What is Plaid Commie - Cymru for?
As Plaid members gather for their conference - Remember Tryweryn, 50 Years ago to the week.
As Plaid members gather for their conference - Remember Tryweryn, 50 Years ago to the week.
Wales’s politics is in a mess and it is a situation that has prevailed more or less since the Assembly was established. Our politics does not serve the people well and in fact it is a no win situation for them.
The only options facing the
people are a majority Labour
administration; or a Labour administration
propped up by either Plaid Cymru or the Liberal Democrats or a Labour administration that just needs
the have some temporary deals from time to time to get by. It really is an
exciting choice. In effect it is one
party rule and Wales’s politics is static and stale with very little, if any,
vibrancy to our politics any longer.
Much of our politics in
Wales these days operates in a very secretive and ‘closed shop’ way. The Labour
MPs and AMs from Wales, at least in public, are quite happy to operate in a
Corbyn – led party and yet only one or two of them voted for him. There are no hints
of divisions or disagreements other than the recent furore over Jenny Rathbone.
The same is true of Plaid Cymru, Leanne Wood only received I think the support
of just two of the current Plaid Cymru AMs during her leadership bid. The
others especially those representing the more rural and Welsh speaking parts of
Wales merrily go along with the distinctly leftward drift of the party. Being a
socialist has almost become more important than being a nationalist.
So the political waters in
Wales hardly ripple - it is calm and serene. It is unreal and manipulative
politics. Indeed it is so manipulative that I venture to suggest that the next
leader of the Labour Party in Wales after Carwyn Jones’s day has already been identified
– Huw Irranca-Davies the MP for Ogmore - despite all the facile pretences of it
being not so. Huw has one major plus
going for him and that is he nominated Jeremy Corbyn to be a candidate for the leadership
although he did not vote for him! Just stop and think why is he going to the
Assembly next year.
We are about to enter the
race to next May’s election and unless there are changes to political opinion,
and I accept that is possible, the current indications are that Labour will
need support again to form an administration. Already there are indications of
what is most likely to happen. Plaid Cymru’s decision to support Labour’s Local Government Bill follows an agreement between the two parties that nothing will
be implemented until after next May.
It shouldn’t surprise anyone
because Leanne Wood has said that if a coalition or any kind of deal is
necessary after next May she will only talk with Labour. So the people of Wales
know now that the slogan ‘Vote Plaid Cymru and get Labour’ is more than likely
to be realised.
I have little doubt that the
Plaid Cymru leader would be quite happy to work with a Corbyn administration –
in fact probably happier than Carwyn Jones would be! But she would not be
alone. There are others like Bethan Jenkins, Adam Price and his one- time
assistant who later was Leanne Woods’s campaign organiser to be leader–Jonathan
Edwards M P. The much publicised political background and activities of at
least three of them is unashamedly socialist and maybe much further left than even
that.
During the Labour Party
leadership contest in the summer I asked a question in more than one post on my
blog ‘What is Labour for any longer ’? My blogs and tweets were sent to the
four candidates quite a few times. Well to be fair the party membership and
affiliate supporters, said to be numbering around 600,000, have answered in
emphatic terms with the election of Jeremy Corbyn. It is a question I did also
ask after the General Election of my own party the Liberal Democrats and Plaid
Cymru as well.
Of course there are nuances
and changes from time to time at elections whether for Westminster or Cardiff
but these are only at the margins and we always end up with the same outcome – the
majority of MPs in Wales are Labour and the Senedd always has a Labour led administration. Its true advances
are being over the last decade by the Conservatives and UKIP did cause a stir
in many parts of Wales in May but all in all it remains pretty much ‘same old
same old’.
Twice there have been
opportunities to change things but the smaller parties have reverted to linking
with ‘big brother’. The Liberal Democrats in 2001 and Plaid Cymru in 2007 – in
both cases Labour could not govern on their own so coalitions had to be formed.
The argument always goes that we must have an administration, certainty
stability. That’s true but the largest party could govern by grace and favour,
in other words make sure its policies meets the wishes of the majority of AMs
without a fixed deal that ties the smaller parties for four years. That
situation only serves to benefit Labour. It could also have an advantage of
giving more influence, power and clout to the AMs. I say ‘could’ because the
evidence that the vast majority of the AMs’ are capable of giving someone a
‘political clout’ is pretty thin!
Labour will always dangle in
front of the Liberal Democrats and Plaid Cymru the storyline that the Welsh
people would never forgive either of those two parties if they went into coalition
with the Tories. It is possible they
wouldn’t but no-one has yet had the courage to even attempt it. In any event it
will be impossible to contemplate such a scenario next year taking into
consideration the austerity policies being pursued by Cameron and Osborne, leaving
aside matters such as the Euro referendum, the scrapping the Human Rights Act,
the Trade Union legislation and the issue of replacing Trident. So the end
result looks like being another political stalemate where Labour remains in
power again.
I wouldn’t mind so much
Labour winning if they had the vision to create a vibrant and exciting Wales.
So I then began to surmise who in today's Wales with the courage,
panache, style and strength of character to be a leader like Nicola Sturgeon..
Who in Wales today could
utter with authority and certainty words like the following as Sturgeon did at
her annual conference:-
“I have a message for the Prime Minister today…ignore Scotland at your
peril. Know that people are watching and listening. And remember this: it is
not you who will decide the future of Scotland, it will be the people of
Scotland.”
The SNP’s sister party in Wales is Plaid Cymru and a golden opportunity
came their way in 2007 to be able to have uttered such words with Ieuan Wyn
Jones as First Minister. Sadly the opportunity was set aside through
prevarication among Liberal Democrats and Plaid Cymru AMs. I chronicled the story
in a post on June 29.
Instead Plaid Cymru portrayed itself as unwilling to take control of the
situation and clearly assert it wanted to be the government of Wales. At the
very same time the SNP had no such fear in Holyrood when they went on to form a
minority government and yes with the support of the Liberal Democrats and the
Conservatives at key periods over the ensuing years.
The failure to grasp the leadership of a ‘rainbow coalition’ with both
hands meant that Plaid Cymru condemned Wales to the continuation of successive Labour
Administrations that are seriously under-performing in so many important and vital
areas. So by now rather than being seen as an alternative to Labour in Wales
the party is often depicted as nothing more than Labour’s ‘little helper’.
But the fact is that Plaid has evolved into a very left of centre party
and it looks as if Leanne Wood is exceedingly proud of that. Leanne’s
background and history has been that of a socialist or indeed if not further
left than that. However she is not alone there are other AMs who proclaim the
same faith such as Bethan Jenkins and the potential new AM Adam Price who has proudly
declared that he was a ‘socialist before he was a nationalist’.
Following comments and discussions on social media it is clear that
there are two differing strands in Plaid Cymru with the socialist / hard left
element in the ascendancy. It is without question by now a long way away from
the party of Gwynfor Evans both in its politics and aspirations. Indeed I often
wonder why the more liberal, centrist, rural and Welsh speaking communities of
North–West and South-West Wales continue to support the modern Plaid Cymru.
Consider Plaid Cymru’s stance over many years now with regard to Wales
becoming a self-governing nation and this at the very time that the SNP is
rapidly moving Scotland towards possible independence. There are problems
facing Scotland with the fall in oil prices and the like. Yet one never hears
Nicola Sturgeon pointing to that as a problem when arguing the case for home
rule or independence. Hers is a confident, assertive voice for Scotland. In
contrast recently on BBC Question Time Leanne Wood when explaining the difficulties
of campaigning for home-rule or independence is not appropriate in the current
climate for Wales said :-
‘Our economy is too weak. We’re already facing a situation where workers
in Wales earn 85% of the UK average’
Why on earth make the Labour and Tory case for them? Of course there are
problems across many areas of Welsh life but having fought Gwynfor Evans in
three General Elections I know for certain such words would not have been
uttered by him. Rather he would have been blaming, as he forever did, the
‘London’ Governments for ‘neglecting’, ‘depriving’, ‘ignoring’ and failing to
invest in Wales. His speeches still resonate with me to this day – in fact I
could probably deliver one or two of them!
So with the Plaid Cymru’s Annual Conference in Aberystwyth only a day or
two away perhaps it is pertinent for the delegates that will gather together to
consider what is the purpose, aim, vision and strategy to be over the coming
years. In other words ‘What is Plaid Cymru for ’?
By way of conclusion and as a means of furthering the debate I include
extracts on this very subject from a blogger I only came across relatively recently:-
Being a
native of the Rhondda Ms Wood must know that throughout the Valleys (and indeed
the south) there are tens and tens of thousands of people looking for a viable
alternative to Labour, that’s why they turned out last month and last year to
vote Tory and Ukip in Caerffili, Merthyr, Blaenau Gwent and Islwyn, and in the
process pushed Plaid Cymru down to fourth place. So why should anyone who
doesn’t want Labour in power vote for the party that will keep Labour in power?
Have
those at the highest, policy-making levels of the party calculated that if a
poor Wales votes Labour, then a poorer Wales might swing towards Plaid Cymru?
Don’t dismiss the suggestion out of hand; just ask yourself, what other hope
has Plaid Cymru got of ever becoming a successful party?
Well, of
course, there is one, obvious route; Plaid could be a Welsh party,
focusing on Welsh issues, from a Welsh perspective. But that option was
rejected in favour of a slow, lingering death – for both nation and party –
decades ago.
Last
month I loaned Plaid Cymru my vote because I persuaded myself that doing so was
a way of giving a proxy vote to the SNP, a party I respect greatly for
confronting the Labour monster head-on, and slaying it. Compare
that to what we now hear from Plaid Cymru – ‘A vote for us is a vote for
Labour’. How do
we explain the difference?
I can’t
help thinking that one explanation for ruling out any pact with the Tories may
be Ms Wood’s desire to play to a foreign gallery. I’m thinking now of those
Left-Green ‘progressive elements’ Plaid so assiduously courted a few months
ago. If so, then it’s another reminder of how divorced from Wales and Welsh
issues Plaid Cymru has become. By comparison, the Scottish National Party does
not fashion its policies to appeal to audiences in Islington, or the offices of
the Guardian newspaper
. . . and certainly not Labour HQ!
But if
Plaid Cymru wants to talk about poverty, then okay. Let’s talk about the
poverty of ambition in the party that has the nerve to call itself The Party of
Wales. While the SNP is leading the Scottish people to independence, Plaid
Cymru’s ambition extends no further than begging a few more crumbs from
England’s table and propping up Carwyn Jones and his gang of deadbeats.
Almost
fifty years after Gwynfor Evans won Carmarthen Plaid Cymru’s ambition today
extends no further than acting as a crutch for the party of George Thomas and
Neil Kinnock in a system of sham devolution. Now that’s poverty! And total failure.