 of the 40 seats there).

In England, the watermark was not so high in 1997 at 43.5% of the vote.  In 2005 that figured dipped to 35.5% - down 8%.  And this year it was down further - to 28.1% of the vote, down another 7.4%.  Now England - with the exception of the North, Yorkshire, the West-Midlands and bits of London - is not exactly Labour's heartland it is true, but drop 15% of the vote is a rather large fall.

And so to Scotland.  In 1997 Labour maintained their status as the dominant party in Scotland, winning 45.6% of the vote - not as high as Wales, but they faced a more competitive party system.  By 2005 that had fallen to 38.9% - a fall of 6.7% - almost half of the slide in Wales.  In 2010 they actually increased their share of the vote here, up by 3.1% to 42% of the vote.  In terms of seats, all that did was maintain their level of 2005, with the only nominal gains those which had been lost in by-elections during the session and the seat of the Speaker, which was a notional Labour seat anyway.

Which means what?  Well, I don't really know is the honest answer.  Certainly if you look historically at Wales you see a Liberal hegemony from mid-1800s until 1920s and then a Labour hegemony from the inter-war years to the present.  And recent trends (1997 on, as indicated above) show that hegemony waning, particularly in light of the four-party system at the National Assembly. 

Historically, Scotland is a similar story - a Conservative dominance was arrested in the 1950s and replaced by a Labour hegemony which, though less powerful than it used to be, remains in place today.  Obviously some Nats will take issue with the term "hegemony" and point to the SNP Scottish Government and Scottish and European Parliament results as evidence to the contrary, and that is a fair point.  But I haven't used that in the case of Wales (nor England, for obvious reasons) so why use it for Scotland.

I think the bottom line is equally obvious - that we have distinctly different party systems - and party competitions - in existence at the multiple levels of governance that currently occupy our representatives.  And though the SNP have been buoyed by winning Holyrood (2007) and European (2009) elections (and the Conservatives similarly with the European election in Wales) it is Labour who continue to dominate when it comes to Westminster elections, though that hold is loosening.

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Several(?) dates with destiny

I wrote at the tail end of last week about Nick Clegg's decision (well, okay, Nick Clegg's announcement of the decision) to hold the referendum to decide whether to adopt the AV vote on May 5th, the same day as the Scottish Parliament election next year.  Cue expected stushie, with Alex Salmond writing to David Cameron complaining that this hardly fits with his "respect" agenda, and suggesting that the referendum would "undermine and overshadow" the Scottish Parliament election.  I outlined some of the reasons for this in my previous post.

In theory, the Scottish Parliament can change the date of its election - up to one month either side of the 5th May date.  Well, actually, no, that's not strictly true.  The Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament can request that the Secretary of State move the election, and they must sign off on it.  This is something, as Brian Taylor points out, which is being considered as a means of settling the other problem of the date - namely Westminster's change to fixed term parliaments, where the election dates would clash every 20 years starting on May 7th 2015.  He wonders whether the PO might make such a request for next year - probably in the full knowledge that if he UK government has made its decision then such a request is likely to be politely declined.

Interestingly (and, I guess, obviously, since they follow the same electoral cycle as Scotland) the problem is the same in Wales - they face having their Assembly election conjoined with the AV vote on 5 May as well.  There has been a similar reaction among elected politicians there as here, except for one, fairly notable exception.  The Presiding Officer of the National Assembly for Wales, Dafydd Elis Thomas, who has no "constitutional objection" to holding both on the same day on the grounds that it would benefit turnout for both.  However, what is really interesting is that he recommends holding Wales' other referendum - that which seeks to move the Schedule 4 of the Government of Wales Act 2006, bestowing in one move legislative powers to the National Assembly - on the same day.  So you'd have the devolved election, the AV referendum and the powers referendum on 5 May.

Dafydd Elis Thomas has previously made clear his objection to holding the powers referendum in Wales until such a time as the result is not really in doubt, and is sceptical of holding it in March (as is currently rumoured to be the intention of Welsh Secretary Cheryl Gillan).  So this seems a bold move - shifting the referendum to a date where there are a couple of other things going on would likely drive up turnout but at the expense of giving a clear campaign solely on the issue of the Assembly powers.  So that is interesting.

Of more interest in Scotland, I guess, is the impact of such a scheduling.  If this did go ahead - and the Welsh had all three votes on the one day - would the First Minister be able to argue that Scots are too stupid to be able to vote on two different issues (the Scottish Parliamentary election and the AV referendum) on the same day?  I guess time will tell on that one, but if Wales did go ahead on that score, it may start to make things more difficult to decouple the votes here.

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Cardiff & Edinburgh

Apologies for the hiatus, I've been in Cardiff awhile, with no real internet to speak off (or time for that matter) doing some academic research for my thesis.  And I seem to have missed out on a fair bit whilst away.

Take, for example, the UK Con-LD Government's decision to schedule the AV referendum on 5 May, the same day of the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly and English local government elections, ostensibly for reasons of saving the public money (£17m was the estimate I heard).  Cue outcry from MSPs, AMs and, well, anyone who isn't a Tory or Lib Dem MP to be honest.  

Their argument - it'll overshadow the devolved elections.  And that, I think, has merit.  Because - and this is more of an issue in Wales I think, than in Scotland, where our media is a little more focused on what happens at Holyrood - the media, generally speaking, sets the terms of reference for elections.  You can quibble with my hypothesis if you like, but look at recently passed General Election - without the TV debates and the presence of the now Deputy PM Clegg, where would the Lib Dems have been?  Answer: probably out of government, most likely with fewer seats.  So the media matters - and if they are focused on the AV referendum then the devolved institutions will lose out. 

Another argument, and one that has merit in Scotland after the fiasco of the 2007 Scottish Parliament election, is that we might confuse people. I know, it sounds patronising - trust members of the public to put a cross on two different bits of paper?  But with that experience here - and the resulting democratic stooshie - I wouldn't be too willing to bet that people won't make a hash of it.  So that one I think, has some merit - but just a little.

There is a case that it may actually help - by combining both votes you may drive the turnout up a little.  This I'm more sceptical of.  If people feel so strongly about changing the method of electing their MPs, they'll show up to vote on the day anyway.

But really, I think, what it comes down to is money - and a distinct lack of it.  Parties are fresh from fighting a UK General Election.  In Wales they have the added complication of holding a referendum to decide on the speed of extending the powers of the Assembly, probably in March, followed by the AV referendum and the Assembly election, both on May 5.  The latter has a month's wiggle room and so could be held in June, but that's at the discretion of the Secretary of State... and if her government has decided to hold the AV vote on May 5 to save money, I doubt they'll shift the Assembly election to June, however valid their reason for doing so it.

No, money is the kicker - and political parties are lacking in it at the moment.  So while in public they will whinge and moan about the AV vote being on the same day as the devolved elections, privately they are probably a little more pleased that campaigning for both can take place at the same time, thus saving them time and energy - and, more importantly, money - in the campaigns.  Or maybe I'm just being cynical.

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